The Texas Legislature passed Senate Bill 1882 in 2017 to empower and incentivize school districts to offer innovative new school models through district charter partnerships. Using this incentive, districts are eligible to receive the higher of state charter– or district-level funding. This can mean between $1,000 and $1,500 per student in additional resources.
The local school board must approve all district charter partnerships. The district continues to enroll the students, receive state funding, and remain accountable for student performance. Funds will flow to the campus through a contract between the district and the partner.
Districts can create partnership schools with nonprofits, units of local government, institutions of higher education, and state open-enrollment charters.
Examples include:
Districts of Innovation, as created by House Bill 1842 in 2015, represents an important step forward in public school flexibility policy. The law allows districts to access the same exemptions from state law as open-enrollment charter schools. To do so, they must receive a two-thirds vote of their board of trustees and approval by the district-level decision-making committee. HB 1842 promotes greater autonomy for schools while preserving the accountability, transparency, and local control essential to the public school system.
District of Innovation plans vary from school district to school district and can include many different exemptions, the most popular of which include:
Dozens of districts have exempted themselves from the requirement to begin school no earlier than the fourth Monday in August. While some districts specified a start date in their plan, others left this decision to the board on an annual basis. Of those districts that specified, most appear to be moving the start date one week earlier or less.
The most common reasons given include:
Of the districts that have exempted themselves from some form of teacher certification requirements, a significant majority pointed to the need to find CTE teachers as a motivation for accessing the exemption, often pointing to the desire to hire industry experts.
Other common sources of motivation included the desire to partner more easily with faculty from institutions of higher education for dual credit purposes and allowing certified teachers to teach a course outside his or her area of certification in order to expand course offerings, particularly in small and rural districts.
The most common reasons given by districts for exempting themselves from the requirement that students be in class for at least 90% of days in order to receive course credit were:
The most common reasons given by districts accessing an exemption from the requirement to maintain class sizes of 22 to 1 in grades kindergarten through 4 were:
The most common reason given by districts accessing an exemption from the requirement for a 7-hour school day was the desire to allow for early release or late start on certain days in order to provide collaborative staff planning or professional development. These districts will either add time on other days or add days in order to ensure that total annual instructional time is not lost.
In accessing an exemption from the state teacher or principal evaluation system, districts mostly cited the desire to implement locally-developed systems aligned with district goals and strategic plans as their motivation for accessing this exemption.
Districts accessing an exemption from one or more contract provisions in Chapter 21 of the Texas Education Code reported they were largely designed to:
The following map shows all Districts of Innovation, 725 total (as of April 12, 2018). Below the map are several profiles of individual Districts of Innovation. You can find a list of all Districts of Innovation and links to their plans on the Texas Education Agency website.