UPDATE: The Examiner newspaper cover article for July 23, “Beaumont ISD eyes Early College shake-up as district announces broad changes,” was decried by Superintendent Sandi Massey as “100% completely false” at the Thursday, July 23, meeting of the BISD Board of Managers; this publication does not concede to the assertion. We do not take such a claim lightly. All articles in the publication are based on verifiable and trusted sources and investigative methods.
During her presentation, Massey directly addressed The Examiner’s coverage as inaccurate.
“I’m sure everyone just believes everything they hear in the news,” Massey mocked. “No, we are not closing King Collegiate Academy. We will never close King Collegiate Academy.”
To be sure, Massey never used the word “close” when previously referring to the future of King Collegiate, and The Examiner article published before the meeting never stated that she did. What is detailed in The Examiner’s article was the planned disruption of the campus that will affect current and future students of the district’s only A-rated program. (Full article at bottom)
While the superintendent left her description of the article as “completely false” on the table, much later in Massey’s presentation, she introduced “Project Accelerate” and the opening of early colleges at West Brook and Beaumont United high schools, along with offerings current King Collegiate students would access if moved to those campuses.
“This is probably the mistake The Examiner made today,” she said, before giving information on a district-proposed plan that does include changes to the King Collegiate campus as published in the article. “Not only are they keeping their Early College, in a year or two at most, we plan to expand … and add students by making it a 6-12 magnet for arts, visual performing arts and STEAM technology.”
The Examiner cover stating “BISD to close only A-rated campus – new plans now include disrupting Beaumont Early College program,” though not part of the actual article, suggests to readers that Beaumont Early College, as it currently exists, will be no more. Closure of a program model that has worked for years is a fact supported by Massey’s own presentation to the board. Again, Massey never uses the word “close” to describe the King Collegiate program, she uses the word “expand.” No matter the semantics, the outcome is the same: Beaumont Early College, as it currently exists, will be no more.
In closing, The Examiner highlights a slide Massey produced for the board of managers during the July 23 meeting to denounce teacher pushback for other changes in the district: “People rarely attack truth because it is false. They attack truth because accepting it requires changing something they love or something they are responsible for.
“When people push back, that’s probably one of the two reasons.”
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Beaumont ISD Superintendent of Schools Sandi Massey hosted the first Community Action Series meeting July 21 at the Downtown Event Centre, announcing several changes planned for the upcoming school year and beyond. Some changes have been detailed in prior meetings, but a new dramatic change was also introduced that will impact the entire student body of the only campus that received an A rating from the Texas Education Agency (TEA) in 2025 prior to the TEA takeover. Massey previously stated there was no plans to disrupt the district’s successful program.
Breaking up what works
During the July 21 meeting, however, Massey announced the district’s intent to shuffle King Collegiate Academy students, (formerly Beaumont Early College High School) to their zoned high school campuses in the 2027-2028 school year. Under the new plan, West Brook High School (most recently rated with a “C” by the TEA) and Beaumont United High School (most recently rated a “D” by the TEA) would each house their own early college programs, although the extent of those programs was not detailed.
Massey advised attendees that the King Collegiate Academy campus would become a Fine Arts Academy, offering programs such as violin and ballet for students in grades 6-12, among other offerings. Although plans are still underway for how the shift would be accomplished, one of the benefits cited for moving early college programs to the district’s large-capacity, lower-rated high school campuses was to allow students the opportunity to participate in extracurricular athletics.
“The reason we don’t have extra curriculars is because we are focused on academics – we knew what we were giving up when we enrolled in Early College,” said Daje Johnson, incoming senior at King Collegiate Academy and member of the Superintendent’s Student Leadership Council for the 2025-2026 school year. “We have a thing called ‘Family’ at Early College, where students from freshmen to seniors are grouped together the entire four years – the older students help the younger students, and the teacher helps everyone. Leaving our family would be really sad for all of us … these are the friends we’ve made and went to high school with the entire time!”
Details regarding whether degree plans and course offerings will remain the same for early college students, and whether students will be integrated into mainstream classrooms, have not yet been announced. Massey is expected to provide additional information during the superintendent’s address at the July 23 Board of Trustees meeting.
“What they have at King Collegiate Academy is small classroom sizes and teachers who absolutely want to be at work, and make sure those students succeed,” a BISD employee told The Examiner in an exclusive interview.
During the 2025 TEA rating release, King Collegiate not only earned an “A” rating, the campus earned seven distinction designations: academic achievement in reading/language arts, academic achievement in mathematics, academic achievement in social studies, academic achievement in science, top 25% comparative academic growth, postsecondary readiness, and top 25% closing the gaps.
Times, they are a-changin’
BISD administration also recently announced a schedule change for the upcoming school year, stating the adjustment is intended “to better support student learning and transportation.”
Transportation challenges were repeatedly discussed during the previous school year as the district faced a shortage of bus drivers. Despite route changes, drivers were still dropping off groups of students closest to campuses before doubling back to pick up the remaining students and complete routes, the distric treported.
