- Coming up on "Austin InSight:" a new school year is bringing lots of changes to the Austin School District.

Several campuses are closed for good, and state intervention is hanging over the district's head.

Superintendent Matias Segura joins us.

"Austin InSight" starts now.

- [Announcer] Support for "Austin InSight" comes from... Sally & James Gavin, and also from Daniel L. Skret.

(bright orchestral upbeat music) (bright orchestral upbeat music continues) - Hi there, and thanks for joining us.

I'm Laura Laughead.

It's hard to believe, but summer is just about over and students will head back to class in just a couple weeks.

But for Austin ISD, things are going to look a lot different.

There will be no first day of school at 10 campuses across the district after a round of closures to address declining enrollment.

And then just last week, a surprise closure of another school, Paredes Middle School, after low performance.

What's more, budget cuts over the summer will mean fewer teachers and larger classes.

The man leading the district through these changes is Superintendent Matias Segura.

He's back again here on "Austin InSight" today to talk about some of the tough issues the district is facing.

Superintendent Segura, thank you so much for being here.

- Of course, happy to be here.

- So let's start with Paredes.

You made the decision to close the middle school just weeks before the start of school.

Why now and so suddenly, especially the closure of schools last year was a months-long discussion.

- You know, it's one of the things, and I try to communicate wherever I possibly can, that the reason we exist as a school district is to ensure that our students get what they need to be successful; you know, academically, they need to achieve.

Now for Paredes, going back multiple years, there've been challenges, and about a year ago, less than a year ago, they were included as part of our turnaround plan that we approved on November 21st, we monitored progress, we monitored the growth.

And what we saw was that a different kind of... A change need to be made.

And it became clear that if we didn't make a change and move the students to schools where those systems were already in place, then our students were not going to be able to achieve in the way that we'd expect.

So, yes, it was a difficult decision, it's one that I don't make lightly, it's not one that I had contemplated making earlier in the year, but we have so few years with our students, especially at middle school.

Every year matters, and I was not going to start the school year without putting our students in the best position possible to be successful.

- Now, Paredes staff and students are going to be split between the neighboring Bailey and Mendez Middle Schools; but to note, Mendez is coming off its own turnaround plan and is set to return to district control this year.

Are you confident that you can manage those two transitions at the same time?

- Absolutely, we are extremely confident.

So you made a really good point, there are two different schools that are receiving the students.

The balance of those populations moving to those schools is very, very intentional, we have 55% going to Bailey, and we have 45% going to Mendez.

So Bailey in South Austin has had systems in place, has been growing, as accountability gets released for the next couple of weeks, I think you'll continue to see growth.

And so, when you think about the students, you know, moving into that school, given the space that we have available in that school, it became clear that these students are gonna be welcomed, we have the space, the systems are in place, and they're gonna be positioned to grow academically.

When it comes to Mendez, as you mentioned, we have taken back Mendez, it is now operating within Austin ISD, from a partner for several years.

The leaders within those campuses, within Mendez, are leaders that have known our systems have been in Austin ISD for quite some time, understand what it takes to build a culture to create that expectation of student achievement and maintain the rigor.

And so, we were very intentional about not moving too many students to Mendez to ensure that Mendez was able to kind of get settled and begin to grow.

And we feel that we've hit that balance, given the 55-45 split of students.

- And another thing I wanna note though before I move on, is that Paredes was on the verge of a fourth failing rating, but meanwhile, you do have three other middle schools, Dobie, Webb, and Burnet that could be facing a fifth.

If you're closing schools, why not start there?

- So what is unique about schools and accountability, and I think that most people don't know, is that there are kind of a series of things that have to occur over a period of time to understand what options are available to school districts.

The reality of it all is that Burnet, Webb, and Dobie were further along in the accountability chain kind of series of years, and Paredes was a little further back.

So we were able to make changes to Paredes because we could own those changes, you know, we had the control, and we were able to make the decisions on our behalf for our students' growth.

For Dobie, Burnet, and Webb, it was a little bit different because of where they were.

They're a little further along, and so we had implemented a turnaround plan that was approved a little over a year ago, it was a restart.

We launched the restart for the '25-'26 school year, we've monitored the progress, we've monitored the growth.

