Things to Think About: Austin ISD Is In A Mess. Here's How We Start Fixing It.

I do not want the State of Texas to take over Austin ISD. I think I've made that pretty clear by now. I believe Austin voters should elect the people who run Austin schools. I'm running for the Austin ISD Board, District 4, because I believe in local control and I believe the school district should be accountable to the people who live here, pay for it and send their children to its schools.

But local control only works if local control works. And right now we have some serious problems.

Austin ISD just earned a B overall. That's great. Truly. Teachers, staff, students and families worked incredibly hard for it. The number of A- and B-rated campuses increased from 43 in 2024 to 61 this year, 35 campuses increased a letter grade and eight schools broke their string of unacceptable ratings. There is real improvement happening in this district, and the people responsible for that improvement deserve the credit.

Austin ISD also has 20 F-rated campuses. Not two. Twenty. Another 11 received Ds. Add it up and 31 Austin ISD campuses received either a D or an F this year. Of the 114 campuses that completed the 2025–26 school year and received ratings, more than one out of every four received a D or F and almost one out of every six received an F. Austin ISD can be getting better and still have a very serious problem.

Let me make something else clear because I don't want teachers and staff getting lumped into my criticism of the system. I believe in them. I have been out in the community volunteering and working with teachers and staff at all different schools, and what I have seen and experienced is, for the most part, a community of hardworking, intelligent and incredibly dedicated people. I've also seen obstacles put in front of them that I think should be removed, and I know they are underpaid. If elected, I plan on working on those things and more.

Burnet and Webb have now reached five consecutive unacceptable ratings and triggered the State intervention law if those preliminary ratings become final. Dobie escaped the same fate by earning a D. Right behind them are Linder and Pecan Springs elementary schools, which have now reached four consecutive unacceptable ratings. A year ago, a dozen AISD schools were sitting at three consecutive unacceptable ratings. Improvement and consolidations got that number down dramatically, which is good, but Linder and Pecan Springs are now one year away from exactly where Burnet and Webb are today.

To me, the possibility of a takeover isn't the original problem. It's what happens when other problems have been allowed to go on too long.

We've Seen This Movie Before

This is one of the things that really bothers me because we have seen a version of it before with Special Education.

Austin ISD spent years failing to complete special education evaluations on time. Kids who needed to be evaluated for services were waiting. In some cases they were waiting so long that they were also waiting for services they might have been legally entitled to receive. TEA eventually intervened, Austin ISD got serious about fixing the problem and the district changed staffing, scheduling and tracking systems. By January 2026, AISD reported zero overdue evaluations. That's an enormous accomplishment considering there had been 1,588 late evaluations in 2022–23.

But what happened to those kids while everybody was waiting? They don't get a do-over on second grade or fifth grade or seventh grade. They don't get the months or years back when an evaluation that might have identified needed services wasn't completed. You can't measure all of the educational opportunities that may have been lost, and you certainly can't hand the time back to the child.

Talk to parents whose children went through it and hear the heartache and anger. This wasn't something that went wrong for a couple of weeks. It went on for years before the system finally changed.

Now we're dealing with a different issue, but the pattern looks awfully familiar. We know when a school is failing. We know what State law says happens when those failures continue. We know the clock is running. And then somewhere around year four everything turns into an emergency.

Why?

If a campus gets its first F, I want to know exactly why. After the second, I want to know what changed after the first one and whether it is working. By the third, if the answer is still no, I don't want another committee explaining that there is a problem. I want to know what we're changing again and what measurable result we expect from it.

Burnet shows why this is so frustrating. Its overall accountability score climbed from 54 to 59 this year. It missed a D by one point. Webb finished at 58 and showed improvement in academic growth even though its overall score slipped slightly. The teachers, staff and students at those schools were working their backsides off. Burnet almost got there. Webb showed movement too. Unfortunately, the law doesn't have an "almost" category.

Linder and Pecan Springs should have had everybody's attention two years ago. They really need it now.

About the People Running the District

I also don't want this turned into some attack on Matias Segura or the current Board of Trustees because that's not what I'm saying. There are things that have improved under the current administration and Board. The B rating happened. The special-ed evaluation backlog was eliminated. The district made $205 million in operating reductions in an extraordinarily difficult budget process. Those things are real.

