AISD Headed for Showdown Over 'Exigency'

Photo by Jana Birchum

When the Austin Independent School District declared financial exigency in 2003, it was because the district's budget was near full collapse. Now, with the district again facing another budget crunch, there is push back from the board of trustees against a recent request from Super­in­tendent Meria Carstarphen (pictured) to declare exigency again, a move that would allow her to restructure the administration, reallocate funds, and prepare for long-term budget shortfalls. In the context of the last crisis and this new resistance, at the board's Feb. 15 work session Carstarphen said, "I do understand, probably more than ever before, what [exigency] means to Texas."

At the work session, AISD staff presented an option to avoid exigency. Dubbed "Option 2," this strategy would achieve staff reduction and savings goals without taking the radical step of declaring exigency; however, staff still touted what they said were the advantages of exigency. The 114 positions the district seeks to remove – to create savings to pay for other programs – had decreased by one due to natural attrition. ("We win by default on that one," district chief legal counsel Mel Waxler told the board.) Of that new total of 113, staff showed that 73 can be resolved by leaving positions vacant or by transferring administrative staff to campus positions. That left 40 positions that staff argued would be most easily removed by declaring exigency, thus removing many legal restrictions on laying employees off.

Trustee Karen Dulaney Smith had a different interpretation. She argued that because 22 of that 40 are either at-will employees or on contracts that expire in June, there are only 18 contracted employees in what Waxler termed "a gray area" as to how easy it would be to terminate or reposition them. Smith argued that those positions could be dealt with through program redesign, saying, "I just don't think it's intellectually honest to say we have financial exigency right now and that this is the reason why we're going to cut employees, if what we're going to do is in fact spend more money on different programs."

The board is scheduled to vote on the exigency proposal and Option 2 at its Feb. 22 meeting. However, trustee Annette LoVoi gave early warning that she will be a nay vote on exigency, saying, "It creates reputational risk, it's already done damage, and it's not the way for this board now."