And because of where they are, we have to make different types of adjustments and don't have the ability to make intervention kind of in the same way we would at Paredes.

They're all a little bit different, they're all very nuanced, so we don't have the same kind of opportunities for Burnet, Webb, and Dobie as we would've for Paredes because of where they were in their journey.

- And I wanna talk about that turnaround plan for those three schools in just a second.

- Sure.

- But first, can you walk us through, for those that may not still know at this point, to reiterate, with these TEA accountability ratings coming out in the next few weeks that you mentioned, can you explain what happens if Dobie, Webb, and Burnet get a fifth failing grade from the TEA?

- So the Texas Education Agency by way of statute, right, so the legislators, the law, states that the commissioner, Texas Education Agency Commissioner, shall make an intervention.

And that intervention can be a school closure all the way to a board of managers.

And so, you know, that is something that was put in place by the legislators within the State of Texas to ensure that schools are focusing on student outcomes.

You know, if one of these schools gets a fifth F, the commissioner shall take an action.

I'm not gonna, you know, kind of speak to what that is, that's his discretion, that's his authority, I am solely focused on student outcomes, ensuring that our students get what they need to be successful.

That's the reason that school districts exist, that's the reason I exist as a superintendent, and that's what I'm focused on.

But that's what could happen, if that were to be the case.

- As you move forward, are you speaking directly to TEA commissioner, Mike Morath, about the next steps?

How would you describe those conversations?

- No, I mean... So the way that... Like through the Texas Education Agency and our work with the TEA agreed order, so many of our community members and staff and certainly our viewers may not know that we've had a TEA agreed order for special education that started in '23-'24.

And so, TEA is very collaborative, like, we will share with them idea and strategies when it comes to student outcomes or modifications to the turnaround plans.

I have not had any conversations with the agency, you know, about what happens next, that's my place is to focus on student outcomes.

When, you know, outcomes begin to get released as we move forward, I'm sure there'll be those conversations.

But right now, what I communicate to them all the time is "What adjustments I can make as a superintendent of Austin ISD to ensure that our students have what they need to be successful?"

That's what those conversations look like.

So we reach out quite a bit, but it's always for input on kind of process, strategy, resources, you know, "How about this pilot versus this pilot," or the different things that we can consider?

'Cause at the end of the day, resources are a big component of this, and there are lots of resources available to school districts; it's just sometimes you have to apply for them and kind of go through different processes.

- Hmm.

One of the things our team has heard in our reporting at Dobie especially, as well as Webb and Burnet, is a desire to fight the stigma of being a failing school, and to send a message to students that the situation is not their fault.

What would you say directly to students at those campuses right now?

- I would say without a doubt, it's not their fault.

You know, Austin ISD, you know, for a little while now, I mean, I would say years past, since I've come together with the board of trustees, we have made student outcomes the focus, we have focused on reallocation of resources to the students that have the highest need, we have focused on building systems that ensure we understand where our students are in their academic journey, we understand what the curriculum is in front of them, we have expectations around the rigor.

And if you do those things, and you do them well, then our students can achieve, there's no doubt, like, there is no doubt that every single student at Austin ISD can achieve.

But at the end of the day, I need to create clear expectations that our students can achieve and that the system as a whole is relentless in that pursuit.

And if we do those things, we're gonna be fine.

And that's what I tell people all day, at the end of the day, all day long, if our students are on grade level, whatever accountability system, whatever it is, we're gonna be fine.

And so, that's where the work has been, that's where I've been focused over the last, you know, two and a half years.

- And aside from Paredes, which we've talked about, the district has 10 other schools that will not reopen this fall.

- Yes.

- Those are the two middle schools and the eight elementary schools impacted in the closure and the consolidation process last fall.

- Yeah.

- How is that transition going?

- So I think it's actually gone quite well.

We put together thoughtful teams, the principals worked together, not only from the receiving school, but from the sending school to build out what this plan was gonna look like, we named the leaders of those schools in December.

So it wasn't all happening in the summer, it was happening all through the spring semester.

We were very intentional about the enrollment process, we created options for our families.

And right now, our schools are well positioned to welcome the students from those 10 consolidated campuses, and I've been getting text messages from principals at the receiving schools and some staff just saying, "You know, it was hard, we knew that it had to happen in some form across the district.

