After nearly three years under state scrutiny, Austin ISD is now past an era of state oversight of their special education program triggered by repeated failures to meet federal and state timelines for evaluating students with disabilities.

District leaders announced Tuesday that a 2023 agreement with the Texas Education Agency (TEA) has expired, removing two state-appointed monitors who had overseen the district’s special education operations. The agreement followed findings that Austin ISD routinely missed legally required deadlines to evaluate students suspected of needing special education services. 

Superintendent Matias Segura said the district mobilized staff across departments to achieve full compliance with state and federal requirements. He said the agreement replaced the state’s proposed conservatorship with a model that gave Austin ISD a chance to fix their own problems internally rather than ceding control to the state.

“This has been a long road for us and getting here required a tremendous lift in collaboration with our entire Austin ISD community,” Segura said. “Everyone had a role to play and every single person in our district answered the call.”

From violations to compliance

The change will allow the district to continue its efforts in improving special education and is the result of the district meeting 99 tasks set forth in the agreement, investing in new hires and thousands of hours in training. 

Segura said the district completed more than 10,000 special education evaluations, reached and maintained full compliance in December and rolled out a districtwide support plan with uniform standards. The district also expanded its special education team by more than 250 specialized providers and evaluators, backed by 120,000 hours of professional development.

Cherry Lee, interim assistant superintendent of special education programs, said the central office and compliance teams pushed to meet deadlines and submit reports to TEA not just to satisfy requirements but to rebuild credibility with the state. Additionally, she said the district held more than 100 family engagement sessions to keep parents informed about special education services. 

“While today is a celebration, it is not a finish line,” Lee said, adding that keeping up effective systems is key. “The milestone has given us a solid foundation but our next chapter is about sustainability.”

Under the former agreement, TEA monitors tracked the school board’s decisions and the district’s special education program, while Austin ISD hired a Lone Star Governance coach to advise trustees. The board members also committed to spending at least 50 percent of their time on student outcomes, including special education compliance. 

State investigators found 40 violations of special education requirements over a three-year period that started in 2020. After failing to correct the compliance issues, TEA notified the district that they intended to place the district under a conservatorship over special education in March 2023. 

In an effort to stave off a state takeover, Austin ISD entered into the agreement with TEA as an alternative pathway toward compliance, agreeing that if it failed to meet the order requirements, it would not challenge the appointment of a conservator or management team. 

Since then, district leaders said they built a centralized database to track special education evaluations, cleared a backlog of overdue cases and overhauled how campuses request assessments. They also worked with nationally recognized experts and launched an aggressive recruitment effort for special education staff. 

Deborah Trejo, co-chair of the AISD Special Education Family Advisory Committee, said she recognizes the district has remedied the identified violations and made improvements to meet the requirements per the state agreement, but there is still much work to be done. She said she is aware of families who are still struggling to get their students’ individual educational requirements met.

“There is a real challenge for many reasons in actually serving all students with disabilities properly and legally,” Trejo said. “I know that is an ongoing challenge for the district, to meet its obligations to serve and provide services that students need to have their running needs met in the classroom. That was not fixed. That’s an ongoing challenge and there is work to do, real significant work to do.”

Trejo said some areas where she still sees need for improvement include offering more training for teachers and administrators, meeting students’ needs in a traditional classroom and providing behavioral support services. But, she said, she is hopeful Austin ISD is moving in the right direction, has learned a lesson from this experience and won’t again allow itself to come so close to a state takeover over special education services.

Relief on special education, new risks elsewhere

Tuesday’s announcement comes as district leaders remain under scrutiny from state education leaders for other issues, including an investigation into whether district employees supported recent student walkouts tied to immigration enforcement protests. 

At the same time, three middle schools are one state standardized test away from a potential fifth failing rating under the state’s accountability system, a designation that could trigger the state education commissioner to replace the elected board with a state-appointed board of managers.