According to public information, all elementary campuses and Bingman Head Start will open at 6:30 a.m. and close at 5 p.m. beginning this school year. The instructional day will run from 7:30 a.m. to 3:15 p.m.
Middle schools will operate from 8:30 a.m. to 4 p.m., with doors opening at 7 a.m. and closing at 5 p.m.
High schools will begin at 8:30 a.m. and end at 4:30 p.m., with doors opening at 7 a.m. and closing at 5 p.m.
King Collegiate Academy will operate from 7:15 a.m. to 3 p.m.
During the July 23 Board of Managers meeting, TEA-appointed managers will vote on the approval of several additional items up for change, including proposed policy revisions, student outcome goals, guardrails, student service renewals and budget amendments.
According to the proposed policy regarding leaves and absences, state leave proration is revised to “all personal leave shall be prorated based on the actual time employed” and an “employee’s final paycheck shall be reduced for personal leave the employee used beyond his or her pro rata entitlement for the school year.” Previous policy allowed only state personal leave for this portion of the policy, which is now being changed to all personal leave. The district also revised the policy to establish five days of state personal paid leave annually, which is the minimum number of days mandated by state law. Alongside this, the proposed revisions also prohibit state personal leave and/or local leave to exceed two consecutive workdays, while the previous policy was five consecutive workdays.
The district is also proposing a new policy regarding bereavement leave, stating that employees shall be granted three days of bereavement leave taken within 30 days of the date of death. The district is attempting to implement a supplemental sick leave bank that employees may join by contributing local leave days and can then request leave from the bank if they are experiencing a catastrophic illness or injury after exhausting all other paid leave. Employees participating in the supplemental leave bank by contributing local leave days are the only ones who can request time from the bank.
Similarly, the proposed revisions to the student activities policy allows students a maximum of 10 extracurricular absences per school year not related to post-district competition, with exceptions to be approved by the superintendent or designee. The new policy means that students participating in board-approved extracurricular activities, such as University Interscholastic League (UIL), may not be allowed to miss more than 10 days for extracurricular events before any district competitions.
The district’s proposed policy revisions regarding educational philosophy removes all prior policies, implementing a new vision, belief and mission statement that excludes past remarks of fostering inclusive and diverse environments for students. The new proposed vision is “In Beaumont ISD, every student will be known, supported, challenged and prepared.” BISD also removed all previous core beliefs, implementing only one core belief that states, “We believe every student’s success is our responsibility and the future of Beaumont lives in them.” The new mission statement is “We accomplish our vision by building systems where exceptional teaching is the norm, leadership is accountable and measurable growth happens in every classroom, every day.” Previous educational philosophies stated that the district would support diverse needs of all students and collaborate with communities to maximize student opportunities, which the new proposed policies eliminates.
If approved, the proposed policies will take effect for the 2026-2027 school year with updates as needed, according to the agenda item.
Goals, guardrails and grades
According to the posted agenda and accompanying documentation, the BISD managers will also vote to approve new student outcome goals for third grade students. Currently, roughly one in four meet grade level goals for reading and math set by the TEA.
Proposed student outcome goals, district administration asserts, “establishes clear expectations for student performance and provides a foundation for accountability, continuous improvement and data-informed decision making.” Stated goals include increasing the percentage of third grade students scoring meets grade level or above on the State of Texas Assessments of Academic Readiness (STAAR) reading test to 65% by August 2031 from the current 27%. They also want to increase the percentage of those who score meets grade level or above on STAAR mathematics test for third grade to 60% by August 2031, which is currently 23% of third grade students. If approved, the data collected from proposed student outcome goals will “guide district planning, profession monitoring and reporting throughout the 2026-2027 school year and subsequent accountability cycles.”
July 23, the board will vote on approving new guardrails on themselves that will “establish expectations and parameters for district operations and governance.” The proposed guardrails state that the board “shall not overlook the importance of monitoring and evaluating its own performance and the implementation of its decisions, perform, or appear to perform, any of the expressed or delegated responsibilities of the superintendent, and represent, or appear to represent, through their words or actions, the voice of the entire board on matters that the board has not publicly adopted.”
Alongside approving board guardrails, they will also vote to approve superintendent guardrails. The superintendent guardrails state that “The superintendent shall not allow the use of non-district approved materials in any classroom, the superintendent shall not allow the number of D and F rated campuses to increase or remain the same, and the superintendent shall not allow the number of ineffective teachers to increase or remain the same.” The agenda item does not clarify how a teacher will be deemed ineffective.
If approved, the guardrails will go into effect immediately, according to the agenda item.
Additionally, the board will also be voting to approve the renewal of several student services with an estimated total of $2 million. The services include sign language interpretations, occupational therapy, physical therapy, licensed specialist in school psychology and speech language pathology. All service renewals are for one-year terms and are offered to students “on an as-need basis,” according to the agenda item.
The outcome of the board decisions and more details will be provided in subsequent editions of The Examiner.
BISD Superintendent Sandi Massey reveals district-wide changes to community partners and parents