AUSTIN (KXAN) — The Austin Independent School District held its first of three planned virtual meetings on Tuesday evening to discuss school consolidation plans. Another is being held Wednesday, and there is another scheduled for Sept. 15.
“Each meeting will explore the unique challenges and opportunities across different parts of the district. We’ll also share our goals and limitations related to programming, accountability, capacity, and more,” AISD said in a press release.
In the first meeting Tuesday, AISD leaders reassured parents that the district will not include accountability ratings in the rubric they’re using to assign students to different campuses, and that improvement plans given to campuses from the state will instead follow the students to the schools they end up reassigned to.
“We were very intentional about not including accountability in the rubric,” Ali Ghilarducci, Senior Executive Director of Communications & Community Engagement, said during Tuesday’s Zoom meeting.
“We did not want a school’s accountability ratings to affect the likelihood that a school was going to be impacted one way or another — to increase or decrease the chance that it would be considered for a boundary change,” Ghilarducci said. “We wanted to first evaluate the school agnostic of accountability. But as we work through the contextual analysis, it’s really important to keep in mind that accountability ratings place some important limits on how we can combine schools and reassign students.”
That message is also emphasized in AISD’s outline of the consolidation process, which is available to view online.
The limitations Ghilarducci mentioned are listed on that website, and below, per AISD.
Limitations Around Accountability
- We cannot assign students to better rated schools to sidestep accountability challenges.
- Any school that currently requires a Targeted Improvement Plan (TIP) or Turnaround Plan (TAP) will bring that requirement with them if a majority of students are reassigned to another school.
- In the event that we need to consolidate two schools with unacceptable ratings, we will have to re-evaluate staffing and provide targeted resources and support.
“If a school in whole is reassigned to another school and that school that’s being reassigned has a targeted improvement plan or a targeted turnaround plan, then that plan becomes the plan that is going to have to be implemented by that new joined campus,” Ghilarducci said.
Parents and AISD community members still have a chance to speak with administrators about their concerns during the virtual meeting that will be held next week on Sept. 15 if they missed Tuesday and Wednesday nights’ meetings.
AISD is expected to release its draft plan for consolidation on Oct. 3. The board will vote on the turnaround plans on Nov. 9 and on the plans to close schools on Nov. 20.
School consolidations will go into effect beginning the 2026-27 school year.
More details and other key dates on AISD’s consolidation plan timeline can be found online.
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