But really appreciative of the thoughtfulness around the approach, because at the end of the day, we want our students to walk into that school and be loved and welcomed and be right where they need to be to start the '26th, '27th school year and grow and learn, that's what we want."

- Now, earlier this summer, the board approved a new budget with some pretty significant cuts, getting rid of hundreds of positions.

What happened with all those positions and those employees?

- Yeah, so when we're thinking about the budget, we always think about positions, when we think about employees, those are our people, And so, we did reduce significantly the number of staff that we had on our budget.

Some of that was tied to teaching staff, some of it was other departmental staff.

And these were, you know, not small numbers, these were, you know, several hundred.

At the end of the day, because of our size, we were able to find homes for most of them within our organization.

At the end of the day, there were staff that did separate from Austin ISD, there were many, but we tried to do our best to use that disruption to fill other gaps that we had within our system.

And right now, we're about 95, 96% fully staffed, and that's exactly kind of where you'd expect to be as you move towards these last couple weeks.

And so, yeah, it certainly was a disruption, it's something that had to be done.

As enrollment declined, your total revenue that you receive from the State of Texas goes down, and you have to make adjustments, and that's just how it has to be.

And I tell our community and our staff all the time, you know, "I would rather it be done by someone who loves this organization, who wants to do what's best for kids, than for it to be done, you know, without a thoughtful process, or have it be done without thinking about the intentionality of placement of staff."

We really, really wanna honor those who have given their careers to Austin ISD.

- But did any qualified staff who wanted jobs end up with no position?

Do you have a number for that and a number for those who did elect to walk away?

- Exact numbers, I don't have that in front of me.

There were some separations for sure, and they were in the dozens and dozens.

I can't speak to the exact number as far as total amount, but we did lose some folks through this process.

And, you know, at the end of the day, we tried to assist where we could in transitioning if there was, you know, assisting to be had because we really do wanna acknowledge that, you know, they gave their career to Austin ISD, they worked with us, they supported our students.

And this is a function of, you know, enrollment, other things outside their control.

And so, we did our best to help them where we could.

- With fewer teachers, some of the classes, inevitably, they're gonna have to be larger, meaning more kids in each class per teacher.

And I don't have kids, but I know kids can be a bit of a handful.

Where will families see those changes, and what does the district want you to do to support those teachers who now have more responsibility?

- Yeah, so a couple things.

First is, that wasn't done homogeneously across the district, meaning that we were very intentional about ensuring that the schools that had the highest need did maintain the lower student-to-teacher ratios, or what previously existed.

So it wasn't done across the board, so I just wanna be really, really clear, and it wasn't done across each grade level the same way.

So pre-K, kinder, 1, 2, wherever the earliest learners were in our system, we protected those.

So second, third, fourth, in fifth grade, we did increase the student-teacher ratio, and they are gonna be larger classrooms, but I also wanna be really clear, that is the threshold.

You know, students don't come in nice packages of 24, or, you know, it doesn't happen that way, there's always this buildup.

We're very committed to ensuring that we release the next allocation as soon as the numbers support it.

So it's not gonna look a whole lot different, and the one thing that we wanted to protect as best we could was planning time.

You know, our educators are professionals, we believe that in Austin ISD.

In order for them to have the time with the curriculum, make sure that their practices are being delivered and they're working with their colleagues within the school that time is protected, the PLC work.

All of that is something that we did not have to give up because we made this adjustment on teacher-to-student ratio.

- Let's move on now to why all of this is happening in the first place.

From a bird's-eye view, there was the slashing of the budget this year, last fall, as we discussed, you closed several campuses, and there were already significant cuts to the central office last budget cycle.

It seems like the district just cannot get ahead.

Why can the district just not seem to make ends meet?

- Yeah, so a couple things.

The first thing I would say is, for a long time, Austin ISD benefited from the ever-increasing property values for a period of time right after the pandemic when we had lots of vacancies.

The vacancy savings at the end of the year were used to offset some of those costs.

And so, as the system improves and your vacancy numbers go up, you get 97, 98, 99% staffed, you don't have as many funds at the end of the year to offset some of the costs that you incurred throughout the year.

