A student holds a sign reading “don’t fire teachers” as students protest Austin ISD’s plan to turnaround the Burnet Middle School by walking out of class Tuesday, May 13, 2025. Burnet and Webb parents are now weighing whether to sign a petition calling for their own schools’ closures to save all of Austin ISD from a state takeover.
Mikala Compton/American-Statesman
In May 2025, Austin Independent School District leadership stood before parents in the wood-paneled Burnet Middle School cafeteria and outlined their plan to improve the campus’ long-struggling academic performance.
Superintendent Matias Segura laid out how the district would update curriculum, enhance the school’s focus on math and reading and provide teacher stipends with a $1.7 million investment. The efforts would be replicated at two other nearby middle schools — Dobie and Webb — because all three had scored multiple years of failing academic ratings on the state’s report card.
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Burnet Middle School, May 13, 2025. Burnet and Webb parents are weighing whether to sign a petition calling for their own schools’ closures to save all of Austin ISD from a state takeover.
Sara Diggins/American-Statesman
But months later, as the 2025-26 school year began, the plan didn’t go smoothly, said Ingrid Saucedo, the mother of current Burnet seventh- and eighth-graders.
The school year started with teaching vacancies, which meant Saucedo’s children were taught by substitutes. Sometimes her children were marked absent even when they were in class because campus administration changed students’ schedules as administrators worked through logistical issues.
“That’s why a lot of parents are mad with Matias (Segura) and the district,” Saucedo said. “He said he’d promise us stuff but didn’t give it.”
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Austin Independent School District Superintendent Matias Segura answers questions and address the concerns of Burnet Middle School parents, teachers and community members regarding a turnaround plan for the school during a community meeting on May 13, 2025. Burnet and Webb parents are now weighing whether to sign a petition calling for their own schools’ closures to save all of Austin ISD from a state takeover.
Sara Diggins/American-Statesman
Since then, Burnet and Webb have received their fifth failing state grade in a row, and Texas law requires Education Commissioner Mike Morath to either close the campuses or take over the district, replacing the elected school board with appointed managers. Even though Morath has yet to decide how the state will intervene, parents’ anger flared last month when Mayor Kirk Watson proposed they could petition to close their own middle schools to spare all of Austin ISD a takeover.
Watson posed the process as a way for the community to act “instead of simply waiting for something to happen to us.”
“It gives the families most impacted a say in what comes next,” he wrote in a newsletter pitching the plan.
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The petitions, which require a majority of parents at each school to sign, could be Austin ISD’s last, desperate chance to hold off a takeover. But for Burnet and Webb families — including parents like Saucedo who ultimately signed the petition — the campaign represents years of broken trust with a district that has failed to support their children.
“To be honest, they don’t deserve our signature because they never help,” Saucedo said. “They never pay attention to us. They don’t deserve it.”
Even if parents sign on to the petition by the Thursday deadline, the little-utilized petition section of state law may not be a reliable long-term solution for Burnet and Webb communities. The only other district that successfully used the petition to avoid a takeover has struggled to improve academics at its middle school that triggered Texas Education Agency intervention.
“I feel like there’s no ‘win’ situation,” said Valerie Gonzales, who has a student at Webb and remains on the fence about signing. “There’s no guarantee that our voice is going to be heard. Where’s Mr. Morath at? I want to speak to him.”
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Parent frustration
Vanessa Gamez, a PTA parent at Burnet Middle School, speaks at a protest at the Austin Independent School District headquarters on Thursday, June 12, 2025. Burnet and Webb parents are now weighing whether to sign a petition calling for their own schools’ closures to save all of Austin ISD from a state takeover.
Aaron E. Martinez/Austin American-Statesman
Gonzales is angry at Austin ISD, which didn’t provide Webb the resources it needed to succeed, she said. And she’s angry at the state for putting the school in this situation, she said. It all feels political to her.
If Webb and Burnet parents don’t choose to close their schools, she fears that the entire district will blame the families. She already sees comments on social media pointing fingers.
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During a meeting at Webb in late September, Segura apologized to families for not meeting their expectations with the academic turnaround.
“It’s been a very, very long time since, I would think, this community felt like you all got what was needed to be successful,” Segura said.
The district has poured resources into the school, including more staff members than the district’s standard ratio, Segura said. He can’t account for decisions made before he became superintendent in 2023, but said he is “responsible for all of it.”
If a majority of parents sign the petition, they must submit it to Austin ISD by Thursday for staff to verify parent names match campus students. Austin ISD would then submit it to TEA by Dec. 1. The weight of the decision has locked parents, like Gonzales, in a pressure cooker.
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Federal immigration enforcement already has sparked fear in the North Austin community, which is home to many immigrants and people who don’t speak English. Submitting personal information to a government agency could exacerbate existing fears, even as the schools offer a safe haven for families.
Gonzales, who attended Webb as a child, feels the state just wants to see her neighbors forced out of Austin.
“You’re wanting to push us out,” she said. “You’re not wanting to see us successful.”
Parent voice
Austin ISD won’t participate in gathering signatures to “allow impacted families to use their voice without our guidance,” Segura wrote in a letter to families. But at the September Webb meeting, he argued the parent petition may be the only chance for families to have a say in the process.
