The plan to address our local school district’s worsening accountability crisis has changed again. Three weeks ago, Austin ISD was proposing to close struggling Dobie Middle School and bus its students to Lamar Middle School for the next two years. Now, district leaders say they will keep Dobie open but replace its principal, other school leadership, and about half of its teachers in an effort to bring up the school’s accountability scores. The district is proposing the same changes at Webb and Burnet middle schools.
Some of the teachers likely to be affected are questioning the plan. Jasmine Graves, who teaches business and finance at Burnet, said she and her colleagues felt blindsided when they heard details of the plan at a private meeting with district administrators on May 6. “We were just stunned,” Graves said. “The next day, lots of teachers were crying and the kids wanted to know what was wrong, because they didn’t know. It was very somber.”
“Lots of teachers were crying.” – Burnet Middle School teacher Jasmine Graves
Dobie, Webb, and Burnet received F’s when the state’s A-F accountability ratings were released in April – the second consecutive F scores for each school. Over the last 10 days, AISD administrators have held public meetings in the schools’ cafeterias to explain that state law requires the district to submit a “turnaround plan” for any school that gets two consecutive F’s. The administrators pitched their preferred turnaround plan, called a “district-managed restart.”
The district-managed restart would require AISD to bring new principals and teachers into Dobie, Webb, and Burnet who have experience in improving student performance. It would require more teaching in literacy and math and a host of other changes. Superintendent Matias Segura clarified to members of the board of trustees last week that all teachers at the schools will be required to reapply for their jobs and that “only the most effective staff” will be retained. He added that state law mandates that 60% of the teachers who teach at a restarted school must have demonstrated “instructional effectiveness” during the previous year.
The upshot is that beloved teachers and principals at Dobie, Webb, and Burnet will be gone when school begins again in August. The school communities have reacted with shock and anger. Students walked out of class at Dobie on May 7, the day after the community’s meeting with AISD. Parents said they felt betrayed at a packed meeting at Webb on Monday. The scene was repeated the next night at Burnet Middle School.
But state law leaves the district little choice, administrators say, and a search for the new teachers and principals is already underway. On May 8, AISD offered $20,000-a-year stipends to attract certified teachers with excellent appraisals and at least three years of experience to the schools. At a board meeting that night, AISD’s Jacob Reach promised the district would find positions for the teachers who will be replaced.
Graves has doubts about that. She told the Chronicle that she and her colleagues asked for assurances at the May 6 meeting that they would be rehired, but were confused by the response.
“They didn’t make it very clear,” Graves said. “It was very obtuse. We asked them directly, ‘Do we still have jobs – the people with three-year contracts, do we still have jobs here or at another campus?’ And all they would say is, ‘We’ll do our best, we’ll try to help you, you can reapply.’ So to me, that doesn’t give anybody any security, whether it’s at Burnet or elsewhere.”
AISD expects Dobie, Webb, and Burnet to score more F’s when the 2024 and 2025 accountability ratings are released. The schools could score F’s in 2026 too – something that would require the state to close the schools outright or take over the entire district. In such a takeover, TEA officials would choose a board of managers to replace AISD’s elected school board.
Because of the deadlines built into the accountability rules, the district will have a very short window – only four months – in which to bring the campuses’ grades up to a C, once the next school year starts. Segura said at the May 8 meeting that the district will begin looking in August for charter schools to take over Dobie, Webb, and Burnet, even as school officials await feedback on the schools’ improvement. Barbara Boutette, who teaches special education at Burnet, said her school has been improving, but doubts the district’s plan will work in time.
“It’s basically a plan to have a new administrator here that doesn’t know the community and doesn’t know the students, who have very many unique needs and relationships,” Boutette said. “There’s a lot going on here. The kids are dealing with homelessness. I have several kids who have lost a parent. They’re dealing with violence. I’m doing a unit in my special education class, reading a novel that includes gun violence, and some kids came to me and said, ‘I witnessed gun violence this very week.’”
This article appears in May 16 • 2025.
