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Round Rock ISD reduces number of campuses flagged under federal 'closing the gaps' metric
Summary
District staff reported fewer campuses designated for comprehensive or targeted federal support, crediting cross-department efforts despite COVID-era and TEA accountability changes.
Round Rock Independent School District staff told the Board of Trustees the number of campuses identified for support under Domain 3 (closing the gaps) has fallen from 15 in 2019 to four in 2024.
Why it matters: Domain 3 evaluates performance for specific student groups (for example, economically disadvantaged students, English learners, students with disabilities) and feeds into federal accountability designations. Schools designated for comprehensive support (bottom 5% within school type) must develop targeted improvement plans and face state monitoring.
What staff reported: Dr. Natalie Nichols and Erica Simmons, executive director of assessment and evaluation, presented the federal-accountability results and explained the designations. Nichols said the district reduced comprehensive-support campuses to zero for 2023 and 2024, and reduced targeted-support campuses from 12 in 2019 to four in 2024. Simmons said less than 2% of Round Rock graduates earn CCMR solely through an industry-based certification, limiting exposure to some TEA CTE rule changes.
Process and remedies: For comprehensive support, Nichols described required campus actions — an assessment using the Effective Schools Framework, a campus intervention team and a targeted improvement plan (TIP) with TEA monitoring. For targeted or additional targeted support assignments, staff explained how repeated underperformance by the same student group across indicators triggers review. Trustees asked whether schools on the list are persistent; staff said two of the four currently designated targeted-support campuses have been on those lists since 2019.
Budget and operational implications: Trustees probed how targeted funds and strategic staffing are being applied; district leaders said some campuses receive strategic staffing allocations and that principals and area superintendents are already seeing early improvement under recent changes in leadership. The administration committed to showing trustee-requested links between budget allocations and campus support in a future update.
Next steps: Staff said they will continue monitoring subgroup performance, implement campus intervention plans where required and return to the board with related budget and staffing alignments as part of the spring budget cycle.
