Listened to the live Q&A session tonight. The director of planning came off pretty sharp but pretty much every other person, including Superintendent Segura, came off pretty unprepared and incapable. The call started late, had technical difficulties, then had 10+ min of the consultant moderator going over needless administrative points before they actually got to the Q&A.
Anything on this topic should always be prefaced with the fact that AISD is only in this position because of the restrictions that state and federal govt have put on them; give the district $800M more in funding and all of a sudden every body with kids in AISD would be more than satisfied.
I am focused on SW Austin and here were my other takeaways:
Seems like they focused more on distance than commute when redrawing zones, which is stupid as fuck. They moved a bunch of people from Gorzycki to Small middle school, meaning families are going from a 1 min commute to a 20+ minute commute even though the distance is only a couple miles different, because to get to Small they’ll have to go thru the Y (290/71 split) in Oak Hill. To their credit they said they are looking at it so I have hope they’ll fix it. This was the only change that affected my family so I’m hopeful, but if they don’t fix it a ton of well-resourced people are going to be fucking pissed. It doesn’t seem like they put much thought into how many families will go private due to these changes and how that will affect district funding.
Eanes being its own thing is really fucking up the high school zoning. There are a bunch of kids in SW Austin that are gonna get royally fucked having to go all the way to Crockett or Austin High instead of Bowie, when really most of them should be going to Westlake if they aren’t going to Bowie.
Segura gave lip service to a question about transfers for folks who purchased a home specifically for the schools they were zoned to; he said they were looking at it, but my takeaway is that those people are fucked. Same thing around families who have been rezoned between kids and want their subsequent kids to go thru the same vertical the previous kids went to.
Overall most of the responses were non-answers, especially during the academic and transfer portions.