Chapter 1 — Joint subcommittee meeting (city, county, AISD)

**Date in the room:** Friday, April 21, 2023. Called at **11:38 a.m.** Adjourned **1:42 p.m.** **Type:** Joint subcommittee (Austin ISD, City of Austin, Travis County). Not a regular AISD voting meeting. **Runtime:** last caption stamp `[02:04:04]`. **Source:** `meetings/clean/20250822-joint-subcommittee-meeting-april-21-2023-1080p.txt` **Place:** AISD boardroom; broadcast Spectrum 22 / AT&T 99.

Caption errors scramble names: President Arthy Singh; Commissioner Bridget Shea (Sheay / Shay); Commissioner Jeff Travillion (Trailian); Trustee Zapata (Sapata); County Executive Polar / Belar Sanchez (likely Paula); Edna Butts (Buts); Matias Segura (Seura / Sigoda); Mendez Middle School (Mendes); Kathy McCor (Success by Six; likely McCarty). Uncertainty noted below.

This is an intergovernmental working meeting. No public comment. Two votes: minutes, then adjourn.

Who is in the room

**Elected / appointed (speaking or introduced)**

• Arthy Singh, AISD Board President — presiding officer.
• Trustee Zapata, AISD District 2.
• Bridget Shea, Travis County Commissioner, Precinct 2.
• Jeff Travillion, Travis County Commissioner, Precinct 1.
• Ryan Alter, Austin City Council, District 5.
• Allison Alter, Austin City Council, District 10.
• Jose Velasquez, city council, joining on Zoom (`[00:02:32]`–`[00:02:39]`).
• Vanessa Fuentes, Austin City Council — “I was a proud member of this committee last year. I’m not technically on this committee this year… I decided to crash the party” (`[00:01:05]`–`[00:01:17]`). Singh: “You’re always welcome.”

**Staff / presenters**

• Polar / Belar Sanchez, Travis County Health and Human Services, County Executive.
• Edna Butts, AISD Intergovernmental Relations and Policy Oversight.
• Kathy McCor, vice president of Success by Six (United Way).
• Interim Superintendent Matias Segura — special education and Mendez.
• Laura Patiña (captions vary) — resilience hubs, later on the agenda.

**Public:** none signed up. Singh checks twice (`[00:01:43]`–`[00:01:51]`).

Opening (`[00:00:15]`–`[00:02:18]`)

Singh: “Welcome everyone to Austin ISD’s boardroom for the joint subcommittee meeting.” Meeting called at 11:38 a.m. Introductions around the table. No public comment. First item is minutes of February 17, 2023.

Motion by Commissioner Shea, second by Trustee Zapata. “All those in favor of approving, raise your right hand.” Passes unanimously (`[00:02:02]`–`[00:02:15]`).

Purpose and planning (`[00:02:18]`–`[00:52:48]`)

Singh: new members, including herself; coming out of COVID; “a certain political environment.” She wants the group to name the purpose of the joint subcommittee beyond the written bylaws: topics and “what level of engagement.”

Allison Alter: Shea, Singh, and the longest-serving members from each body had already brainstormed. The county had just allocated a second tranche of ARPA dollars the day before, including child-care resources. A prior working group (Travillion, Allison Alter, then-Trustee Boswell) had identified child-care need during COVID. City ARPA: about **$11 million** for child care. County first tranche plus this second tranche. AISD also looking at child care.

Travillion on workforce: “for us we don’t have a workforce unless we’re aligned with our school district” (`[00:11:15]`–`[00:11:19]`). County ARPA examples include workforce development (~$4 million) and child-care assistance (~$3.5 million). He wants workforce development “back into the schools.”

The table then works through sticky-note / brainstorm topics. The captions do not yield a clean typed list; the spoken cluster is: workforce and CTE; parent-support specialists at $20/hour; teacher incentives; affordable housing; child care / pre-K / after school; mental health and jail diversion (county ARPA ~$8 million mentioned in this stretch); land and parks; opioids; gun violence; resilience hubs; community schools. Housing has been a standing joint issue for “five years ago maybe longer” (`[00:08:58]`).

