AISD interim superintendent: TEA recommended conservatorship for special education; Mendez Middle School must improve to avoid further intervention

AUSTIN — Interim Superintendent Matthias Segura updated the joint subcommittee on Austin ISD’s response to the Texas Education Agency’s (TEA) recent findings about special education services and on the status of Mendez Middle School, which remains under state oversight because of persistent low accountability ratings.

Segura said TEA’s staff recommended placing conservators over the district’s special education department; he and the board proposed an alternative of a monitor but acknowledged the state could move forward with a conservatorship. Segura described the recommendation as targeted to the special education department — “not over the superintendent or the entire district” — and said the district is working collaboratively with TEA on an audit and a recovery plan with a roughly 18–24 month horizon. He added that TEA typically reviews progress at nine‑week intervals.

Segura told the subcommittee the district has already taken several steps to accelerate evaluations and strengthen case-management systems: the district has completed roughly 4,000 special-education evaluations since May 2022 and more than 8,000 since last year, he said. He said a core operational constraint is staffing: Austin ISD has 75 licensed school practitioners/diagnosticians positions but only about 24 of those positions were filled at the time of the briefing, which limits how quickly evaluations and follow-up services can proceed.

Segura said the district is developing a comprehensive operational plan, including a project-management schedule, a recruitment and compensation package aimed at raising competitiveness for scarce licensed specialists, and dashboards for campuses and principals to track evaluation and service timelines. He said the district expects this work to take multiple quarters and asked for continued community patience while it implements the recovery plan.

Board President Arthi Singh warned subcommittee members that conservatorship is “one step below a takeover” and can include authority to override district decisions in areas that affect special education services, and she urged the district and its partners to move quickly to meet TEA’s targets.

The subcommittee also discussed Mendez Middle School, which has experienced several years of low accountability ratings and declining enrollment. Segura traced the school’s decline from earlier enrollment and performance levels and described district efforts to stabilize instruction there. The district had previously entered partnerships with outside operators; one earlier partnership with a STEM coalition was terminated in December 2021, and the district later contracted with Third Futures in March 2022. That agreement gave Third Futures operational control at the school for a time; Segura said the current objective for the partnership is to bring Mendez to an accountability rating of C or better, which would “break the chain” of escalating state actions. If the campus does not improve, TEA could require further steps that range from placement of a school manager to closure; continued failure across multiple triggers could, in extreme cases, expose the district to broader state intervention.

Elected officials and trustees on the subcommittee pressed the district to coordinate a community-driven turnaround strategy. Multiple members recommended convening local partners and civic organizations with experience in neighborhood-level coalitions — including models used by the Austin Project and community‑schools partnerships — to build wraparound supports for students and families. County officials also noted recent county investments in related supports, including eviction prevention and workforce dollars, as resources the district could align with school-level recovery work.

Segura said district leaders plan to return with more detailed recovery-plan milestones and emphasized that the district has accelerated evaluations and is assembling a targeted recruiting and compensation approach to fill critical special-education staffing gaps.