On Oct. 9, under the sweltering 5 o’clock cloudless sky, about 100 Austin ISD parents and students clustered at the edge of the I-35 service road where AISD houses their headquarters, hoisting signs reading “I love Maplewood” and “Save Becker.” Inside the building, the AISD Board of Trustees prepared to gather at the dais. A passing CapMetro bus honked in support to a wave of cheers.
Multiple posters endorsed the parent-created LetsGetItRightAISD.com, a petition website against the district consolidation plan that the district released on Oct. 3, which proposes to close 13 schools and rezone thousands of students to a new neighborhood school.
The redrawn district is meant to fill empty schools, better serve students learning English, allow elementary and middle schools to more cleanly feed into middle and high, and save desperately needed money. The plan also means to save AISD from a takeover by the TEA, due to 33 schools receiving unacceptable STAAR-based accountability scores in August.
“This is a farm. This is a garden, and things are not growing equitably,” Trustee Fernando Lucas de Urioste said during the Oct. 9 board meeting. “We have to have the entire farm producing, and we don’t have enough water for the way we’re doing it now.”
A kid wearing noise-blocking headphones hit a sizable drum to the beat of the group’s chants: Save our schools! “This is a very, very bad idea,” wrote one child in a letter read aloud to the protesters by his mother.
The Oct. 9 meeting presented the only planned opportunity the board of trustees had to discuss the consolidations. Parents filed into the room from the protest, some taking a seat on the floor. During public comment, several pointed out that the disruptive closures are more likely to tank students’ standardized testing scores than improve them.
“The draft consolidation plan … pours gasoline on this fire. Closures routinely cause a first-year drop in performance, and that’s well documented,” one parent emphasized.
Parents pointed out several issues with the proposal. One of the foremost: Five schools would become non-zoned dual language or Montessori campuses – how does the district plan to keep these “special” schools open to the local kids who attend them now, rather than just transfer families who can afford to drive across town every day? The district doesn’t plan to provide bus transportation next year for students who stay at their current schools, which would take that choice away from students whose parents work early.
Moreover, “Is the plan assuming that people are widgets, and they will move wherever you put them, and we won’t lose any enrollment?” Trustee Kathryn Whitley Chu asked.
“Enrollment is already declining,” Superintendent Matias Segura replied. “We’re desperately trying to come up with plans that keep students in AISD. But … something has to give.”
Board President Lynn Boswell asked for data from other districts who have undergone similar consolidations: Will this actually work, and create schools that can and will succeed under the TEA’s standardized test-based accountability system? “We are playing a very high-stakes game,” Boswell said.
This article appears in October 17 • 2025.
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