Singh: take time to decide “what topics, whether it’s, you know, housing, child care, whatever those big topics are” (`[00:15:13]`).

This block is discussion, not a vote. No rubric, no closure list, no TAP.

Child care and Success by Six (`[00:52:48]`–`[01:20:45]`)

Kathy McCor, VP of Success by Six, is invited as the statistician the members already rely on. She puts a workforce lens on early care.

Stark number: “28% of the children under age six in Travis” County are in low-income households (`[00:55:36]`–`[00:55:39]`). She walks settings: pre-K, Head Start, child care.

Snapshot of pre-K: “80% of eligible children are enrolling in prek four” (full-day, four by September 1). House Bill 3’s early-ed allotment was meant to support full-day pre-K; “lots of asks on that early ed aotment.” Pre-K 3: “only 22% of eligible children enrolled” (`[00:58:55]`–`[00:58:57]`).

AISD pre-K partnerships: students “are technically AISD students. They count towards AIDS enrollment. So there’s 18 school facilities that have a full day for 16 centers in Austin” plus Round Rock partnership sites (`[01:00:04]`–`[01:00:14]`). Wraparound drop-off/pickup blends child-care subsidy and pre-K money.

Head Start: federally funded; AISD about 200 seats; Child Inc. has the majority. Staffing is the bottleneck for underenrollment.

Subsidy wait: “Right now, we have 1,345 children on the subsidy waiting list” (`[01:03:17]`–`[01:03:20]`).

Infant care: “High quality infant care can cost over $20,000 a year. Um, it costs more than tuition at UT for almost all child care” (`[01:06:15]`–`[01:06:18]`).

Travillion: focus Title I, “as close to free as possible,” because “when we look at where our low performance is happening um it is it is almost geographic” (`[01:01:07]`–`[01:01:16]`).

No vote. The group treats this as a standing joint workstream.

Special education and TEA conservator (`[01:20:45]`–`[01:39:44]`)

Singh introduces “our interim superintendent Matias Seura” for TEA updates on special education and Mendez.

Segura: since he came on, special education “was priority 1A” (`[01:21:28]`–`[01:21:36]`). Challenges “not new… going back to 2018, 2019, and others would argue well before that.” Multiple TEA notifications and investigations. For community members “it felt like it was new and maybe out of nowhere, but… we’ve been working on for quite some time” (`[01:22:53]`–`[01:23:04]`).

May 2022: audit/assessment by Dr. Stson (caption; internationally known special-education expert). Structural changes including leadership. New board elected November 2022, seated late December/January; “a kind of a refocusing.” Board named him interim in December 2022. He describes himself as “non-traditional… expertise is in systems.”

Other focus areas exist — “multilingual education, climate and culture, budget priorities” — but “special education services is truly one a above all else” (`[01:25:14]`–`[01:25:16]`). Board ad hoc committee. Dashboard for principals so they can see each student in the evaluation/ARD process; “up until very recently, we didn’t have the tools to do that.”

TEA letter “several weeks back”: conservators “being recommended for placement within the special education department.” He is explicit: “that’s not over the board. It’s not over the superintendent. It’s not over governance or procurement or finance. It’s specifically over special education department” (`[01:27:08]`–`[01:27:22]`). Community response “noting kind of what’s occurring right now in Houston and… it is terrifying.” AISD had proposed a **monitor** (looks over shoulders, no binding authority). A **conservator** does have binding decision-making. Expected sometime midsummer. Board and administration “aligned at every step.”

Staffing: evaluations done by LSSPs and diagnosticians. “We have 75 positions in Austin ISD. Right currently right now we have 24 filled” (`[01:29:04]`–`[01:29:12]`). Central Texas: only 256 licensed LSSPs/diagnosticians. “We’ve done 4,000 since May of 2022 and over 8,000 since last year.” This is “not a six-month challenge. This is not a year challenge. This is an 18 to 24month… initiative” (`[01:30:18]`–`[01:30:24]`).

