Trustees of the Austin Independent School District spent more than three hours debating a proposed consolidation and comprehensive transition plan that combines school closures, boundary changes, program moves and state-required turnaround plans.

The proposal is structured so district leaders can meet Texas Education Agency (TEA) turnaround-plan deadlines while also targeting operating savings; trustees on the dais repeatedly asked staff for clearer, campus-level cost and transition details, stronger communications with families, and written commitments on transportation and legacy options for current students.

Trustees and administrators described the package as deliberately broad so district staff could craft recovery options that otherwise would not exist if closures, program consolidations and turnaround-plan requirements were handled separately. Superintendent Segura said the November schedule on the board calendar is intended to align with TEA filing deadlines and the district’s enrollment cycle, but trustees pressed for more time to review annotated drafts.

Trustees sought specifics on how much the consolidation work will save and how those savings were calculated. Trustee Cullen asked how the plan arrives at the district’s projected position-count reduction (the plan includes a modeling line showing reductions in FTEs); administrators said the estimate relies on consolidation scenarios and standard staffing models but that trustee questions about the methodology will be answered in the budget backup materials.

Transportation, legacy guarantees and access to programs were recurring lines of questioning. Several trustees — including Trustee Foster and Trustee Quintana — urged the district to publish a clear legacy/grandfathering proposal (for example, that current kindergartners would be allowed to remain through 5th grade) and to lay out a transportation-equity fund or policy to ensure lower-income and emergent bilingual families can remain at campuses that shift to non‑zoned, choice-based models.

Administrators described several operational constraints. Victoria O’Neil, Executive Director of Campus Family Engagement, said dual-language campuses included in the proposal were modeled assuming existing emergent bilingual students would have seats in the new configurations and that staff are designing an application rubric for campus‑wide dual language programs. District leaders acknowledged some campuses will require applications and seat-priority schemes in the near term.

Trustees also raised questions about how the plan interacts with TEA accountability. Trustee Chiu asked why the consolidation and budget-recovery work were being presented together; administrators said combining the work opened programmatic solutions that would not be available to address TEA turnaround (TAP/TAPS) requirements and budget pressures if handled separately. Staff noted the district must prepare turnaround plans for multiple campuses and referenced a TEA filing timeline that drives the district’s schedule.

Several trustees called for more transparent, trackable feedback. Superintendent Segura and other administrators committed to posting annotated drafts showing what feedback was received and how it affected revisions; staff said they would provide an online tracker and a trustee feedback form to collect and respond to detailed campus questions. Administrators also committed to meeting individually with trustees and to bringing back clarifying cost and transition materials prior to the board’s formal vote.

Trustees asked administrators to clarify a range of line items and assumptions: projected net savings figures cited in the discussion ($13 million in one version of the plan and a separate projection of roughly $25 million), an $800,000-per-campus TAP investment referenced for some turnaround supports, and the district’s assumption set for how many legacy students would accept options that require continued transportation. Trustees said those assumptions need campus-by-campus detail.

Trustees also urged caution around naming candidate replacement campuses and making off‑hand suggestions in public; administrators said staff would analyze any trustee suggestions and return with data. Trustees asked for explicit timelines for community engagement workshops, school-by-school program inventories (course offerings, extracurriculars), and clearer explanations of what changes special education families should expect.

The board did not take a vote on the consolidation package at this meeting; staff said the next formal vote is scheduled for the board’s November session and that more annotated materials will be posted ahead of the information session in early November.

Looking ahead, trustees asked staff to prioritize clear, translated materials, to model conservative and optimistic budget scenarios tied to the district’s real estate monetization assumptions, and to produce a transportation policy that covers legacy students and non‑zoned choices. Several trustees said that if changes occur, the district should phase transitions where feasible to avoid abrupt displacements and to preserve continuity for students and staff.

What’s next: administrators committed to publishing updated drafts, a tracker of trustee/community feedback and a timeline for spring transition work; they also said staff would prepare specific cost and enrollment scenarios and respond to campus-level requests from trustees before the November vote.