Saturdays With the Superintendent

Parents from the schools on the potential closure list during the Jan. 22 facilities master plan task force meeting called by Superintendent Meria Carstarphen (Photo by Richard Whittaker)

There was an unexpected gathering of the AISD Facilities Master Plan Task Force at district headquarters yesterday. Even though it had only been called late Friday night, and it is unclear how many members of the board of trustees knew it was happening, Superintendent Meria Carstarphen made it quite clear that this wasn't an emergency meeting.

Instead, she named it as "a debrief session" which she had called so the task force could have some focus after the recent public blowback against potential school closures. Before heading into the three hour meeting, Carstarphen told the press, "What they brought to the community were options. Now that they've done that, they need to start shaping things up as they start working to closure."

Back on Feb. 22 of last year, the AISD Board of Trustees hired Ohio-based consultants DeJong-Richter to oversee the development of a full master plan. The consultants put together a 72 member task force which, since inception, has now officially dwindled to 63 members. Only 21 members were present when the meeting kicked off at 1.15pm, with Rev. Freddie B. Dixon Sr. turning up a few minutes later. "I had to rejuggle my Saturday to do this," said Dixon, who was originally supposed to be helping at a training session with the Kairos Prison Ministry. (According to AISD general counsel Mel Waxler, due to its nature and the lack of a quorum, the meeting did not violate the state's 72 hour posting regulations under the Open Meetings Act.)

When Dixon got there, it was clear that the afternoon was not being run by either DeJong-Richter or by either of the task force co-chairs, Anderson High teacher Richard Frazier or McCallum parent Janet Mitchell. Instead, it was the super and AISD Chief Operations Officer Larry Fryer running the show.

Carstarphen has met with the task force before, but only during their regular scheduled meetings: What they got here, Dixon said, was Carstarphen "sharing information with us and giving us guidance and giving us input that we desperately need."

Her initial task was to repeat the current mantra: It's the state budget, stupid. The early draft laid out Tuesday by House Appropriations Chair Jim Pitts, R-Waxahachie, puts the worst case scenario at a $113 million shortfall for the district. At the last task force meeting, held Tuesday, the group had already started refocusing from school closures to its original mandate of creating a full facilities masterplan. These latest numbers add new context to that task.

Carstarphen changed one cornerstone of the task force's remit: Rather than looking for $5 million in savings to be enacted in the 2013 financial year (starting September 2012), she's now looking for them to find $3.5 million in FY 2012 (starting with this fall's new academic year.)

No small part of the discussion was about how the task force should frame their recommendations to the board, due next month. While discussing the district's chronic underfunding of maintenance, one task force member asked her, "How would you like us to present that, other than, 'we know we're short?'" Carstarphen replied that "Yes, you could put it up as a truth, and then perhaps you have a recommendation to associate with it."

Carstarphen also raised the possibility of having the city kick in some cash towards operational costs. That's been floating around in some backroom conversations for a while, but there seems to be no mechanism within Texas law to allow one bit of local government to just hand cash to another. Similarly, when asked whether the district could divert bond money to cover repairs, Waxler said he was pretty sure that was a non-starter, due to the state's way of ringfencing the maintenance and operations (daily expenses) part of the budget from the interest and sinking (bond repayment) part.

There were some in-depth discussions of particular projects and how to pay for them. When it came to the long-mooted boy's school, Carstarphen said, "If you're going to start a whole new program … I do think that's one where you should say, 'Look for private funding.'" Similarly, if they were to recommend a Challenger Center for space education (a favored project for Carstarphen) "private funding will be essential."

She did critique the community proposal of decamping the administration, selling off their current home at the Carruth Administration Complex and making Austin Community College their neighbors at Highland Mall. She argued that it could have too many unseen costs and would require refitting the mall (although if the West Sixth Street property, brought for $4 million and puted to be worth more than $20 million now, could be sold it would make a great episode of Flip This House.)

Carstarphen will be back in the board room on Monday, when she'll be laying out the staffing formulas to the board: That will be the first step to slashing around 600 staff positions before the next year.