A member (Fuentes, from the Houston-takeover question) asks whether this is “essentially the effect of a death penalty for the district” — if they cannot get out from under the order, “do they then take over everything” (`[01:36:49]`–`[01:36:58]`). She did not understand that in Houston one school failing a certain number of years let TEA take over the entire district.

Segura: “yes, but many many many many things have to have to occur.” Collaborative audit with TEA; generally about two years; commissioner reviews every nine weeks. If they are not committed, “there could be at some point in the distant future that possibility.”

Singh: “The conservatorship is just one step below a takeover and a conservator can, as Mr. Sigoda mentioned, they can override any decisions we make as a board. They won’t replace the board, but they can basically make decisions on any program area that impacts special education, which could be anything from facilities to HR, our budget” (`[01:38:50]`–`[01:39:14]`).

Mendez Middle School (`[01:39:44]`–`[01:52:28]`)

Segura: last time Mendez felt “stable” was 2013 — enrollment 886, met standard. 2014–2018: improvement required, enrollment down to 646 in 2018. Large campus. 2018 partnership with the state “mandated… for lack of a better term.” 2019: F, 606 students. Partner “got worse under the charter school that you were required to bring in” — Segura pauses: the 2018 partner was not the later TEA-mandated form; AISD initiated it as a “foregone conclusion.”

December 2021: board voted to terminate the STEM coalition partnership. Partner had controlled staff, principal, instruction; AISD “very little influence.” March 2022: new partnership with Third Future (captions: Third Futures). Extra year of accountability clock because of the new partner. Sixth grade pulled from both Mendez and Martin; students stayed at elementary.

Goal this year: C or better, which “would effectively break the chain” (`[01:44:28]`–`[01:44:32]`). If Mendez does not meet accountability: board of managers, conservator, or closure. AISD “has limited opportunity to engage with the school community” because of the Third Future contract; TEA reviewed the agreement. “Those are our students.”

On special ed versus Mendez: special ed does not have “a clear path to a takeover because we haven’t done the audit yet”; Mendez F-continuation is the campus-to-district takeover path (`[01:52:06]`–`[01:52:28]`).

No vote. Information only.

Resilience hubs, parent-support specialists, close (`[01:51:58]`–`[02:04:04]`)

Resilience hubs (Laura Patiña in the later stretch): county dollars (~$1.6 million in the discussion) and city/AISD sites. Electric buses come up only as a resilience/fleet aside, not as student routing.

Allison Alter flags parent-support specialists: AISD has asked the city to restore pre-COVID funding; “a lot of misconceptions about the origin of that program”; originated with the city. “If that is a need that AISD has in the budget process, we need to be having those conversations early and often” (`[02:02:45]`–`[02:02:51]`). Next JSC August; poll for August 11 or 18 or 25 — budget season for all three bodies.

Motion to adjourn: Shea, second Zapata. “Barring any objection, this meeting is adjourned… It is 142.” Last stamp `[02:04:04]`.

What was not discussed

Checked against the codebook list.

Result

• Minutes of February 17, 2023: **unanimous**, Shea / Zapata.
• Adjourn: Shea / Zapata, no objection, **1:42 p.m.**
• No other motions. No school-closure vote. No conservator vote. No TAP vote.

Board and campus life

Singh and Zapata sit as AISD. Segura is three months into the interim job and describes himself as a systems person, not a campus educator: “I am a non-traditional.” He has worked “with just about every one of y’all” at the city/county table. Travillion talks Title I geography and low performance, not a named campus he visits. Fuentes is at the table because Mendez is in her council district. No trustee describes a classroom, a library, a planning period, or a child of their own at a campus. The special-ed numbers (75 posts / 24 filled) are the closest the room gets to campus load.

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