Paredes Middle School, July 22, 2026. AISD trustees voted to close the campus in late July.
Sara Diggins/Austin American-Statesman
Last month, the Austin Independent School District stunned community members by shuttering a South Austin campus just weeks before classes were set to begin. District officials projected the campus was set to score another failing grade on the state’s A-F rating system.
Texas school systems have often resorted to closing struggling schools to avoid harsh state consequences, but a new Texas Education Agency rule will eliminate that option in many cases, making state intervention more likely.
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The rule, which takes effect this month, takes the failing grades attached to a closed school and assigns them to the new school where the largest share of students from that closed campus are reassigned. Districts won’t be able to erase the history of a chronically failing school by closing it unless they move students to an A- or B-rated campus.
For instance, if a district closes a campus that has scored three F grades in a row and sends students to a campus with a C grade — as Austin ISD is doing by reassigning 55% of Paredes students to Bailey Middle School — the receiving campus will be marked as having scored three F grades. Letter grades from 2026 will be released Aug. 14, and district officials project Paredes will score a fourth F grade.
The rule change takes effect Aug. 16, but it remains unclear if it will affect Bailey Middle School, which scored a C in 2025. Austin ISD closed the campus on July 30, but TEA doesn’t consider a campus closed until the agency has processed the request.
TEA did not respond to a request to clarify when Paredes’ closure will be processed. Austin ISD did not respond to a request for comment.
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The change comes as more districts face state takeovers over chronic academic failures at a single campus. In Austin ISD, if any of three North Austin middle schools receives a fifth F rating when the state releases this year’s grades, the state can remove the superintendent and elected trustees from power.
Lawmakers write education law in Texas, but the Texas Education Agency and Education Commissioner Mike Morath have the authority to edit and write certain rules that often have sweeping and profound impact. Education organizations have criticized the rule change as tying the hands of school districts that must make decisions for budgetary and academic reasons, often necessitating closures.
Rule details
Under the new rule, districts that move a plurality of students from a D- or F-rated school to a newly opened campus or one with a C, D or F rating will face more restrictions. If the new campus has fewer unacceptable ratings than the closed school, Morath will assign the grades of the closed school to the new school.
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The agency did not define “plurality,” but the term typically refers to the largest share of something, regardless of whether it’s a majority. Under the rule, districts will also need to submit a plan outlining the school’s instructional materials, daily schedule and proposed training for teachers and campus administrators at the campus receiving the closed school’s students.
The new rule also mandates that districts submit this type of plan for approval if they want to move a plurality of students from an A- or B-rated school into a school with a C rating or lower. The state’s A-F rating system is largely based on student results on the State of Texas Assessments of Academic Readiness, or STAAR tests.
Districts were already restricted from moving students from one failing school to another, but the inclusion of C-rated schools in the new rule will narrow options even further. Austin ISD may be particularly stymied by the change — 67 of the district’s 115 rated campuses scored Cs, Ds or Fs in 2025.
Paredes closure
The Austin school board voted July 30 to shutter Paredes immediately — less than three weeks before school started — and to reroute students to Mendez and Bailey middle schools.
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Superintendent Matias Segura said Paredes was likely to receive a fourth F rating when TEA releases scores on Aug. 14, inching the school closer to five Fs. Staff vacancies and leadership “disruptions” would not have allowed the school to sufficiently improve academics over the next year, he said.
Mendez, where 45% of the students will attend, has a B rating, but Bailey, which will take the majority of Paredes students, has a C. The next closest middle schools with an A or B rating are Small and Gorzycki middle schools, which both have As and are about 7 miles from Paredes.
If the new rule is applied to Paredes’ closure, Bailey Middle would be reassigned four F ratings.
AISD Superintendent Matias Segura speaks to a room full of teachers, staff, parents and community members during an information and listening session held at Parades Middle School in Austin as a vote on whether to close the school approaches, July 29, 2026.
Sara Diggins/Austin American-Statesman
Concerns over the rule change
When the draft rule was posted publicly April 3, several education advocacy groups expressed concern.
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The Texas School Alliance, a group that represents some of the largest districts in Texas, voiced fears that it would limit districts’ ability to close or reassign students to C-rated schools. Statewide enrollment declines are forcing districts to make budget decisions that include closing schools, Executive Director HD Chambers said.
“This tends intentionally or unintentionally to tie the hands of school boards and limit their ability to use the entire school district as possible solutions to the closure of a school,” Chambers said.
He is sympathetic to TEA’s desire to prevent a situation where a district moves children from one failing school to the next but said school boards should have local decision-making power to move students into campuses that are graded at a C or higher.
No school district officials “in their right mind is going to send a kid from a low-performing school to place where they’re not going to be able to flourish,” said Greg Smith, executive director of the Fast Growth Schools Coalition, which represents about 50 school districts. His organization also left comments on the new rule.
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Districts, like Austin ISD, know the academic and fiscal circumstances in their own communities best, Smith said.
Education nonprofit Good Reason Houston supported the rule change, but “warned this may discourage placement in stronger C campuses, particularly in urban districts facing enrollment decline,” according to a summary of the comments.
In response, TEA denied that the rule threatened local control.
TEA officials wrote that the change is “intended to encourage thoughtful student placement following campus closure, particularly in cases involving campuses with a history of academic challenges.”
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The rule goes into effect Aug. 16, TEA spokesman Ricky Garcia said in a statement. The agency doesn’t consider a campus closed until a district’s closure request has been processed, he said.
When Austin trustees discussed the potential closure of Paredes in late July, several questioned Segura on TEA’s role in approving the campus closure. Segura suggested the agency’s approval of the change would not be an issue but said he didn’t know the date that TEA would okay the closure. He said he was confident the agency would approve the change.
In describing his conversations with TEA, he said, “there was nothing that I heard that would make me think it would be a long process.”
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