Chapter 7 — Board of Trustees information session and special meeting (October 9, 2025)

**Date in the room:** Tuesday, October 9, 2025. Called at **6:02 p.m.** Recess to executive session **11:34 p.m.** Reconvene **12:47 a.m.** Adjourned **12:49 a.m.** **Type:** Information session plus special meeting. Public comment on any topic; later action on TCAD nominations and a transfer appeal. Consolidation is presented, not voted. **Runtime:** last caption stamp `[05:36:27]`. Recording ~6h 47m. **Source:** `meetings/clean/20251011-Austin-ISD-Board-of-Trustees-Information-Session-&-Special-Meeting--October-9-20.txt` **Place:** AISD central office; Spectrum 22 / AT&T 99.

Caption errors: Segura (Sigura / Sugura); Peyton Heights (Petton / Pimton / Pton); Casis (Cassiss / Cassissa); Gorzycki (Gitzky / Geritzky); Kiker; Kaufman; Quintana (Kintana); Gonzalez; de Urost; Christine Seamort (Seaholm?); Avette Gardanas; Bedichek; Maplewood; Sanchez; Zilker; Galindo.

This is the first full board night after the October 3 draft. Community meetings have not yet begun. French will re-present the maps the next morning (Chapter 6) as a staff briefing.

Who is in the room

**Board:** President Lynn Boswell; Vice President Whitley Chu (named from the podium by the first speaker). Trustees who speak or take votes later: Kaufman, Hunter, Kintana, Gonzalez, de Urost, Singh, Foster. Quorum physically present.

**Staff:** Superintendent Matias Segura; Dr. Maxwell, academics; Christine Seamort, operations; Dr. Rachel French, planning / PM; Avette Gardanas, multilingual; Dr. Lewis, counseling and mental health. Counsel Walker on the prayer/Bible resolution.

**Public:** 35 in person, 25 recorded, one minute, no yielding. Cap of 60. Boswell warns it will “feel very awkward” when the board does not answer, because comments are not on an action item (`[00:01:43]`–`[00:01:54]`).

Public comment (`[00:00:31]`–`[01:24:24]`)

Speakers called five at a time.

**Peyton Heights / Casis.** Corey Pomeroy, Westover Road: keep Peyton Heights zoned to Casis “as it currently is, as it historically has been, and it as it is and remains under the draft plan.” Hits the four guiding principles: minimize impact (neighborhood close to school), balanced enrollment, clean feeder, long-term stability (`[00:04:07]`–`[00:05:08]`). Philip Cunningham, three young children, one at Casis: “for generations, our children have walked and biked to the very, very short distance to Cassiss… a historic and living connection the draft plan is rightly chosen to maintain.” Page 14 of the report. “A neighborhood that proudly chooses Austin ISD because it allows our children to attend Cassiss” (`[00:09:27]`–`[00:10:18]`).

**Circle C / Gorzycki → Bailey.** A speaker (Roberto Lago or Megan Vasquez in the first five; captions do not lock the name to this speech): Wildflower Park rezoned from Gorzycki to Bailey. East of MoPac, “repeatedly… subject to reszoning proposals that ignore actual geography.” Three years ago AISD tried to pull them from Kiker (15-minute walk) to a school that required MoPac. Gorzycki is a five-minute drive; students bike. Bailey: “a 9mm toll road drive or a six mile drive.” Triple travel time. Neighborhood has “never exceeded 2% of their enrollment” at Gorzycki. Would be “the only current Kiker Elementary neighborhood that would not feed to Geritzky” (`[00:05:30]`–`[00:06:36]`).

**No-zone campuses / equity.** How are historically underserved students prioritized? Equity audit named inequities; “naming inequities is not the same as appropriately addressing them.” Closures “fall hardest on our low-income communities, black and brown neighborhoods, and campuses serving large numbers of EB students.” Four proposed no-zone campuses: “majority of Hispanic students between 89 to 91% and with 84 to 95% ecois.” “While a no zone is not a closure… Displacing parts of a school’s community is harm.” George I. Sanchez as civil-rights namesake: “To fracture the students at the campus named after him to three separate schools is deeply contradictory to that legacy” (`[00:06:48]`–`[00:07:47]`).

**Becker / Sanchez.** A Becker parent and AISD graduate: started with chickens that would be homeless if Becker closed; then talked to Sanchez families. Plan “creates immense transportation challenges and kicks out the non-dual language students telling them they can’t attend their newly renovated campus so that kids with choices like my son can” (`[00:08:14]`–`[00:08:59]`).

