Superintendent Matias Segura told Bryker Woods families at a packed community forum that Austin Independent School District (Austin ISD) developed a draft consolidation plan to address falling enrollment, operating costs and state accountability risks.

“We have to make sure that every student gets what they need, period,” Superintendent Matias Segura said as he outlined the rationale for the district’s draft, adding that the district is “an inch deep and a mile wide when it comes to resources.” He said the plan aims to align feeder patterns, reduce costly underutilized facilities and sustain programs such as dual language across the district.

Community leaders and parents said Bryker Woods is a high‑performing neighborhood school with an International Baccalaureate (IB) Primary Years Programme that they argue improves enrollment and should be preserved. “The opportunity that IB provides for our kids is so vital,” Colleen Fairbrother, a fifth‑grade teacher, said, describing classroom work and the program’s impact on students’ thinking. Parents also noted recent and planned nearby housing projects they expect will add students to the neighborhood.

District staff explained how the draft plan was produced. Rather than closing schools on the basis of state accountability ratings alone, the district said it analyzed capacity across geographic zones, permanent building square footage and projected student “yield” from nearby development. Staff said they excluded portable classrooms from permanent capacity counts because portables are older, costly to maintain and were treated as temporary in district modeling.

“We do not include portables in those calculations,” Segura said, adding that Austin ISD has more than 600 portables that represent roughly 1.3 million square feet and include units that are decades old. The district described the rubric it used as a standard baseline (square‑foot thresholds, assumed 22 students per general‑education classroom and adjusted ratios for special education), followed by detailed campus‑level reviews.

Parents questioned the rubric and its inputs — including a contention that the district’s floor‑plan counts included program spaces Bryker Woods does not have and that the district miscounted general‑education rooms. They also presented a parent‑produced financial model that, under a 20% student attrition assumption, estimated a $470,000 first‑year revenue loss if Bryker Woods closed. District leaders said they will provide campus‑by‑campus cost details and noted that consolidation decisions are evaluated in the context of a districtwide budget where staff costs represent roughly 87% of expenditures.

Community members asked about future uses of school property if a campus is closed, noting deed restrictions and floodplain concerns. Segura described prior repurposings—Pease Elementary converted to an early childhood center with federal and nonprofit partners, and the Anita Coy site moved into a public facilities corporation for teacher housing—and said any reuse would be shaped by community benefit priorities and public engagement.

Parents asked whether the proposal’s timing is driven by the Texas Education Agency (TEA). Segura said some consolidations are directly linked to required turnaround plans that must be approved as part of documents the district will submit to the agency, which is why trustees have been asked to act on related items by the Nov. 20 board vote. He also said the district is in ongoing conversations with TEA staff about alignment.

School staff and parents raised program‑continuity concerns for IB. The district said it supports IB and would explore vertical alignment and partnerships with nearby middle and high schools, but noted that sustained program continuity requires feeder‑pattern alignment, staff capacity and district resources.

On student supports, Stacia Paschal, director of strategic planning and organizational effectiveness, described bridge teams, toolkits for principals, monthly professional learning for counselors and the deployment of licensed mental‑health professionals and restorative practices to reduce disruption if closures occur.

Segura said the draft is iterative and that the administration has already adjusted aspects of the plan in response to feedback; he committed to sharing additional demographic and financial detail with the community ahead of the board action scheduled for Nov. 20. He and staff encouraged continued community proposals, including ideas for Bryker Woods to serve as a receiving campus or to scale the IB program districtwide, provided those ideas can be modeled and aligned with district goals.

What’s next: the district will update demographic projections annually, perform periodic boundary reviews every two to three years and said it will share the campus‑level fiscal analysis and the demographer’s developer contacts with the community. Board consideration of items tied to turnaround plans is scheduled for Nov. 20; staff said they will consider trustee requests on timing and continue community engagement.