Something else that I don't think many people know is that Austin ISD trustees are not paid. Nothing. They are nine elected volunteers serving four-year terms while governing one of the largest public institutions in Austin. Seven represent individual geographic districts and two are elected districtwide. Trustees approve the budget, oversee finances, set policy, hire and evaluate the superintendent and, most importantly to me, represent their communities.

I think people should know that before they talk about trustees like they're a bunch of highly paid politicians sitting around Central Office. They're not. It is a huge responsibility, it takes an enormous amount of time and they're doing it as volunteers.

If I'm elected to District 4, I know who I work for. The people of District 4 elected me. I'm not there to be a district shill. I'm not there to represent the administration, and I'm not there to represent myself. I'm there to listen to the people I represent and do the will of those people to the best of my ability.

I'm not going to merely advocate. I'm going to get things done. It's what I do. It's what I have a track record of doing.

I've Done This Before

The clearest example happened while I was President of the Lamar Middle School PTA, when Austin ISD proposed moving Dobie students into Lamar.

Lamar would welcome any student who walks through its doors. That was never the issue. Moving those kids would have effectively ended the Dobie community. Dobie would no longer have existed in any meaningful way as the school those teachers, staff, students and families had built together. You cannot take a school community, scatter its children, teachers and staff somewhere else and pretend nothing important was lost.

Dobie teachers, staff and families were fighting to preserve their school. I understood. I brought Dobie teachers, staff and families together with Lamar teachers, staff and families and we organized against the district plan.

And I didn't sit in a room and decide what everybody ought to think. I asked. I listened. I solicited information and collected it. I received hundreds of emails, texts and phone calls from people offering to help, providing information and telling me their opinions. I took all of that in and did what the people I represented wanted me to do. I built a consensus and I forged compromises on both sides.

It got ugly at times. We were called racists and plenty of other horrible things. I was accused of somehow misusing my "presidential powers," which still makes me laugh because I was the unpaid volunteer president of a middle-school PTA. Apparently my vast presidential authority consisted of listening to people, sending emails, running meetings and refusing to go away.

It didn't make me particularly popular with some people in the district offices. Fine. Popularity wasn't the job. Representation was.

The district eventually changed course. Dobie stayed Dobie.

That's exactly what I mean when I say I know who I work for. If District 4 elects me, I will solicit information. I will listen. I will dig into the facts. I will hear from people who agree with me and people who don't. Then I will represent the people who sent me there, even when that creates friction somewhere else.

And I'm going to communicate while I'm doing it. People should know what I'm working on and why I'm doing it. I don't think representation works very well if the only time you hear from your trustee is when there is an election, a crisis or a Board meeting somebody happened to watch online.

I want there to be a dialogue. I'll ask questions. I'll tell people what I'm learning. I'll explain what I'm doing and why. I'll listen when people disagree with me and answer questions as directly as I can. Now, I can only control my side of that dialogue. I can't make anybody respond, participate or agree with me. But from me there will be communication.

It doesn't get more simple than that.

Then There's the Money

Austin ISD just went through one of the most brutal budget processes I can remember. District leaders found $205 million in operating reductions for 2026–27. More than 500 positions were affected. Staffing formulas changed, transportation changed, campus support changed and Central Office took additional reductions. It was painful. But when the district absolutely had to find an enormous amount of money, it found an enormous amount of money.

That should cause us to ask how we got there and how we keep from getting there again.

The adopted budget still includes an expected $60 million from real-estate transactions. Austin ISD itself says that money is one-time revenue and planning for 2027–28 has to include another $60 million in reductions to replace it. The district projects ending 2025–26 with a fund balance of about 10% and says it ultimately needs to rebuild that to around 20%.

Sell property when selling property makes sense. Consolidate when consolidation makes sense. I have no philosophical problem with either one. But a building can only be sold once, and recurring expenses show up every year. I want recurring expenses supported by recurring revenue. That's not some exciting new financial theory. It's how you avoid showing up next summer with another hole.

And I want teachers paid more. Not when everything else is finished. Not someday if Austin ISD suddenly discovers extra money under a couch cushion. The people actually standing in front of our kids every day need to be much higher on the list when we decide how recurring dollars get spent. Now. Not later.

There is another piece of this that I think belongs in the financial conversation. Austin ISD says it has now invested about $10 million in turnaround efforts at Burnet, Dobie and Webb. I'm glad that money went into those schools. The teachers and kids deserved the help, and the results suggest the intervention did something. Dobie broke its string of Fs. Burnet went from 54 to 59 and missed doing the same thing by one point.

