Saul Hinojosa, South San's state-appointed superintendent, wants to improve the district's academic outcomes by investing in teacher recruitment and retention.
Just days into the job, South San Antonio Independent School District’s new state-appointed leader has set an ambitious goal of transforming the struggling district into an exemplar of student success.
Superintendent Saul Hinojosa discussed his objectives on Wednesday at the district’s first board meeting since being taken over by the Texas Education Agency last week. “My goal is to become an A-rated district,” Hinojosa said. “It’s not only one person. It is going to take this board, the community, staff and everybody working together for a common cause.” The TEA appointed Hinojosa and seated a board of managers to replace trustees as part of a move to stabilize South San ISD following decades of dysfunction. The decision came months after the district’s conservator wrote a letter emphasizing the board’s inability to govern itself properly, represent community interests or focus on student outcomes. STATE TAKEOVER: Meet South San ISD's new superintendent and board of managers Hinojosa joins South San after a successful 15-year run at the helm of neighboring Somerset ISD. When he arrived there, he said Somerset was also in turmoil and had three failing schools. By the time he retired in 2022, the district and five of its campuses had earned As on the state's accountability system. South San ISD has never gotten higher than a C on the state’s controversial grading system. While the TEA hasn’t released A-F scores for the last two years due to ongoing litigation, the district was assigned a C during the 2021-2022 school year. When the accountability system was modified during the pandemic, South San received two not-rated scores in lieu of failing grades. To carry out his new vision, Hinojosa shared a “90-day plan” with the new board that prioritizes investments in classroom instruction. The plan involves restructuring and reducing the number of full-time equivalent positions in the central office to spend more money on teachers. Within his first six days at South San, Hinojosa said the administration found $3 million in central office positions that they will be “giving back to our campuses.” “Our best performing teachers will be the best paid teachers in Bexar County,” Hinojosa said. “If students don’t have effective teachers in front of them, they’re not going to succeed, so our goal is to build capacity in our staff.” The base pay for South San teachers is $59,350, according to the district’s 2024-2025 compensation plan. Teachers with over 26 years of experience earn $69,485 annually. Hinojosa said the district will hire additional instructional coaches to help increase its number of teachers and allocate more funding to purchase buses and paint schools. During the public comment portion of Wednesday's meeting, Tom Cummins, executive director of the South San chapter of the American Federation of Teachers, told the new superintendent and board that they had assumed both “a great honor and a great responsibility.” Cummins said the union has represented South San teachers and support personnel since 1975. In 1989, South San AFT won an election instituting a consultation policy requiring the superintendent and administration to meet with the union monthly to discuss issues in the classroom. The district axed the policy over a year ago, Cummins said, but the union “hopes someday to have it back” to address funding challenges, student retention and recruitment, and academic outcomes. “We will hopefully be with the administration and continue our relationships with the board because while this is a new start, there are still old issues floating around which really need to be dealt with,” he said. 'A clean break' After brief introductions, the board of managers jumped right into business. One of its first tasks was approving Hinojosa as interim superintendent with a daily pay of $1,238.94. The board will vote on his permanent employment contract during its next meeting on March 19. Hinojosa replaces former South San Superintendent Henry Yzaguirre, who was paid $270,000 annually to lead the district since 2021. The board of managers also approved JCA Law as its new legal counsel and elected its officers, confirming the TEA’s appointments of Raymond Tijerina as board president, Karla Gomez Sanchez as vice president and Darrell Balderama as secretary. Ernesto Arrellano Jr. was the only former trustee in the audience. During public comment, he said he applied for the board of managers when the TEA began recruiting in November even though he knew he “more than likely wasn’t going to be selected.” After congratulating the new board, Arrellano shared his experience as a trustee and explained how he and his colleagues worked to prevent a state takeover from occurring. The South San graduate said he first witnessed the district’s dysfunction while serving on the San Antonio Water System board from 2013 to 2018 and felt compelled to bring better governance practices to his alma mater. After being elected in November 2020, he said he “saw just how deep the challenges were.” “We were drowning in debt, with plans at the time by that board to add another $16 million to that deficit for an unnecessary athletic facility despite a 25% drop in enrollment and low attendance, with three closed schools that had been reopened, further straining the budget, and student pass rates that had fallen to less than 30%,” Arrellano said. READ MORE: 'A history of dysfunction': South San's troubled culture could trigger board removal He said he “worked behind the scenes” to rebuild the board into a professional team. By the end of the 2022-2023 school year, he said they were moving in the direction the community deserved. Then, in 2023, the TEA recommended a board of managers intervene after an investigation revealed deep-rooted operational and governance chaos. Arrellano and other trustees negotiated a settlement that gave them one year to get their act together to avoid being replaced. In the months since, Arrellano said the board had “achieved significant milestones,” including eliminating rampant infighting, working collaboratively with the superintendent, closing four schools to slash the deficit, refinancing bonds and canceling maintenance tax notes to save millions and improving its bond rating. Saavedra’s letter to Education Commissioner Mike Morath painted a different picture. The former South San superintendent said trustees showed “a blatant disregard for Texas law” and “pervasive attendance, participation and mindset issues” during his time as conservator. He recommended a board of managers to “facilitate a clean break” from the board’s toxic culture to benefit the district’s roughly 7,400 students.
Texas Education Agency South San South San AFT American Federation Of Teachers San Antonio Water System Saul Hinojosa Ernesto Arrellano Jr. Henry Yzaguirre Tom Cummins Mike Morath Saavedra Raymond Tijerina Karla Gomez Sanchez Darrell Balderama Somerset ISD Bexar County Texas Hinojosa A-F JCA Law
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