Austin ISD officials told attendees at a community meeting that a draft plan to close Woodane Elementary School would reassign roughly 70% of Woodane students to Rodriguez Elementary School and about 30% to Houston Elementary School, and that Rodriguez would inherit the campus's required turnaround plan.

"This plan is a draft plan. Your feedback, what you share with us will help us move forward," Superintendent Matias Segura said, opening the district's explanation of the proposal and the rationale behind it. Segura said the district faces enrollment declines (about 20,000 empty seats systemwide), persistent budget pressures and state accountability deadlines that have limited the options available to the district.

District staff framed the proposal as an attempt to keep neighborhoods together, align feeder patterns and concentrate resources where students need them most. "We want our families not to feel like they have to go across town to get to a strong neighborhood school," Segura said. Christine Steenport, Austin ISD's operations officer, walked through boundary maps and explained the 'feathering' approach the district used to redraw small parcels so nearby students are reassigned either to Rodriguez or to Houston.

The district said TEA (the Texas Education Agency) requires a turnaround plan for schools with consecutive unacceptable accountability ratings and that some options (for example, delaying action) are not available when a campus has reached three consecutive unacceptable ratings. Segura described the constraints: when a school reaches that threshold the agency will accept only a limited set of interventions, including restarting a campus or closing it and moving the majority of students to a higher-rated campus.

"Rodriguez Elementary School would be the school that receives the turnaround plan that's required by the state of Texas," the superintendent said, adding that the combined campus would co-develop and implement a single turnaround plan if the board approves the draft.

District staff also addressed transfers, staffing and supports. Steenport said transfer requests from currently enrolled families would be handled at the superintendent level to preserve cohorts when feasible. The district's staffing guideline, Steenport said, will aim to allocate teachers and staff to the receiving campus roughly in proportion to the percentage of students coming from each campus so that 'familiar faces' remain.

On special education and compliance, Krista Ethridge, interim executive director of special education, said the special education office is planning proactively and meeting frequently to review individual students' needs and placements. "We have started proactively planning very early. My team meets, weekly. Right now, we're actually meeting almost daily to, to really plan and look at the data," Ethridge said.

Parents, teachers and community members raised several consistent concerns: the timing of the process, continuity of special education services, how staffing decisions will preserve existing relationships, impacts on nearby community services (library, recreation centers), transportation, and the loss of a local neighborhood anchor. One parent told the meeting, "I'm afraid for my son," describing worries about transitions for students with disabilities. Several teachers and longtime volunteers described Woodane as a community hub and urged the district to preserve the site's community uses if the school closes.

District officials acknowledged the disruption and said revisions to the draft will be released this Friday, with a board information discussion the following week and a vote anticipated at the Nov. 20 board session. Ally Ghilarducci, the district's senior executive director for communications and community engagement, urged attendees to submit comment cards and to participate in ongoing planning.

No formal vote occurred at the meeting. The proposed changes remain a draft until the Austin ISD board reviews the revised plan and votes.