Students, teachers and parents hold signs protesting state-required plans aimed at improving scores in some Austin schools and voicing their fears of a Texas Education Agency takeover on Oct. 5 at the William B. Travis building.
Keri Heath/American-Statesman
On a Sunday in early October, a cluster of Austin school district families, teachers and advocates gathered under the shady side entrance of the William B. Travis Building, which houses the Texas Education Agency.
Just two days before, a controversial plan announcing the closure of 13 Austin campuses dropped. As written, the sweeping proposal would impact thousands of children in campuses proposed for closure and thousands more who would be moved to new schools because of shifting attendance boundaries. Despite the seismic changes proposed at the Austin school district level, families at the rally found themselves outside an agency that oversees education statewide.
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“Turn TEA Around,” read their signs.
In recent years, the state’s education agency has employed what some view as a nuclear option, replacing locally elected boards of trustees and the superintendents they hire with a slate of state-appointed replacements. Texas law allows the state education agency to do so when a campus scores five consecutive failing grades for academic performance on the state’s A-F letter grade system.
Just last week, TEA announced it would take over the Fort Worth Independent School District after one campus — since closed — triggered this provision. The state agency did the same in Houston ISD in 2023.
Members of the Austin education community worry their district could be next as three middle schools — Dobie, Burnet and Webb — have racked up four failing grades in as many years. A fifth at any of those campuses could trigger intervention — and Austin school district leaders are hyperaware of the looming consequences.
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At a public meeting for East Austin residents Tuesday, Superintendent Matias Segura insisted he does “not want to be the superintendent who avoids a hard decision and puts us in a position later where we lose control.”
The Austin district is already on TEA’s radar, with the agency monitoring the school system because of a 2023 order to overhaul special education services after chronic failings to evaluate students.
At the downtown Austin rally, mother Jessie Neufeld railed against both any possible takeover and additional requirements from TEA that F-rated campuses enact turnaround plans, aimed at improving academics on the campus-level.
“If you really want better schools, work with us, not against us,” Neufeld said. “We don’t need takeovers. We need collaboration. We don’t need you silencing our school boards.”
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During community and board meetings, Austin district officials pointed to improved outcomes at some schools and pledged they will do anything to retain local control. But state education Commissioner Mike Morath in August called the district’s failing campuses “a very significant problem.”
And in a Sept. 3 letter to Segura and board President Lynn Boswell, Morath warned “the district’s current approach is not working and urgent transformational change is necessary.”
Lessons from Houston’s takeover
The real concern is that Austin could become a mirror of the Houston school district’s takeover, said Laurie Solis, a parent of three and advocacy chair for the Austin Council of Parent-Teacher Associations. TEA’s foray into the state’s largest school district was highly anticipated because of a multi-year drawn out legal battle over whether the state agency had authority to intervene. In 2023, when TEA officially replaced the elected board, community pushback began in earnest.
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In the two years since then, state-appointed Superintendent Mike Miles and Morath praised improved test score at formerly struggling campuses. But enrollment has simultaneously dropped by about 6,700 students this year, and teacher turnover spiked to 1.7 times that of the state average.
Some of Miles’ policy changes, such as cutting library services and implementing a standardized curriculum — called the New Education System — in some historically low-performing schools, garnered significant opposition.
Solis and other parents worry this model could be replicated in Austin if a takeover were to occur.
“We want our students to be curious learners, and when we only focus on academics, we lose focus on all those other aspects of our brains,” Solis said.
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Heightened anticipation
Conversations about what a state takeover of Austin schools could mean intensified in the spring when district officials announced that just one more year of failure at Dobie, Webb or Burnet middle schools could trigger such an intervention. The three schools are in the midst of state-required turnaround plans, which involved replacing the campus principals and a majority of the teaching staff and a curriculum overhaul.
RELATED: Austin ISD plans turnarounds at multiple campuses amid school closures
A dozen more schools will need similar plans next year.
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That’s a lot for the Austin district to manage, said Trassell Underwood, vice president of Education Austin, the district’s largest union representing teachers and staff. Implementing so many turnaround plans will be disruptive for staff, but Underwood fears a takeover would be even more troubling.
“The concern is jobs, is curriculum, is will teachers lose some bit of autonomy to be able to teach the children,” Underwood said. “It’s a lot of uncertainty.”
Texas Education Agency Commissioner of Education Mike Morath discusses the 2024 and 2025 A-F school ratings during a press conference at the William B. Travis Building in Austin, Thursday, Aug. 14, 2025.
Mikala Compton/Austin American-Statesman
Replacing the elected school board would “make things worse, not better for students, for our families, for our teachers,” said Sharyn Vane, a local education advocate whose children graduated from the district. “We were already seeing some improvements academically in these schools.”
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But not all schools have received improved scores from the state.While the district shrank its number of D- or F-rated schools from 49 to 41 in the past two years, one-third of campuses were rated “unacceptable” in 2025. At the same time, 14% of state schools received a similar grade.
The district also struggled to serve low-income students, as compared to peer districts across Texas, according to scores from the State of Texas Assessments of of Academic Readiness tests.
‘Every action imagineable’
Segura told the American-Statesman in an interview last week that he is doing everything in his power to prevent a situation that would trigger a takeover for Austin.
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“I’m very aware of what is at stake here, and maintaining local control is absolutely critical to ensure that our students in Austin improve academically, but in a way that aligns with who we are as a city,” Segura said.
Commissioner Morath has been vocal in his critique of chronically F-rated campuses. During an August press conference in August, he presented slides comparing Austin’s 23 F-rated campuses to schools in districts with similar demographics.
A slideshow compares Austin and Brownsville’s schools as Texas Education Agency Commissioner of Education Mike Morath discusses the 2024 and 2025 A-F school ratings during a press conference at the William B. Travis Building in Austin, Thursday, Aug. 14, 2025.
Mikala Compton/Austin American-Statesman
“The challenges that we see in schools that end up getting issued ‘F’ ratings are pretty extraordinary, and they demand the adults that are in charge to take every action imaginable to give those students a better future,” Morath said.
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He also said that in some districts, “the degree of struggle is a systemic root problem, and it starts at the school board.”
The TEA declined to answer questions about what prompts a takeover intervention specifically, or how the agency assists districts that are on the verge of intervention due to fiscal or academic reasons.
In Fort Worth, Morath cited “continual academic deficiencies” and the “inability of the district to implement effective changes to improve the performance of students” as reasons prompting the takeover.
More on takeovers
When states intervene into academically struggling school districts across the nation, results can be spotty, said Van Schoales, senior policy director at Keystone Policy Center, a Colorado-based nonprofit. To ensure success, the state must maintain or boost resources, Schoales emphasized.
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Although Morath must take action if a district triggers five years of academic unacceptability, he does have the choice between closing the struggling campus or replacing the district’s board of trustees. Districts can also choose to delay state intervention by partnering with an outside entity to operate perpetually struggling campuses.
Children attend class at Covington Middle School Tuesday, Aug. 20, 2024.
Mikala Compton/American-Statesma
But the state’s decision to install a board of managers may involve considerations outside the academics of a district, said David DeMatthews, a professor of educational leadership and policy at the University of Texas.
“I do think there’s some politics at play with taking over Austin,” DeMatthews said. “Fort Worth and Houston are three hours from Austin. TEA’s headquarters are here. There will be protestors and picketers.”
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Board president Boswell told the Statesman that the Austin district should protect itself by ensuring no students are in schools categorized as failing.
“Our community has been really clear that a focus on test scores is only a part of what we want in our schools,” Boswell said.