Monica Téllez de Arsté teaches a Pre-K student at Ridgetop Elementary School, Feb. 3, 2026. Ridgetop is one of ten schools the Austin School District Board of Trustees voted to close.
Sara Diggins/Austin American-Statesman
When Jeanne Lehman Lopez moved to Austin from Indiana in 2020, she remembers driving up to Blazier Elementary on the morning of Sept. 16 surrounded by red, white and green flags in celebration of Mexico’s Independence Day.
It was the first time Lehman Lopez had ever seen a school celebrate the culture of its students — many of whom are still learning English — with such gusto. The way Austin ISD schools embrace students’ identity draws the community in, she said.
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“There’s a pride from being able to celebrate a culture, even if it’s not your own, to understand your community, understand your neighbors,” Lehman Lopez said.
With the possibility of a state takeover looming over chronic academic issues, Lehman Lopez fears Austin ISD’s uplifting of community values and student identity may be under threat. The Texas Education Agency is expected to announce letter grades for public school campuses in mid-August, and if any of three North Austin middle schools score another failing rating, the entire district is at risk of being run by state appointees.
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But Lehman Lopez worries a state takeover would rob Austin ISD of what makes it unique. Even as conservative state leadership has pushed public school curriculum rightward, Austin ISD’s leaders have resisted letting go of Pride Week celebrations and other similar practices.
Austin ISD is special for how the district cares for and empathizes with all students, trustee Kevin Foster said.
“Even when our community is rightfully upset with difficult choices, there is an ethics of care that permeates the work,” he said.
Under a state takeover, the TEA is likely to replace district leaders like Superintendent Matias Segura and the entire school board with agency picks whose approach to education aligns with state priorities. Recent state takeovers of Texas school districts indicate that state-appointed leaders would likely pour resources into increasing student scores on the state’s standardized test and creating greater structure across campuses throughout the school day.
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For some advocates, an increased academic focus is necessary while Austin students lag behind grade-level standards. But other families worry that Austin ISD values could be lost in transition.
Leadership changes
The state could announce a takeover of Austin ISD as early as this fall if Dobie, Webb or Burnet middle schools receive another failing grade from the state.
TEA’s school rating system evaluates campuses largely based on student performance on the State of Texas Assessments of Academic Readiness. Spring STAAR results showed only minor improvement at the three North Austin middle schools, which have struggled to meet state academic standards since 2019.
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Since 2023, the state has taken over five school districts because of similar academic failings. In each case, Education Commissioner Mike Morath has selected a new superintendent for the district, and that person has quickly become the most important factor driving changes.
Morath’s selection for Houston ISD, former Dallas ISD Superintendent Mike Miles, ushered in controversial reforms that sparked widespread outrage from staff and families. Miles’ educational philosophy hinges on a rigid, militaristic schedule and prioritizes academic gains through testing.
It’s not yet clear what reforms Morath-appointed leaders at other districts recently taken over will introduce. Two of the four appointed superintendents previously worked in Houston ISD under Miles. In all cases, the TEA cited the new leaders’ historic success in improving student outcomes to explain the appointments.
In Fort Worth ISD, Superintendent Peter Licata, who previously led Florida’s Broward County Public Schools, has said he wants to focus on standardizing the classroom experience and increasing administrative supports for teachers.
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AISD Superintendent Matias Segura listens to questions during a presentation of agenda items ahead of the vote on the final closure plan at the AISD headquarters, Nov. 20, 2025.
Sara Diggins/Austin American-Statesman
Segura, the current Austin ISD leader, comes from the district he now oversees. His mother taught in Austin ISD for more than 40 years, including at Kocurek Elementary, where Segura attended school. Segura’s children also have gone to Austin ISD schools, and he’s been a district employee since 2018.
In response to a request for an interview, Austin ISD spokeswoman Cristina Nguyen said in a statement the district won’t speculate about potential state action.
“Our focus is on accelerating the progress already underway in Austin ISD, which is producing measurable results,” Nguyen said.
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Academic changes
The long-term changes a state makes after takeovers are often tied to the problems that prompted intervention, such as academics, said Erin Baumgartner, director of the Houston Education Research Consortium at Rice University.
In Houston ISD, for example, the far-reaching changes have reshaped how children learn in the classroom, with more frequent assessment of student knowledge and increased staffing to reform schools. Many of these changes have already begun to roll out in other districts taken over by the state.
If a takeover happens, changes would be up to the appointed superintendent and managers. The district’s new leader may not follow the Houston model, Baumgartner said. But there is some evidence that the state believes the Houston approach should be replicated in other districts under state management, such as Lake Worth and Beaumont ISDs, where the TEA appointed superintendents from Houston ISD.
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Beaumont ISD Superintendent Sandi Massey said in May that she plans to implement an academic model similar Houston ISD’s “because of the success that Houston has had, extreme success.”
From left, Sunset Valley Elementary School students Lennon Arnold, Ximena Rodriguez, Adelina Salazar and Elena Salazar look through a yearbook during the Popsicles on the Playground event on the last day of school at Sunset Valley Elementary School on Thursday, May 28, 2026 in Austin.
