The Austin Independent School District Board of Trustees convened Oct. 29 for a work session to review the district's draft consolidation plan and to hear recorded public comments. President Boswell called the meeting to order and Superintendent Segura described a schedule of follow-up materials and an updated draft to be released Oct. 31, saying staff had received more than 7,000 written comment cards.

The meeting opened with recorded public comments. Parents from multiple campuses urged the board to delay or withdraw the plan, saying closures would harm neighborhood schools and trigger enrollment losses. Mackenzie Coronado, a Braker Woods parent, called Braker Woods "a quintessential neighborhood school" and said closing it would "forever change the historical nature of our neighborhood." Kelsey Long said two-thirds of families at Braker Woods told district surveys they would consider leaving AISD if the school closed, a point repeated by several callers.

Segura told trustees the Oct. 31 update will annotate changes responding to community feedback and will include standalone addenda: an academic framework addendum, a special-education transition plan, a finance addendum and an enrollment and transfer policies addendum. He said the district will publish a comment-card thematic analysis and will redact personal information before public release.

Key clarifications Segura read into the record that will appear in the next draft include:
- Continuation transfers: rising sixth- and ninth-graders will be allowed to continue at a feeder they were planning to attend despite boundary changes.
- Transfer guarantees: students who transferred into a campus that closes or that has a program change will be guaranteed a spot at the receiving location so cohorts can stay together.
- Prekindergarten: current pre-K students will be allowed to remain at their campus.
- Staff and sibling transfers: staff and sibling transfer requests will be automatically approved unless explicitly denied by the superintendent (Segura said application-based magnet programs are a separate category).
- Transportation: students who live in the tenant attendance boundary for a newly established schoolwide dual-language program will receive transportation; the district also said it will continue to follow established hazardous-walk-zone and two-mile rules for other school bus eligibility.
- Mandarin instruction: the Mandarin immersion program currently at Riley will be offered at Wooten in the updated plan.

Trustees pressed staff for details and for a sensitivity analysis of financial projections that shows a range of enrollment and attrition scenarios. Trustee Singh asked for graduated financial models (for example, +1%, +3%, +5% and negative scenarios) and for campus-by-campus projections; Segura said trustees would receive more detailed campus-level analysis by Friday.

Several focus-area deliberations followed. Staff presented and the board discussed alternative configurations for Sunset Valley/Jocelyn/Odom and for the district's dual-language footprint; the Wynn Montessori proposal to relocate the Montessori program was debated (trustees and staff said zoned, urban Montessori models that meet state accountability are rare and that any relocation would require a substantial implementation reset); and the board examined feeder-pattern options in Northeast Austin intended to reduce middle-school splits.

Trustees and callers also discussed several individual campuses mentioned repeatedly during public comment, including Braker/Bridal/Biker Woods, Beckett Meadows/Western Oaks neighborhoods, Becker and Dawson in South Central Austin, and Riley and Ridgetop in southeast Austin. Parents and community leaders repeatedly urged the board to pause or revise the plan, to publish a public sensitivity analysis, and to include stronger guarantees on transportation and program continuity.

No formal vote occurred during the session. Segura said the district would publish the annotated draft and documents on Oct. 31 and provide translated materials the following week. Trustees asked for timely access to the raw comment-card dataset (with redactions) and emphasized the need for clear, campus-level academic programming information before any board vote.

The board concluded the workshop after about two and a half hours, scheduling further briefings and asking staff to return with the additional documents and the requested financial and programmatic detail ahead of future votes.