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“We are at the mercy of the laws when it comes to what we can do next,” Segura said. “The input of what this community wants to have happen next, it can only be done by way of petition.”
As of Friday, just 2% of parents at Webb and 6% of Burnet families had signed on to the closure proposal. Over the weekend, families and teachers from across the district walked through North Austin, knocking on parents’ doors to tell them about the effort.
Trustee Kathryn Whitley Chu, who represents Northwest Austin on the school board, spoke with a handful of families over several hours. They all signed or took a paper copy of the petition to think over.
“I’m not going to believe people don’t want a voice until I’ve asked every single person,” Whitley Chu said.
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Ana Salas-Porras, the grandmother of Austin ISD students, holds a sign during a news conference Friday, Oct. 9, 2026, outside Burnet Middle School in Austin. Families are encouraging parents to sign a petition asking Texas Education Commissioner Mike Morath to close Burnet Middle School instead of placing Austin ISD under a state-appointed board of managers.
Jay Janner/Austin American-Statesman
Volunteers have set up phone banks and visited the school to inform families. The Austin Council of PTAs, a districtwide organization aimed at supporting campus-level parent-teacher groups, joined the effort last week. The petition would give families a say in how their schools closed and allow “their students and their teachers and the entire school district to have a glimmer of hope to not have state intervention,” said Crystal Brothwell-Hernandez, the Austin Council of PTAs president.
While the state-provided petition forms are in English, the Austin Council of PTAs translated the information into Spanish. Unless the petition process is communicated in Spanish, it won’t reach a majority of families affected, Saucedo said.
The law
If Morath closes a campus because of accountability reasons, state law allows the district to reopen the school under two circumstances. The district can create a new academic model that serves mostly different grade levels or hand the campus over to a charter or other nonprofit.
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Segura told parents in September that one option would conslidate the two school communities at a newly reopened Burnet campus. However, he stressed that no plans have been made and floated the potential for schools that serve students in kindergarten through eighth grade or via STEM-focused curriculum.
Saucedo said she was angry at the district for advertising the petition without any plan for how the schools would transform in the future.
“You need my signature first, and then you are going to make something for our kids,” Saucedo said.
But even if a majority of Webb and Burnet parents sign the closure petitions, Segura’s pitch for the campuses to reopen under new models may not be guaranteed, Texas education experts said.
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In other states that have closed schools for academic reasons, school systems often won’t reopen the campus or will only reopen it as a charter, said Joshua Childs, an associate professor of education policy at the University of Texas.
“When it’s time for policy and administrative implementation, whose voices and whose perspective is going to be the ultimate decision or the lynchpin?” Childs said. “That, I think, remains to be seen.”
Maria Rios, a parent, questions Matias Segura, Austin school district superintendent, at a Webb Middle School community meeting on May 12. Burnet and Webb parents are weighing whether to sign a petition calling for their own schools’ closures to save all of Austin ISD from a state takeover.
Aaron E. Martinez/American-Statesman
David DeMatthews, a UT professor of educational leadership and policy, also cast doubt on Morath approving any campus reopenings so soon after accountability issues. The education commissioner has strict expectations for schools that have long struggled on state report cards, he said.
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“To then turn around and reopen (a campus) immediately, that would undermine the entire accountability system,” DeMatthews said. “I’m not a legal expert, but I don’t see that holding up.”
The Texas Education Agency didn’t respond to a request for comment on the petition process.
Snyder ISD
The only district that has successfully used the parent petition, closing and reopening a school while avoiding a districtwide takeover under current Texas law is the 2,200-student Snyder ISD, located between Lubbock and Abilene. In 2019, Snyder Junior High School scored its fifth failing rating, triggering state intervention.
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Then-Superintendent Eddie Bland discovered the parent petition option buried in statute and brought the idea to families, he said.
For a month, the district hosted public meetings at the middle school campus, where 68% of students were low-income, and 12% were learning English.
Snyder ISD officials presented families with an option to completely reshape the district: close Snyder Junior High and reopen two new schools for second- through eighth-graders, one of which would focus on inquiry-based learning.
“I don’t think you have a very good shot at it (the parent petition) if you’re asking the parents to do something that’s going to disrupt their lives just so we don’t have a board of managers,” Bland said. “Any time you’re disrupting their normalcy, you have to have a plan.”
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Families signed the petition, but Morath rejected the district’s two-school plan, so Snyder ISD went back to the drawing board. The district ultimately partnered with a charter, Responsive Education Solutions, to operate the campus.
In a four-campus district, Snyder Junior High had to reopen — otherwise, students had nowhere else to go, said Bland, who retired in 2022. But the charter partnership was short-lived.
In March 2020, as Snyder ISD staff traveled to the Dallas area for training with Responsive, the COVID-19 pandemic shuttered schools nationwide. The first academic year for the newly reopened campus began with virtual learning, and the district ended the partnership in 2021.
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Since then, the new Snyder Junior High — run by the district — has struggled to gain its footing academically. In August, the campus posted its third F rating in a row, triggering a state-mandated turnaround plan, which requires new academic strategies and investments.
The campus hasn’t met state academic standards since 2014, a fate both Austin ISD and TEA officials would be eager to avoid at Burnet and Webb.