Ken Zarifis remembers when Education Austin, the union representing Austin’s public school teachers and staff, first began to push Austin ISD’s board of trustees. It was 2011 and AISD was considering whether to allow a charter school to take over Allan Elementary on the city’s Eastside.
The plan was for the IDEA charter school to begin with Allan Elementary, then take over Martin Middle School, and, eventually, former Johnston High School, to bring up the schools’ test scores. Public school supporters were furious. Zarifis went to the school board trustee representing his neighborhood and asked her to oppose the plan. Zarifis and other members of Education Austin filled the board of trustees’ public meeting on the night of the vote to speak against it. The trustees still approved the takeover 6-3.
“I’ll never forget it,” Zarifis said. “We started chanting, ‘We will vote you out! We will vote you out!’ We went outside, we were all in this big circle, and we said, ‘We have to start looking for people to flip the board, for candidates.’ By February, we’d found four people.”
Three of the four – Gina Hinojosa, Jayme Mathias, and Ann Teich – won their elections the next fall, flipping the board against the takeover. At their first meeting in December of 2012, the trustees canceled the district’s contract with IDEA. The takeover of Allan Elementary lasted four months.
“It’s all about local. That’s all that matters to me. I can’t do a damn thing about national stuff, but I can do a lot locally and that’s what I lean into.” – Education Austin’s Ken Zarifis
“I’d never seen electoral politics work in such a local and direct fashion,” Zarifis said. “They terminated it on the first night that they were all sitting there. You suddenly see: We’ve got power.”
That wasn’t always the case for Education Austin, which has been celebrating its 25th anniversary this year. Zarifis’ predecessor, Louis Malfaro, who served as the organization’s president starting in 1999, when the Austin Federation of Teachers and Austin Association of Teachers merged to create EA, said the board of trustees was not necessarily a progressive body during his tenure, that the union needed to assert its power. “We used to be nothing,” Malfaro said. “The teachers in the city, we didn’t run the show. West Austin ran the show. The Chamber of Commerce ran the show.”
It’s been different since the IDEA charter school fight. Zarifis estimates that the union’s preferred candidates have only lost two or three of the trustee races in which the union has endorsed since 2012. All nine of the current trustees were endorsed by the union. District leaders consult with Education Austin so often that it is almost an arm of the district itself. “Ken’s like the 10th school board member,” Malfaro said.
Education Austin has used that influence to fight for districtwide pay increases for teachers and staff, reduced workloads, shared decision-making, and safe working conditions. “They’ve been very successful in advocating for raises for teachers and classified staff,” Ann Teich said. “They’ve also been very successful in advocating for a workday that is manageable – you know, a duty-free lunch and that kind of thing, something I always appreciated when I was a teacher. They’ve also been successful in advocating at the Legislature to some degree.”
Morgan Craven remembers partnering with Education Austin at the state Capitol in 2017. Craven, who at the time was working for the social justice nonprofit Texas Appleseed, had seen federal data showing that young students, disproportionately black children and those with disabilities, were being suspended from school at rates higher than other kids. She wanted to change state law to limit the suspensions.
Craven had no background in education so Zarifis introduced her to his community. “He was like, ‘Okay, we’re doing this – let’s do it,’” Craven said. “He got teachers involved in the advocacy. We were working with young people in the advocacy. We were working directly with the district in the advocacy. And I don’t know if that was on his agenda, to suddenly devote this much time to this particular issue, but he just jumped into it.” The advocates got a law passed to limit out-of-school suspensions for young students. The reform was undone this session with the approval of House Bill 6, which once again makes it easier for teachers to suspend students.
“We used to be nothing. The teachers in the city, we didn’t run the show.” – Former Education Austin President Louis Malfaro
Education Austin’s vice president Trasell Underwood remembers the leaders who put it on the map, starting with Malfaro, who worked out a consultation agreement with the district allowing the union to discuss wages and working conditions. She praised other EA leaders who recognized the power that would come from merging the previous unions into one entity. She recalled how former VP Montserrat Garibay helped Education Austin organize DACA clinics and citizenship drives, where families sat down with attorneys to begin the process of becoming citizens. She said it was members of the union who pushed the district to support its LGBTQ workers and students by participating in Pride celebrations. “It was Education Austin that went to the district and forced the conversation,” she said.
Zarifis joined the union soon after taking a job as an English teacher at Burnet Middle School in 1998. Today, the school is threatened with a charter school takeover, just like Allan Elementary was in 2012. The state of Texas, through the Texas Education Agency, is forcing AISD to replace the leadership and about half the teachers at Burnet, Webb, and Dobie middle schools in an effort to improve the schools’ test scores. If the scores don’t come up by December, the schools will be handed to charter school management, starting in 2026. The district is planning to close and consolidate other schools.
It’s a crisis that Education Austin has repeatedly confronted during Zarifis’ tenure as president. In 2012, the union partnered with Gina Hinojosa, who had just been elected president of the AISD board of trustees, to save Johnston High School from being closed. (The school was renamed Eastside Early College High School in 2008.)
“I met with Education Austin and other community advocates every week for that whole school year, working to make sure we were on top of ensuring that school would stay open,” said Hinojosa, now a state representative. “At the high school graduation ceremony, the TEA commissioner announced they had met accountability standards. It was just the coolest community effort when it succeeded. But Education Austin was there and that’s how I knew they were a reliable ally and partner.”
Zarifis stresses that it is the union’s focus on local organizing that has made it effective in a state that is adamantly anti-union. “It’s all about local,” Zarifis said. “That’s all that matters to me. I can’t do a damn thing about national stuff, but I can do a lot locally and that’s what I lean into. Most of the stuff that impacts our lives day-to-day happens locally – what the City Council does, what the school board does.”
Zarifis said this is one of the things he loves about public education – that ultimately it’s a grassroots, community-led enterprise. “It’s the most glorious thing. There’s no institution that’s more magnificent, as flawed as as our public school system is, in creating the future, every bit of it. Show me one other institution that’s creating the future. That’s like magic shit. It’s so otherworldly, but it’s hard work. It’s not like a magic-wand kind of magic. It’s hard-work magic.”
Editor’s Note Thursday, June 12, 9:24am: This story has been updated to correct a quote from Ken Zarifis. He did not say that there is no institution as magnificent or as flawed as public education, but that there is no institution as magnificent, as flawed as it is. The Chronicle regrets the error.
This article appears in June 13 • 2025.