Tracy Dunlap, Education Austin, Maplewood teacher. Taught at Brook, closed. “I cannot support a plan that closes thriving, diverse neighborhood schools.” Maplewood students to Campbell; staff told they will have a job somewhere. “I’m skeptical. Most of the cost savings comes from the elimination of staff. So, this seems like a layoff without actually calling it a layoff.” Classified staff not under contract. “The focus right now must be on supporting schools with turnaround plans, not rushing to close schools.” “I understand our number one priority is to avoid a TEA takeover, but closing schools is obeying in advance” (`[00:10:39]`–`[00:11:39]`). “I’m ready to fight for my school and all public schools. Are you?”

Ellen Price, Becker kindergarten, speaking for Alexander Chavez, dual-citizen Venezuelan parent: heritage and Spanish literacy at Becker; transferred from other parts of the city; “guarantee that displaced dual language students can access any schoolwide dual language program that works for their family rather than being assigned to a specific campus.” In her remaining seconds: “please don’t displace the Sanchez community again. They have been through displacement during COVID displacement while their new building was built. This building was built for them. It was not built for us. Please allow them to stay” (`[00:12:05]`–`[00:13:07]`). Applause.

Brenda Malik, Washington Holy Cross Historic District. Went to L.L. Campbell; two sons; six grandchildren, two of them at Campbell. “The only elementary in the district with a predominantly black student population.” Generations of fight for that school (`[00:13:24]`–`[00:14:24]`).

Adam Sparks: “AISD is in crisis, but is an academic crisis, not a financial one. We have 23 failing schools in this district… we know it is $13 million.” Instead the plan “closes 13 campuses whose land value alone is $300 million, fires 700 teachers and staff, displaces over 5,000 students.” His school’s consolidation is “a paragraph.” Metz and Brook “are still empty. You can make $15 million by selling those two immediately.” Ask for multiple plans on November 6. “Aisd.com. Join us” (`[00:15:05]`–`[00:16:11]`). (Caption may clip the URL.)

Matt Harer (Heriger), two kids, “on most days I like the district.” “Fostering a sense of financial emergency is being used as a tactic to sell a closure plan which was the only option presented.” Twenty years of TEA superior achievement, including after reserves went 20% to 15%. What did 2019 closures save, and what did they do to enrollment? San Antonio: closures made the deficit worse. “When that process suggests shuttering a school, an A-rated diverse school fully enrolled with students within the attendance zone, it signals… the underlying process is flawed” (`[00:16:33]`–`[00:17:36]`).

Zilker: 117 current students plus future east-of-Lamar families reassigned Zilker → Galindo. Railway as a long-standing natural boundary; travel and safety (`[00:17:53]`–`[00:18:33]`).

Shannon Kho, “the librarian at Sanchez Elementary, a Sanchez parent, and a 17-year resident” (`[00:47:23]`–`[00:47:28]`). Chose to work at Sanchez and send her daughter there.

Recorded block starts `[00:58:03]`. Twenty-five messages; same campuses, TAP timeline, dual language, feeders. Public comment closes `[01:24:22]`. Trustees: questions or clarifications only.

LSG time into the record (`[01:27:05]`–`[01:27:45]`)

President’s report, required by the TEA agreed order: July–September student-outcomes plus special-education monitoring time **74%** (target 50%); September **68%**; **250 minutes** in executive session in September.

Segura: apology, values, money (`[01:27:57]`–`[01:33:58]`)

Team: Maxwell, Seamort, French, Gardanas, Lewis.

“I want to apologize uh to our community for just the disruption and just the challenges that we’re having to to navigate uh at this time… it’s not lost on me how disruptive this is for our families, for our students. Um and this is a a draft plan” (`[01:28:50]`–`[01:29:16]`). Goal: strong neighborhood schools “throughout the entire city,” not one part.

Cost of education up; state and federal “real loss… tens of millions.” Still under a TEA agreed order for special education. “Our students are more than just a letter grade… we also have to acknowledge that… the risks that get introduced to our system are largely dependent on those letters that are received and not by us by the state of Texas” (`[01:31:16]`–`[01:31:37]`).

What they chose not to cut: “We retained librarians. We retained registered nurses. Other school districts do not have these in their walls. We do. We made a decision over a year ago to retain planning time uh and and not move to a seven out of eight um master schedule for secondary. That was a $20 million swing. We’ve decided not to increase class sizes” (`[01:32:00]`–`[01:32:26]`). They also kept their own curriculum rather than state HQIM: “six, seven, eight million dollars every other year.”