But think about the timing.

Austin ISD already knew it was in serious financial trouble when all of this started. And before the intensive Dobie turnaround, the district was seriously considering moving the Dobie students somewhere else, including Lamar. I know that part firsthand because I helped organize the fight against it.

Then the district changed course, invested heavily in the school and Dobie got to a D.

I'm glad they invested the money. My question is why did we have to get there that way? Why did we have to get all the way to the edge of State intervention before that level of urgency and investment showed up? What would have happened if some of those interventions had started a year or two earlier?

Maybe Burnet wouldn't have missed by one point.

That's the operating model I want to change. Find the problem earlier. Spend the money when it can still prevent the crisis. Measure whether it's working. Change it again if it isn't. Don't wait until State law leaves us with two terrible choices and then suddenly discover urgency.

Wichita Falls Did Something Different

This is where Wichita Falls becomes worth studying.

Kirby Middle School reached the same five-year trigger that Burnet and Webb have now reached. Wichita Falls could have lost its elected Board. It didn't. Commissioner Morath visited the district and ultimately agreed to an arrangement under which Kirby was formally closed, students remained at Hirschi Middle, Third Future Schools continued operating Hirschi and TEA appointed a conservator to monitor the district. Wichita Falls kept its elected Board.

What I find useful is what Wichita Falls had already done by the time Morath got there. Superintendent Dr. Donny Lee says the district had moved curriculum specialists out of central administration and into Kirby classrooms, increased compensation, rebuilt K–8 math and reading curriculum, made major facility changes and nearly tripled its fund balance to around $60 million. The number of failing campuses had also fallen dramatically.

They didn't fix everything. I'm not saying they did, and I'm not saying Austin should xerox the Wichita Falls plan and change the name at the top. Austin is a different district with different problems.

What Wichita Falls proved is much simpler. Morath does not have to replace an elected Board when a district reaches this trigger. He has already accepted another arrangement when a district could show him substantial changes already underway and agreed to serious State oversight.

So I want to know what Austin is putting in front of him.

We already know Segura has said the district will consider a path similar to Wichita Falls and that nothing is off the table. Good. What does the Austin version look like? What happens at Burnet? What happens at Webb? What measurable results are expected and by when? What happens at Linder and Pecan Springs before they ever reach five? What kind of oversight are we willing to accept in exchange for keeping an elected Board?

Those are conversations I want happening now. Maybe they are. I can't say there isn't a detailed, well-thought-out plan somewhere inside Austin ISD. But if there is, I think we all should have seen it by now.

I want less talk about plans and more: these are the problems, this is what we believe caused them, and this is how we believe we solve them.

Why Did Only One Company Bid?

There is another part of this that I don't think we know nearly enough about.

Austin ISD knew Burnet, Dobie and Webb were approaching the State intervention deadline and went looking for an outside organization capable of operating the three schools under SB 1882. The search started in September 2025. AISD continued recruiting organizations even after the original application deadline, but when it was over exactly one organization submitted a proposal: the Texas Council for International Studies, or TCIS.

One company.

AISD didn't choose TCIS from five competing turnaround organizations and simply make the wrong choice. There weren't five choices. There weren't two. There was one. Then TEA reviewed the proposal and determined TCIS did not meet the State's required academic track-record standard for an organization being asked to turn around chronically failing campuses.

I mean, seriously. How did we get there?

I'm less interested in doing an autopsy on TCIS than I am in understanding why nobody else bid.

There are dozens of organizations involved in SB 1882 partnerships around Texas, but that number gets much smaller when you look at what Austin actually needed. Many operate pre-K programs, early-college schools, Montessori programs or other specialized models. Turning around a chronically failing middle school on a short accountability clock is something very different.

So what's the real universe? How many organizations in Texas actually had the experience and performance record necessary to operate Burnet, Dobie and Webb? Five? Ten? Two? Who were they? Which ones did Austin ISD contact and what did they say?

And I think we should ask some harder questions too. Was taking on three struggling middle schools at once financially unattractive? Were our contract terms a problem? Was the amount of control an outside operator would need something AISD didn't want to give up? Is there something about our financial situation, bureaucracy, work style or reputation that made qualified organizations reluctant to work with us? Or is this simply such a difficult business that there aren't many organizations willing to do it anywhere?

I don't know. That's why I want the answers.

