AISD flushes $100M down the toilet

More than two months after the Austin Monitor published its last article, its reincarnation, Austin Current, is finally live. There are eight unique articles on its website today, in addition to stories by KUT and its owner, the Texas Tribune.

I'm curious to see how much Current will produce on a daily or weekly basis. The problem with the Monitor was that its daily articles, all written by freelancers assigned to cover a meeting, often didn't dig below the surface or provide readers much context – at least in the final years of its existence.

AISD: the anti-abundance poster child

Along with the Austin Free Press, Current reports that the Austin Independent School District has in the last few years spent nearly $100 million on upgrades to schools it is now closing.

This lede from Current is quite demoralizing:

Just past the corner where Rosewood Avenue becomes Oak Springs Drive, a fenced construction site sits empty. Pipes and cement slabs rise from the ground, physical remnants of more than $48 million in improvements to a school that is now scheduled to close.

But I think the point both articles neglect is that all of this waste is the result of a school board that for years refused to make tough decisions. They weren't wrong to deplore the conditions imposed by the state's unjust school funding system, but they were wrong in their refusal to adopt to those conditions. Enrollment (which is tied to funding) kept declining. The writing was on the wall. They were going to have to close schools.

(I'm also really puzzled as to why the AISD critique quoted by Current came from James Quintero of oil front group Texas Public Policy Foundation)

They knew this, and yet they still kept asking voters for more money, as if that would prevent the inevitable. The most egregious instance was the 2024 tax rate election, Prop A, which district leaders heralded as a bold educational investment. What they didn't mention – and what the local press didn't mention enough – is that only a quarter of the $170 million a year tax increase would actually go to local schools. The rest would go to Greg Abbott's slush fund. This is what I wrote at the time:

My concern is that even with this tax hike, AISD is still going to make tens of millions of dollars in cuts. How are voters going to feel when they approve a big tax hike with such a small ROI? Is that going to further undermine confidence in the district? Moreover, will that make it harder for other local governments to seek tax hikes –– which they absolutely will need to do –– in the coming years?

Sadly, I think that aged pretty well. When I was interviewing voters at the polls during the Prop Q election, it was not unusual to hear gripes about AISD's perceived bait-and-switch.

AISD is the poster child for the Abundance critique of blue city governance. The district has a top-notch pool of talent to draw on for both administration and classroom instruction but by all accounts the execution is terrible.

Things are only going to get worse with the introduction of private school vouchers. More kids are going to leave the district, further aggravating the district's finances.

This would be the time for members of the board who figured it would be an easy stepping stone to higher office to start taking their jobs seriously.

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