Maxwell: five levers for every school to be “strong, be vibrant, be loving.”

Kaufman — Pierce (`[01:36:32]`–`[01:37:07]`)

“I’m a teacher. I taught at Pierce for my first two years. Um and that school closed. Um then I went to Ann Richards. So there I was considered a very highquality teacher. Um when they were closing Pierce, they said Pierce didn’t have highquality teachers. So I was the same” person. TAP language about HR “telling them they’re going to be replaced with high quality teachers… that terminology… used in certain ways is is offensive to our staff who are who are amazing teachers.”

This is the clearest campus-life credential on the dais in these seven chapters.

Draft maps, $25.6 million, recapture (`[01:33:58]`–`~[02:12:35]`)

French: feeder-pattern maps (same substance she will repeat October 10). Two 250-student schools combined to 500: modeled **$1.3 million/year**. Segura: “We hire almost 700 teachers every single year… I’ve heard over and over again that this is a a plan that is going to fire staff. That is not the case. Uh you we are not breaking contracts” (`[02:10:45]`–`[02:10:57]`). Preference survey, then matching.

“Total estimated savings, it’s about $25.6 million… conservative” (`[02:11:22]`–`[02:11:30]`). People who treat that as a tiny share of the total budget are including recapture: “the recapture payment of $700 million. So yes, our overall budget is 1.6 to $ 1.9 billion on, you know, typical year, but we give 700 to $900 million a year to the state. So our operating budget is much less than that. It’s about $960 million” (`[02:11:43]`–`[02:11:58]`). No offset for future revenue. TAP investments happen **whether or not** campuses close; without closures they just deepen the deficit.

Seamort: transition — staff, families, buses. Preference survey November 2025; principals December; allocations January 2026; internal match fairs February–March. TAP and non-TAP flowcharts. Custodians and food service included. Families: new zone / transfer / grandfathering; siblings not automatic. Two-mile bus rule; no bus for new non-zone or grandfathered (same as Chapter 6).

Board questions: high-quality-teacher language (Kaufman, above); equity of no-zone campuses; buses and travel. One trustee restates the $25 million figure (`[02:46:40]`). No amendment. No vote on the draft.

Later items, prayer resolution, TCAD, transfer (`[05:22:26]`–`[05:36:27]`)

Monitoring report accepted (motion to accept, seconded).

Item 12.2: resolution on a state requirement for a period of prayer and Bible reading. Counsel Walker: whereas clauses to make clear students still have a First Amendment free-exercise right; the board is not required to adopt the policy. A trustee asks whether the whereas language also covers bringing a Bible and reading it at school; Walker: the resolution covers prayer and Bible; the upper portion is the legal requirement on whether the board adopts a policy (`[05:28:36]`–`[05:31:54]`). This is not a consolidation item.

Item 14.1: nominate two candidates to the Travis Central Appraisal District board, four-year terms starting January 1, 2026; due to TCAD October 14; AISD will allocate votes November 20. About 30 applications; email to the entire community. Motion Hunter, second Kintana. “The motion passes by all in the dis” (`[05:34:30]`).

Recess 11:34 p.m. Reconvene 12:47 a.m.

Item 16.1, transfer appeal on behalf of VM. Gonzalez: “I move to deny the requested relief” and uphold the administration. Second de Urost. All on the dais. Adjourned **12:49 a.m.** Last stamp `[05:36:27]`.

What was not discussed

Result

• Consolidation draft: **presented. No vote.** Vote date remains November 20.
• Monitoring report: accepted.
• Prayer/Bible resolution: discussed as a legal-requirement document with free-exercise whereas clauses (action in the agenda-preview stretch; not a closure vote).
• TCAD nominations 14.1: **all on the dais** (Hunter / Kintana).
• Transfer appeal VM 16.1: **deny requested relief**, all on the dais (Gonzalez / de Urost).
• Adjourn 12:49 a.m.

Board and campus life

Kaufman is the former Pierce teacher who was the same person when Pierce “didn’t have highquality teachers” and when Ann Richards said he did. Kho is a Sanchez librarian and parent. Dunlap is a Maplewood teacher who already lived through Brook. Malik is Campbell across generations. Pomeroy and Cunningham are Casis walkers. Segura apologizes and lists librarians, nurses, planning time, and class size as what the organization kept. The board does not answer the one-minute speakers. The $25.6 million and the $700 million recapture line are the staff numbers that will be repeated at campus meetings.

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