Dobie Middle School Teacher Tatiana Brown-Gomez helps Jesse Vazquez, 11 and Jose Mexquitic,13 with their project during class on Monday, April 14, 2025. Dobie, Webb and Burnet middle school could face another failing state rating this year, which would put Austin ISD at risk of a district takeover.
Ricardo B. Brazziell/American-Statesman
When the Texas Education Agency announced in 2023 that it would seize control of the Houston Independent School District over the academic failings of one campus, many Austin families watched with deep concern about what it would mean for the state’s largest public school district.
Crystal Brothwell Hernandez, president of the Austin Council of PTAs who has nine children in Austin ISD schools, described seeing Texas’ largest urban school district fall into the hands of the state as part of a conservative grab for public schools. She believes the state doesn’t know what local schools need and fears takeovers turn learning into a cookie-cutter approach and rob parents of their voice in their child’s education.
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Louisa Aguirre, a parent of a Webb Middle School students, asks questions at a Webb Middle School community meeting at Webb Middle School on Monday, May 12, 2025 in Austin.
Aaron E. Martinez / American Statesman
Maria Rios, a parent of a Webb MiddleSchool student, holds up a sign at a community meeting at Webb Middle School on Monday, May 12, 2025 in Austin.
Aaron E. Martinez / American Statesman
“It feels like they had a bullseye on our backs,” she said.
Now, her fears of state intervention in Austin ISD are on the cusp of becoming a reality.
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Over the past few years, the state has increasingly laid the groundwork to take over more Texas school systems, and Austin ISD has become a vulnerable target.
In May, the TEA shot down an Austin ISD bid to delay state intervention at three North Austin middle schools, which for years failed to meet state academic standards. One more F-rating at one of the campuses will trigger a state law that allows the TEA to remove elected trustees and the district superintendent from power, replacing top leadership with state appointees.
A potential announcement could come as soon as August, when the state releases 2026 grades for public school campuses, although the next steps toward intervention could take months to play out.
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The move could dramatically reshape how Austin ISD’s 70,000 children learn, the environment in which they’re educated and how schools prepare students for college and a career.
Superintendent Matias Segura has said maintaining local control is critical to educating students in line with Austin values. In a meeting with the Statesman in May, Segura said the district must “maintain the ability to educate our students the way that we see fit, and that means retaining control.”
Parents, teachers and other community members gathered before an AISD Board of Trustees information session on June 12, 2025 to oppose the way the district is handling turnaround plans at Burnet, Dobie and Webb middle schools. Dobie, Webb and Burnet middle school could face another failing state rating this year, which would put Austin ISD at risk of a district takeover.
Aaron E. Martinez/Austin American-Statesman
Austin ISD’s potential takeover is set against an increasingly volatile political landscape in Texas education that has seen a growing number of elected school boards sidelined in recent years. For many state leaders, a takeover in Austin ISD – a progressive district that promotes values of inclusion and diversity – could symbolize the conservative push to get education “back to the basics” instead of focusing on so-called identity issues.
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“As a political objective, Republicans want to show they are in control, and they can use these brutalist measures to make things better, period,” said Brandon Rottinghaus, a political science professor at the University of Houston. “I think there is a definite bias against urban school districts who the leaders of TEA would say are not equipped to navigate education in the state.”
The move could usher in what many critics argue would be a more regimented, standardized curriculum with little flexibility to incorporate local priorities. But others say the move would be necessary to improve academic outcomes for Austin, the district that had the largest number of F-rated campuses in the entire state in 2025.“Austin ISD really does need a game plan for turning around its many failing campuses,” said David DeMatthews, a University of Texas professor of educational policy who opposes takeovers. “It doesn’t seem there’s good evidence to suggest that’s going to stop any time soon.”
In a letter sent last September to Segura and Board President Lynn Boswell mandating that the district create a plan to improve student scores, Education Commissioner Mike Morath warned, “the district’s current approach is not working and urgent transformational change is necessary.”