At the same time, property values don't grow and enrollment declines.

Every time we've made the hard decision, the goalposts kind of gets further away.

Which is why this budgeting cycle, as hard as it was to cover, you know, almost a 200, well, over a $200 million gap, we did, because we cannot be here moving forward, we need to stabilize, we need to acknowledge our reality of the number of students that we have enrolled in Austin ISD, a little less than 70,000, which is a lot of students, and acknowledge that, you know, at the end of the day, there are things that I can't control, the revenue that comes from the State of Texas is what I have to pay for public education in AISD, I need to prioritize those resources where the students have the highest need, I need to be very thoughtful about the things that are nice-to-haves, and we've had for a long time, but maybe don't contribute directly to student outcomes.

So that's what we went through, and it's not that we can't get ahead, we just did that.

(chuckles) I think that hard work that we did this past spring was a demonstration of us getting ahead.

I do not wanna be the superintendent that's having to, you know, continuously deal with budget deficits and gaps, I wanna be the superintendent who can clearly communicate that the resources we have which comes through the state, funds the expenses that we have, and that those expenses are prioritized on student outcomes.

If we can do those three things, we'll be a healthy, vibrant school system; and we are very much on our way to being that, especially as we think about the momentum around accountability as well as this, you know, significant challenge we had around the budget.

- And now let's talk about Recapture, which is the system where local districts spend sometimes sizable portions of their local tax revenue back to the state to be redistributed to other districts.

How much do you think that is at play here?

- So, you know, one of the things I'm really clear about is we get funded on a per student basis, just the same as every other school district in the State of Texas.

I mean, there's some adjustments based on students identifying as a claimant's advantage, or students receiving special education services, but generally speaking, you know, we get the same per student as every other student at every other school district in the State of Texas.

So I wanna be really clear, our approach, or my approach, is really focused on raising the sea, "Can all school districts get more?"

The Recapture structure that's been put in place and have been in place for several decades now, I think requires a significant kind of revamp, reform, whatever you wanna call it.

Just because at the end of the day, schools are not getting what they need.

I think overall, the focus needs to be on raising the amount of allocation per student.

But it does have a factor, I mean, it does certainly play a factor, but I just don't want to mislead anybody in saying, you know, that the system as a whole is the only thing contributing to, you know, like outcomes or, you know, the challenges that lots of school districts have.

But I am so hopeful that in this coming legislative session, the 90th legislature, that they really explore what didn't work the last legislative session, what other resources are needed because when you have as many school districts as we have in the State of Texas that are running deficit budgets, you have lots of superintendents that are just kind of "Call it in;" and the disruptions that we're seeing, something has to be done, it just has to be done.

- Coming upon the last few questions, when you talk about enrollment, you've said it, we all know it's down, but do you see it more as a demographic issue just with fewer kids and fewer families in the district?

Because I know AISD lost 3,000 kids this past school year, do you see it as more competitive challenge with charter networks and now for this coming school year, you've added on top private school vouchers?

- Yeah, so great question.

What I would say, and I am in the weeds of this, I've spent a lot of time over the last many, many years kind of looking at the trends.

So what I would say is, historically, for the last 10 years or so, it has largely been driven by gentrification and the cost of living in the city of Austin, right?

It's gotten really, really expensive to live here in Austin.

- Yeah.

- So families, not unlike staff, move outside the city.

Then you think about, "Okay, well, what happened last year?"

Because there are areas in our school district that are growing, I mean, you look at Southeast Austin, Northwest Austin, even Southwest Austin.

But when we saw a decline in enrollment, it was really in those areas where immigration, legislation had really changed like the kind of movement within the community.

And so, that's something that hit us, you know, pretty hard.

And so, that's one component.

The other component is we talk about charter schools, you mentioned charter schools.

Charter schools are closing too, they experience a lot of the same pressures that we do when it comes to the urban environment, the cost of living.

And so, when you think about the total number of students in Austin, the percent between charters and Austin ISD has not really changed a whole lot.

We believe, I believe, that Austin ISD is the best provider of public education in Central Texas, period, full stop.

Now, that being said, you know, families that choose a different option, you know, that proportion against the whole has kind of been the same for a period of time.

