Gina Hinojosa's Day-One Promise Meets a Timeline: Mike Morath's Term Expires Jan. 10, Nine Days Before She Takes Office
Gov.-elect Gina Hinojosa promised to fire Texas Education Commissioner Mike Morath on day one. The calendar may do the job first — his term expires Jan. 10, and her replacement still has to survive a Republican Senate.
AUSTIN — Gov.-elect Gina Hinojosa's loudest education promise was built for a victory speech: 'In case you have not heard, on day one, I will fire Mike Morath.' The calendar, it turns out, may get there first — and the fine print runs through the Texas Senate.
Morath, who has led the Texas Education Agency since January 2016, is nearing the end of his third term, and his current appointment expires Jan. 10 — nine days before Hinojosa takes office on Jan. 19, KTTZ reported Monday. That means she could appoint a replacement rather than formally fire him. Her transition team is already interviewing candidates, she said Thursday, although her nominee would need confirmation from the Republican-controlled Texas Senate.
The stakes are the whole system. TEA oversees public schools serving roughly 5.5 million Texas students, distributes state and federal funding, oversees standardized testing and assigns the A-F accountability ratings Hinojosa has pledged to pause. It also holds the takeover power the state used in Houston ISD in 2023 — a move Hinojosa, a former Austin ISD board president, has pledged to reverse. 'I don't have anything against the man personally, but I do believe we need an educator in that position to get us back on track,' she told The Texas Standard in October. TEA did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Friday, the report said.
A new commissioner alone would not rewrite the job: many of TEA's powers, including district takeovers and the accountability system, are established in state law, and changing them requires the Legislature — where Democrats won the Texas House in Tuesday's election but Republicans retained their Senate majority.