In response to questions about whether the agency was gearing up for a takeover, the TEA directed the Statesman to a webpage with standard information about district takeovers.
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District spokeswoman Cristina Nguyen said the district can’t comment on potential future TEA actions, but that recent state testing data show Austin ISD “is making strong academic strides.”
Austin ISD will continue to invest in campuses that need more academic support, she said.
How Austin ISD got here
State lawmakers over the past decade have increasingly set the stage for TEA to take over school districts facing academic challenges. At the same time, Austin ISD has made itself susceptible to state intervention under the shifting laws.
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Performance on state standardized testing is the core of how state officials decide whether to seize control of a district. Every year, the TEA rates campuses on an A-F scale – a report card that is largely based on students’ results on the State of Texas Assessments of Academic Readiness, or STAAR test.
Three North Austin middle schools – Dobie, Burnet and Webb – haven’t received a passing grade since 2018. Austin ISD launched costly academic turnaround plans at the schools to boost student learning this year, overhauling staff and curriculum, but the campuses posted only modest performance gains on 2026 STAAR returns.
All three schools scored an F in 2019, 2023, 2024 and 2025. The schools weren’t rated in 2020, 2021 and 2022 because of pandemic exceptions and changes in the school accountability system.
Students walk along Burnet Road as they protest Austin ISD’s plan to turnaround Burnet Middle School’s academics by walking out of class Tuesday, May 13, 2025. Dobie, Webb and Burnet middle school could face another failing state rating this year, which would put Austin ISD at risk of a district takeover.
Mikala Compton/American-Statesman
A 2015 law, House Bill 1842, mandated that if a campus receives five failing ratings in a row, the education commissioner must either shut down the offending school or take over the entire district. Since the law passed, Texas has taken over seven districts for academic reasons ranging in size from 20,000 to 170,000 students. In the same time period, the TEA has decided on a campus closure at only one district: Wichita Falls ISD.
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In the years since, Texas leaders also made it harder for school districts to dodge intervention.
Lawmakers passed Senate Bill 1882 in 2017, allowing districts to receive extra funding and delay consequences related to campus grades for two years by partnering with universities, nonprofits or charter schools to manage failing campuses.
Austin ISD officials attempted to take advantage of these benefits for the three North Austin middle schools by contracting with nonprofit Texas Council for International Studies, or TCIS.
In May, the TEA rejected Austin ISD’s bid to use the law to pause a takeover, citing a 2020 rule change that more strictly limited who could qualify as a turnaround partner.
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Austin ISD officials have since submitted more information about TCIS to TEA, and Segura insisted the TEA rejection was merely procedural. Austin ISD remains “entirely confident” that TCIS “has the experience and capacity required to meaningfully improve student outcomes at these three schools,” he wrote to families after the rejection became public.
It’s unclear when or if the district will receive a response from TEA.
The agency is expected to release new letter grades for public schools statewide in mid-August. If any of the campuses earns a fifth F grade, the entire district could face major consequences.
Prior statements from Morath indicate academic performance isn’t the only factor TEA considers when taking over a district. The education commissioner has said he also looks at governance and financial issues when deciding whether to intervene.
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Austin ISD faced a budget crisis this year, enacting major budget cuts – including reducing staff and increasing class sizes at some schools – to close an expected $181 million deficit for the 2026-27 school year. The district also had to eat into its fund balance to cover a growing shortfall for the 2025-26 academic year.
“The more the values of the community are distasteful to the rest of the state, the more the rest of the state will come and take away the powers of the city and now at the district level,” said Carrie Griffith, executive director and co-founder of Our Schools Our Democracy, a left-leaning public school advocacy group.
What will happen in a takeover?
Other district takeovers in Texas have created profound upheaval in how districts operate at their highest levels, trickling down to the classroom.
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If a takeover is announced, Austin ISD could appeal the decision legally or at the agency level. Should those appeals fail, Commissioner Morath, who is appointed by Republican Gov. Greg Abbott, would sideline elected trustees in favor of state appointees who will manage the district.
