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Austin ISD outlines school consolidation roadmap, targets November 2025 approval
Summary
Superintendent José Segura presented a draft consolidation roadmap for Austin ISD: data collection now, analysis with a rubric in summer, and a target for board approval in November 2025. The district plans to analyze all 116 campuses and do deep dives on the top 30 candidates.
The Austin Independent School District on Thursday presented a draft roadmap for a potential school consolidation effort, saying the district will analyze all 116 campuses, develop rubrics this spring and seek final decisions in November 2025.
“When you look at the graphic, I wanna kind of break it down into three different categories or phases. We have data collection, we have the analysis, and then we have finalization and approval,” Superintendent José Segura said as he described the timeline. Segura identified Dr. Rachel French, director of planning, as the project manager for the consolidation effort.
Why it matters: District officials said the goal is to reach a “stable state” that supports a multiyear balanced budget, protects educational quality and provides families with time to adjust. Segura said the district historically prefers to make boundary or student-movement changes a year before they take effect and therefore is targeting November 2025 so families would have the spring of 2026 to prepare for any transitions.
Planned process and milestones: The district said it will return to the board in an information session in early May to discuss priorities and “guardrails” for the rubric. The rubric will be presented for final review at the June board meeting, concurrent with budget approval, and the district intends to analyze campuses in July and August when school is out. Officials said the analysis will rank campuses by potential for consolidation, produce a top-30 list for deep dives, and then move toward community engagement and transition planning in fall 2025.
Data and outreach: Segura said the district is building clean data sets for the analysis and emphasized community engagement. “We are always wanting to make sure before Thanksgiving break, before winter break, we have these milestones hit,” he said, adding that the district will develop a communications and engagement plan for families, staff and community stakeholders.
Trustee comments and questions: Trustees asked for clearer public examples of what a modernized replacement school would look like and for clarity on how vacated school buildings might be reused to meet broader community needs such as child care or other services. Segura said the district is considering those possibilities and will include community input in transition planning. Trustee Singh and others asked for a short list of inputs the board and public should monitor (e.g., vacancies, program fidelity) so the board can assess whether the district is investing in the levers that support student outcomes.
What remains undecided: No formal consolidation decisions were made Thursday. Segura said the plan is still in draft form and will be refined with board feedback and public input over coming months. The district said it will post draft documents and a landing page for middle school initiatives and other materials online as they are developed.
