The Austin ISD Board of Trustees are facing a Nov. 21 deadline to decide which schools will close next school year – a push announced last week from an original Nov. 14 deadline – following the Texas Education Agency’s mandate demanding Turnaround Plans (TAPs) for AISD campuses given “unacceptable” ratings based on STAAR results.
Nonetheless, the trustees barely talked about the TAPs and closure decisions last Thursday night, Sept. 25, during their monthly voting meeting. Rather, the focus was on a revision of the Lone Star Governance (LSG) scorecard that the TEA is using to evaluate AISD.
With TAP deadlines looming, the tension on the dais was palpable. Under the TEA’s rules for the district, the board must focus on “student outcomes” (i.e., STAAR results) for at least 50% of their meeting time, while school closures, consolidations, and the budget apparently don’t fall under that category per the state.
“We do have TAPs to talk about. We do have a difficult budget to talk about. We do have school closures to talk about. We have profoundly important things to talk about… But we lose this. We lose time to talk about other things too, and I just want to really name that,” Board President Lynn Boswell said to her fellow trustees.
Superintendent Matias Segura did give a brief presentation on the budget crisis, revealing that the district would run out of funds by next school year if there isn’t a major intervention, risking emergency borrowing, substantial layoffs, and the TEA’s takeover of AISD. “We would lose our ability to do this [process] in a way that reflects our values and how we would do it, and give that power, most notably, over to the state,” Segura emphasized.
The board heard a “student outcomes” presentation on STAAR results from 2019-2025. It revealed a significant disparity: 52% of kids in grades 3-8 who are economically disadvantaged didn’t meet grade-level standards on the exams, compared to 10% of kids who are not.
Trustees also eased their own paperwork load by reducing their state-mandated responsibilities. TEA requires that AISD have a “scorecard” with at least three goals to improve upon, about which they write up a regular report. So, having five originally, the board voted to cut two: caregiver engagement and early learning, while those focused on dual-language programs, underserved students, and academic success accountability remain.
Trustees said the required reporting can feel performative and take significant time away from their actual work on those issues within their schools.
Segura emphasized that their vote on paper to shorten their TEA scorecard doesn’t mean the district will stop making progress on those issues. With the sudden TAPs, they simply have too much on their plate this school year. “I don’t know if we can say this. We’re going to do all of this. It’s going to continue,” Segura said.
“I want to be clear that… the reduction of these [goals] does not have to do with the attention paid,” Trustee Kevin Foster emphasized. “Quite the contrary. I want more work to be freely done in these areas by alleviating the reporting burden, which is an act of faith, right? To say, you know what, go with God. You have work to do.”
“Ditto,” Trustee LaRessa Quintana added.
This article appears in October 3 • 2025.