(From left) AISD Trustee Andrew Gonzalez, President Lynn Boswell, Superintendent Matias Segura and Secretary Kevin Foster listen to public comment during the board’s regular voting meeting June 18. The board of trustees would lose their power during a state takeover of Austin ISD.
Justin Doud/American-Statesman
The agency will solicit applications for aspiring managers, and a majority, but not all, of these appointees must live within Austin ISD. With the Texas Capitol in Austin’s backyard, the city is home to political experts and education policy analysts from both sides of the aisle.
The board of managers would make all the decisions that the elected board would have overseen and drive the direction of the district. While Austinites will still vote for school trustees, those representatives will have no more power than the people who elected them.
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“It is a theft of democracy,” Griffith said. “It’s a theft of the vote when you take a school from its community.”
It’s likely that Morath would also replace Superintendent Segura, who has run the district since 2023. At a meeting last week, trustees voted to extend his contract – amid the looming takeover fears – through 2030.
In every state takeover since 2023, Morath has replaced the superintendent, including in Fort Worth ISD, where the district leader had only held the job for one year and whose leadership Morath had praised.
It’s also very typical for top district leadership to undergo major turnover during this governance shift.
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“It’s like switching the driver, changing the map and rerouting the trip all at once, while you’re on the trip,” DeMatthews, the UT professor, said.
In many of the recently announced takeovers, the TEA-appointed leaders or other top district officials are connected to Houston ISD or to Third Future Schools, a turnaround charter network that Houston ISD Superintendent Mike Miles founded. He drew many of the reforms he implemented in Houston from his experience at Third Future.
Superintendent Matias Segura watches the crowd in the room grow as the Board of Trustees meeting begins at Austin ISD headquarters Thursday, June 11, 2026. The TEA often replaces the superintendent during a state takeover.
Mikala Compton/Austin American-Statesman
Classroom-level changes
It’s unclear exactly what a takeover would mean for Austin classrooms, but there are several examples across the state that may foreshadow changes to come.
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In Houston ISD, the most prominent and closely watched takeover in Texas, Miles ushered in a slate of reforms called the New Education System at dozens of district campuses. The NES model has emphasized test preparation and required teachers to stick to timed and scripted lessons. Some of the most controversial reforms – including converting libraries to discipline or testing centers – have drawn widespread outrage and protests from Houston parents and teachers.
“It touches every aspect of the management and operation of schools, from leadership to staffing to compensation to curriculum to lesson pacing to assessments,” said Daniel Dawer, a University of Texas doctoral candidate studying the effects of school system takeovers. “It’s all changed pretty dramatically.”
There’s already evidence of Miles’ reforms spreading to other districts undergoing a state takeover, such as Lake Worth and Beaumont ISDs, where TEA installed superintendents hailing from Houston ISD.
Houston ISD parents and student protest, on top of participating a sickout, against Superintendent Mike Miles and the policies Wednesday, Feb. 5, 2025 at Wharton Dual Language Academy in Houston.
Yi-Chin Lee/Houston Chronicle
What comes next
TEA’s decision to intervene seems increasingly likely.
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There is a slight, but very slim, possibility that TEA and district leaders will work out an alternative to a state takeover, Dawer said.
“I’d say it’s pretty much almost zero,” he said.
A takeover can last years. After two years of state management, the TEA could extend the agency’s presence by another two years, or start returning local control to Austin ISD.
However, the transition back to local control could last for a much longer period. Once TEA starts the transition back to local control, only a handful of elected trustees would rotate onto the board at the same cadence they would regularly be elected – extending the state’s intervention in district decision-making.
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The TEA could also specify conditions necessary to exit a takeover. In HISD, the TEA said it would return the district to local control only when no campuses scored a D or F rating for more than a year.
In Houston ISD, state leaders announced a board of managers and superintendent in June 2023 and have yet to make moves toward returning the district to the hands of the community.