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Austin school district leaders are determined to turn around the two middle schools that triggered mandatory state intervention.
Whether they get the chance may no longer be up to them.
Burnet and Webb middle schools received their fifth consecutive F ratings from the Texas Education Agency, triggering a state law that requires the agency to intervene. What that intervention ultimately looks like remains unclear.
Under the new statewide ratings released Friday, it is the only Texas district to trigger a potential state takeover.
But the ratings also left the district with an argument that it is making progress. The district overall earned a B grade, up from a C last year, said Superintendent Matias Segura. And Dobie Middle School, which was teetering on its fifth failing score, earned a D this year.
The district has an opportunity to appeal any school rating this year. And it likely will do so, Segura said, but would not detail what action it might take or for which schools. TEA will finalize the accountability ratings in December.
Segura says he won’t speculate on TEA’s next move and, as of Wednesday, had not spoken to the agency about the pending state intervention. Instead, he said, educators remain focused on improving all the schools, including Webb, Burnet and Dobie.
“I’ve spent time at those three schools last week, even prior to that,” Segura said. “We have two new leaders at those schools. The system is now better positioned to move the outcomes based on what we went through last year.”
What happens next?
The ratings answered one question. They also created another.
How much control, if any, will Austin ISD lose?
State intervention can range from targeted oversight to replacing an elected school board and superintendent altogether.
One possibility is TEA orders the closures of Webb and Burnet while leaving the district in the hands of local leadership.
At the other end of spectrum is a full state takeover, removing the superintendent and replacing the entire school board with a state-appointed superintendent and board of managers. Multiple school districts are currently operating under this system.
Or TEA could land somewhere in between. In Wichita Falls ISD, TEA and the district agreed to close a failing school, but allowed the superintendent and the elected school board to remain in place. TEA did, however, appoint a state-empowered conservator to monitor the district’s progress.
Austin educators worry about how any coming changes will affect kids, classrooms and the community. But they also know the district needs to substantially improve schools that have struggled for years.
“Part of ourselves is preparing for a takeover,” said Ken Zarifis, president of Education Austin, AISD’s labor union. “Regardless of what happens, we have to take action.”
For many educators, the greatest concern isn’t simply that the state may intervene. It’s that Austin could become the next Houston ISD.
Houston ISD shows the highest stakes
Houston offers the clearest example of how sweeping state intervention can become. In 2023, after years of litigation, TEA took control of HISD. One failing school triggered the takeover, but the state also cited broader problems, including violations of the Open Meetings Act and Texas procurement law.
TEA installed Mike Miles as superintendent and appointed a nine-member board of managers to run the district. Over the last three years, Miles has ushered in the New Education System model, which standardized lessons and reduced individual schools’ autonomy; slashed the number of librarians; overhauled its high school career programs; and added travel programs.
Academically, the district improved by several measures. The STAAR test scores improved. Before the 2023 takeover, the HISD had 56 failing schools. This year, four elementary schools received failing grades while the number of A and B-rated campuses grew, according to the Houston Chronicle.
“We’re pleased with the results in Houston,” TEA spokesman Jake Kobersky said about HISD’s progress. “They represent real opportunity, real progress for thousands upon thousands of kids.”
Some Houston families and educators view those gains with skepticism, suggesting they may reflect population changes, a narrow focus on standardized testing instead of critical thinking and decisions to keep advanced students in lower-level classes to ensure higher scores.
Toni Templeton, a research scientist at the University of Houston Education Research Center, says the group is currently studying how the takeover affected student performance.
The center’s research earlier this year showed 13,000 students left the HISD in the first two years after the state takeover.
Researchers expected to see an enrollment decline, Templeton said. Like many other urban school districts, she said, HISD has been hit by factors including declining birth rates, more educational options and gentrification that pushes families toward more affordable homes elsewhere.
Before the takeover, HISD enrollment declined 1% to 2% each year, Templeton said. After, the annual decline jumped 3% to 4%.
“What we saw was really a mass exodus,” Templeton said.
Students primarily left to attend nearby school districts and charter schools, the January study found. The changes also extended to HISD’s workforce: Teacher retention declined, more seasoned teachers left and the number of teachers with less experience increased.
The share of uncertified teachers grew from 0.3% in the 2016-17 school year to 19.8% in 2024-25.
In the two years after the takeover, Templeton said, students also began changing schools in unexpected ways. Ninth grade enrollment fell 15% in two years. Traditionally, enrollment increases at that grade level as students transition into HISD from charter or private schools.
“So these are changes that are signaling to us that parents are being motivated to make choices that they wouldn’t normally make as a result of the takeover,” Templeton said.
If TEA takes over Austin ISD, the community can expect the district to follow the same path as Houston, said Jackie Anderson, president of the Houston Federation of Teachers.
“They have the playbook,” she said. “That’s what they do.”
A different path in Wichita Falls ISD
Wichita Falls ISD offers a very different example of what state intervention can look like.
Earlier this year, TEA decided against a total takeover of Wichita Falls. Instead, the state appointed a conservator to monitor the district’s progress and guide it through decisions while allowing the district to keep its superintendent and elected school board.
This year, the school that triggered state action improved from an F to a C, said Superintendent Donny Lee.
The improvement followed years of attempts to turn the school around.
For years, the district struggled with failing scores and discipline problems at Kirby Middle School. In 2024, the board voluntarily closed the campus and moved its students to Hirschi Middle School, then turned operations to Third Future Schools, a network of nonprofit charter schools founded by Mike Miles.
Because accountability ratings measure performance from the previous school year, Kirby, received its fifth failing rating in 2025 even though the campus had already closed. When TEA intervened in March, the agency allowed Wichita Falls ISD to continue running its own district, with oversight from the conservator.
“When we first partnered with Third Future, there was a lot of pushback because of the uncertainty,” Lee said. “Who is Third Future? Why are they coming to our district? You know all of the questions that surround an unknown.”
But as academic performances improved, the community grew more supportive, he said.
The district has since handed over two more struggling schools to Third Future and is hoping to see similar improvements, Lee said. With some schools still flagging, he said, it’s not time to ease up.
“We are going to celebrate the fact that we are improving,” he said. “But we still have some work to do, and we know that. So we’re going to keep putting our nose to the grindstone and work hard.”
Whether Austin ISD follows a path closer to Houston’s sweeping takeover or Wichita Falls’ more limited oversight will ultimately be decided by TEA in the months ahead. Until then, district leaders, teachers and families remain in limbo, waiting to learn how much of the district’s future will remain in local hands.
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