My hope is that as outcomes continue to increase for our students, and as our community sees Austin ISD stabilize and begin to thrive the way that we know that it can, which is what drives me every single day, you'll see kind of that share kind of move in maybe a positive trend.

When it comes to vouchers, you know, we have a pretty good understanding of what the movement is in Austin ISD or in Austin.

The private schools that exist have existed for quite some time, some chose to participate, some did not.

And parents, you know, have that option, you know, what I'll say is, based on what we've seen, there'll be some impact.

I'm not sure it'll be as big as maybe some might think, I think if you're in a suburban or in a rural area, it may be to a greater degree.

But we are monitoring all those things, and like anything else, if there's an adjustment in enrollment, we have to be responsive and reduce the overall cost because, you know, we're fully funded based on enrollment.

And so, if enrollment goes down, we have to make difficult decisions.

- Hmm.

Thank you for that explanation.

And as we wrap things up, with all this turmoil heading into a new year, how do you address the most important facet in this?

The human toll on children, on families, and staff, while still bringing in energy and enthusiasm about learning; learning should be fun.

- Yeah.

And so, you used the word "turmoil," I wouldn't use that word.

And the reason I wouldn't is because, you know, we have over a hundred schools in Austin ISD, and I spend so much time out in the community, at these schools, and I can tell you without a doubt, even when we're going through the budgeting process or we're going through, you know, the process of a consolidation, there is so much support for Austin ISD, the work that we've done, and most people in our community understand kind of what we've been navigating over the last couple years and the growth that we've been kind of seeing, and the trajectory we're on.

And so, I think people are honestly pretty excited because that work has been hard, hard.

And so, when parents are at home making a decision for what's best for their students, they can look and say, "Okay, well, Austin ISD made hard decisions to ensure that my student has access to the services they need to be successful."

So I think that there has been certainly disruptions, but like any school year, it is the start of something new, it's exciting, there's a lot to be proud of when you think about the work that we've done together.

And as outcomes begin to roll out as a system, I think that you know, our staff, our community, our parents are gonna see that we are, without a doubt, moving in the right direction.

And that's what we all want, we want our kids... I mean, I've got two of them in the School District, right?

I need them to be on grade level, I need them to be challenged, I need them to understand that there are people in that school that care for them.

So, yeah, I'm excited, that's why, for me, it's very easy to have the enthusiasm because at the end of the day, we've been around for 145 years, we're gonna continue to be around.

And if we don't make the hard decisions, you know, we definitely would be putting ourselves and our community at a disadvantage; and it's all about our kids.

- It is all about the kids at the end of the day, that should not be lost in all of this.

And I know it's a gargantuan amount of work to get here and still a long road ahead.

Superintendent Matias Segura, thank you so much for being with us today- - Of course.

- And best of luck to you and the students in the upcoming school year.

- Thank you, I appreciate it.

(bright upbeat orchestral music) - Before we go, we wanted to highlight an Austin nonprofit opening up applications this weekend for $100,000 in grants.

The group is DAWA, Diversity Awareness and Wellness in Action.

Its DAWA Fund supports what it calls community frontliners in Austin's BIPOC community, that's Black, Indigenous, and People of Color.

The individual grants are $300 each.

DAWA's founder, Chaka Mahone, told us what they're looking for in applicants.

- People that are caring, people that are nurturing, people that respond to crisis, you know?

So teachers, social workers, healthcare providers, service industry workers, and creatives.

And so many people are like "Creators respond to crisis?"

Yes, they do.

They think about and they make us aware of things that we're too busy to be aware of a lot of times.

And they slow us down, they help us think about things that, you know, are deeper, the deeper human things that we're dealing with, issues that we're dealing with.

- Applications open Saturday, August 8th, and will be open through the weekend.

To learn more about how to apply, you can visit dawaheals.org.

And that's our show.

If you want to see more "Austin InSight," you can catch up on all our episodes on the Austin PBS YouTube channel and in the PBS app anytime for free.

Thanks again for watching, we'll see you next time.

(bright orchestral upbeat music) (bright orchestral upbeat music continues) (bright orchestral upbeat music continues) - [Announcer] Support for "Austin InSight" comes from... Sally & James Gavin, and also from Daniel L. Skret.

(bright instrumental music)