Aaron E. Martinez/Austin American-Statesman
In Houston ISD, reforms included paying top-performing teachers to work at struggling schools, standardizing curriculum and increasing classroom monitoring through daily assessments and administrator observations.
Some of the most sweeping changes were packaged as the New Education System, a model now used at about half of Houston campuses. The model standardizes instruction and provides additional support staff, while giving educators less say in how and what they teach. It’s not unusual for districts to mandate the use of instructional materials, but in many cases teachers have some flexibility to design their own lessons.
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The district has also centralized academic, extracurricular and social and emotional resources. Miles fired staff who worked directly with families to provide resources and instead launched off-campus centralized resource centers.
Houston ISD also controversially repurposed libraries and other spaces into “team centers,” where students who score well on daily quizzes work while students who test poorly stay in the classroom to receive a “second teach,” or additional instruction.
Ken Zarifis, president of Education Austin, the largest district employee union, speculated that the biggest change for a state-run Austin ISD could be the greater role STAAR testing will play in day-to-day instruction.
“We’ll deal more with focusing on the test being the measure of a child,” he said.
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A takeover could also mean a shift away from each campus making independent choices about programming, instruction or events, Baumgartner said. HISD was decentralized for a number of years, but now, more decisions are made at the central office, she said.
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, 2025 at the William B. Travis building.
Keri Heath/American-Statesman
Some Austin parents worry that a state takeover would streamline curriculum in a way that stifles creativity or academic advancement.
“I’m just worried they’re going to sacrifice my kids for a higher test score,” Lehman Lopez said.
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In the three years since TEA intervened, Houston ISD has decreased the number of F-rated campuses from 53 to zero. But there have also been unintended consequences — since 2023, the teacher turnover rate spiked by more than 10 percentage points and the district’s enrollment dropped by 15,000 students.
Researchers are still watching the district’s performance to understand whether the results can last after TEA leaves the district.
“What you often find is these short-term gains that are not sustainable and that trail off after a couple of years,” said Toni Templeton, a research scientist at the University of Houston’s Education Research Center, speaking of takeovers nationwide.
Austin ISD values
As Austin ISD officials ushered the district through significant changes during the last school year — campus closures, attendance boundary changes and budget cuts — Segura maintained that he was navigating the upheaval with district values at the top of mind.
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He told community members in October that he does “not want to be the superintendent who avoids a hard decision and puts us in a position later where we lose control.” In a June interview, Segura said the district is guided by local values when making staffing decisions, which is why Austin ISD employs librarians, mental health professionals and nurses in higher numbers than Texas requires.
Students make friendship bracelets during Pride Week in the library at Lamar Middle School Thursday, March 27, 2025.
Mikala Compton/American-Statesman
Karen Goodman, whose eighth-grade son attends Lamar Middle School, fears that more standardized requirements across campuses could stifle creativity, especially for a school like Lamar that’s known for its fine arts academy.
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“A takeover, it’s going to be more of the testing and the strict curriculum,” Goodman said. “It’s just going to be kind of a cookie cutter approach.”
Exactly how a district’s non-academic programming could change under a takeover is difficult to tell until the state appoints leadership, Templeton said. Maintaining celebrations of local identity, like Pride Week, would be up to the new leadership, she said.
Crockett High School students walk out of school in Austin on Friday, Jan. 30, 2026, as part of a nationwide protest of the actions of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Jay Janner/Austin American-Statesman
Zarifis, of Education Austin, said that schools represent the core of any city.
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“We lose Austin,” Zarifis said. “We lose our city when we have the state take us over.”
A new board
While the potential changes from a takeover remain unclear, what is certain is a takeover would remove power from Austin ISD trustees.
Seven of the district’s nine trustees represent a specific geographic region while two are elected at-large. When members of the public have issues with district staff or administrators, Texas law encourages them to take complaints to their elected board member. Residents who are upset with how an Austin ISD trustee has performed can vote them out of office every four years.
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In the past six months, as Austin ISD weighed tough choices over school closures and staffing cuts, community comment often swayed how trustees voted.
During a lengthy discussion in June about how to reach a balanced budget from a $181 million deficit, Austin ISD trustees insisted that each campus have a full-time librarian. After meeting for several hours during which they heard from dozens of community members about the importance of librarians, trustees called on Segura to pull money from reserves to keep the positions.
By design, trustees are responsive to the public, a dynamic that contrasts with how state-appointed boards of managers function, said Foster, who represents North Austin.
“If a school district is taken over, that team is free to be ‘results focused,’ with the results being the standardized test scores and the results being the number of failing schools,” Foster said. “They’re free to focus on that and not listen to the public.”
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The AISD Board of Trustees listen to public comments during their meeting at Austin ISD headquarters Thursday, June 11, 2026. To cut a $181 million deficit down to a balanced budget, Austin ISD increased class sizes, cut positions and reduced transportation options.
Mikala Compton/Austin American-Statesman
While Northwest Austin mom Jessica Levesque doesn’t agree with every decision the board makes, she feels she has a path to resolve any issues that come up.
When the district placed a bus stop far from her neighborhood, it was her trustee, Kathryn Whitley Chu, who helped her connect with the right people to establish a closer stop.
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“I’m worried that will go away,” Levesque said.