SAN ANTONIO – Major changes are coming to San Antonio Independent School District.
Rhodes Middle School will close at the end of the 2025-2026 school year. State-approved turnaround organizations will partner to improve academics at six SAISD campuses.
“Rhodes, 10 years ago, it had over 800 students,” SAISD Trustee Ed Garza said. “Today, it’s at 350, 360 students. So that’s a 500-student decline in 10 years.”
Rhodes students will be reassigned to Tafolla Middle School, a move finalized after a lengthy school board meeting.
During that meeting on Monday, March 17, families pleaded with the school board to keep Rhodes open and not partner with Third Future Schools.
The SAISD school board ultimately voted to both close Rhodes and partner with the charter network. District school board leaders said enrollment declines, paired with academic failures, drove the decision.
Three SAISD schools — Edgar Allan Poe STEM Dual Language Middle School, David Crockett Academy Elementary School and Hot Wells Middle School — will be operated by the Accelerating Campus Excellence Restart Model.
According to the Texas Education Agency 2025 Annual Report, “the Accelerating Campus Excellence (ACE) Model is one of the most successful campus turnaround models developed.”
Three additional SAISD schools — Herman Hirsch Elementary School, Ira C. Ogden Elementary School and Fidel L. Tafolla Middle School — are set to be operated by Third Future Schools.
Third Future is a network of charter schools. According to the Third Future website, the organization is “a proven school turnaround expert and education improvement partner. The nonprofit organization serves over 6,000 students across Colorado, Texas, and Louisiana.”
“Those schools will also have to go through that reapplication process for their staff and for their administration,” Garza said, referring to schools set to operate under ACE and Third Future.
That requirement means existing staff members at schools operated by the ACE partnership and Third Future are not guaranteed jobs at those campuses next school year.
According to Garza, staff members who currently work at Rhodes Middle, Tafolla Middle, Hirsch, Ogden Elementary, Poe Middle, Crockett Elementary and Hot Wells Middle will need to reapply for a job within the district for the upcoming school year.
“We’ve tried to be transparent to all of our campuses that at any particular time within the school year, a campus could be on that list based on under-enrollment,” Garza said.
Some families said the process felt sudden and unclear.
“It’s very poor and it’s sad and it brings shame to the San Antonio Independent District,” Albert Campbell said.
Parents also said they want more details about what the new operators will do and how the district will boost involvement.
“How are we going to get more students engaged and more parents involved,” Priscilla, an SAISD parent, said.
The school board has said the moves are aimed at avoiding a broader state intervention tied to repeatedly low campus ratings.
“That’s what triggers either the closing of the school or the state takeover of the entire school district,” Garza said. “These schools have been academically unacceptable now for three years in a row, and so the philosophy is bring in new leadership, bring in new staff.”
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