Third Future is relevant only because they had already worked with Austin at Mendez and yet did not submit a bid. Their own public financial statements show that the Texas organization has been under significant financial pressure and that Mendez was losing money for them. Maybe the economics of taking on three more Austin schools didn't work. Maybe there was another reason entirely. I haven't found anything that tells me.

And that's really the point. I'm not trying to decide whether Third Future should have gotten the contract, whether TCIS should have or whether somebody else should have. I want to know why Austin conducted an extraordinarily important search for outside turnaround expertise and came out of it with exactly one option, and why that one option couldn't ultimately satisfy TEA.

Before we ever have to do this again, we should know.

So Where Do We Go From Here?

This is where Austin needs to stop bouncing from one emergency to another and work several parts of the problem at the same time.

Burnet and Webb need a plan that can be put in front of Morath and defended with actual people, actions, benchmarks and dates. Not just "give us more time." If a conservator and serious State monitoring can preserve the elected Board while Austin continues working, then examine it seriously. Wichita Falls already proved that kind of outcome exists.

Linder and Pecan Springs need to be treated like the clock already says five. Waiting another year is exactly how we ended up where we are with Burnet and Webb. The other F campuses need the same kind of early diagnosis. What is causing the failure? What is changing? When will we know whether the change worked? What happens next if it doesn't?

The budget needs to be structurally balanced instead of being pushed across the finish line with another one-time transaction. The district has already shown it can make extraordinarily difficult financial decisions when forced to. Now finish the job, rebuild the fund balance and make teacher compensation one of the priorities of the recurring budget rather than something we keep talking about wanting to improve.

And before we ever go looking for another outside operator, find out why the last search produced exactly one proposal. Identify the organizations that could actually qualify under TEA's turnaround requirements, talk to them before the next emergency arrives and understand what would make them willing — or unwilling — to work with Austin ISD. If it's money, know that. If it's control, know that. If it's our reputation or the way we structure partnerships, know that too. We shouldn't discover the size of the market when we're already standing at year four.

None of this requires declaring war on TEA. It also doesn't require Austin ISD to agree with every law coming out of the State of Texas. I certainly don't. If a State law is bad, work with our legislative delegation, other districts and the people who can change it. Recapture is ridiculous, attack recapture. I've written a whole other blog about that one.

But while we're trying to change laws we don't like, we still have to run the district we have under the laws that actually exist.

That's what local control means to me.

I don't think I know everything. I know I don't, and not just because my kids remind me of my ignorance every single day. I don't expect every person in District 4 to agree with me on every issue either. That's not how representation works.

If the people of District 4 elect me, I work for them. I will listen. I will ask questions. I will dig into the information. I will tell people what I'm learning and what I'm doing to the best of my ability. And then I will represent the people who sent me there, even if doing that makes a few people unhappy.

I want to be somebody people feel comfortable talking to. Not because I'm going to automatically adopt every point of view I hear, but because I will listen and I will always do my best to understand it. I'm not going to toe the line for Austin ISD. I'm going to represent the people who elected me.

I did that at Lamar. Sometimes it was easy. Sometimes it really wasn't. I did it anyway. The job was not to make things easy for myself. It was to represent the parents and teachers and ultimately improve the experience and lives of the children and the teachers.

I'm proud of what we accomplished. I heard much more good than bad. I got elected President three times even though I could only serve two terms. So that's gotta tell you something.

Austin ISD has real successes worth celebrating. It also has 20 schools with F ratings, two middle schools sitting at the State-intervention trigger, two elementary schools one year behind them, a budget still being repaired and an outside-turnaround strategy that produced exactly one proposal and then fell apart when TEA rejected that applicant.

Those things aren't insults. They're facts.

I don't want the State running Austin ISD. I want Austin ISD running within the law, solving problems before they turn into emergencies and working well enough that the State doesn't feel like it has to.

Sources: Austin ISD 2026 Accountability Ratings and campus totals; Austin ISD Special Education Evaluation Progress; Austin ISD 2026–27 adopted budget; Austin ISD Board of Trustees responsibilities and unpaid volunteer status; Austin ISD School Improvement/Burnet, Dobie and Webb turnaround investments; Texas Education Agency Austin ISD/TCIS SB 1882 determination; Austin Current reporting on AISD's SB 1882 procurement; Austin ISD Mendez/Third Future transition; Third Future Schools–Texas Network FY2025 audited financial statements; Wichita Falls ISD and The Texas Tribune reporting on Wichita Falls intervention.