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In a move that’s becoming almost routine, Austin ISD trustees voted in November to close 10 local schools, citing a cocktail of budget shortfalls, declining enrollment, and state accountability pressures — all for a projected $22 million in savings. Parents and teachers protested, saying that the district rushed its decision and ignored community voices. They said AISD is acting without a long-term vision or plan for its schools.
The irony of the district’s decision isn’t lost on anyone: Just three years ago, AISD committed $175 million in bond money to upgrade these very campuses — investments now destined for empty hallways and boarded doors. The whiplash has done little to rebuild public trust.
“It feels like we were asked to fund improvements to schools the district had already decided to walk away from,” said Dan Barrett, a parent at South Austin’s stricken Becker Elementary. “That’s not just a school issue. That’s a trust issue.”
AISD committed $1.3 million in 2022 bond funds to Becker. East Austin’s Martin Middle School is AISD’s most expensive bond-blunder closure. There, the district allocated $61.4 million in 2022 bond funds for a secure-entry vestibule, a mental health center, and assorted plumbing, electrical, HVAC, kitchen, and tech upgrades.
AISD already had contractually committed or spent almost $20 million on those campuses as of the end of 2025.
“Excellence” plans
In 2022 voters approved $2.3 billion in bonds to fund maintenance, safety upgrades, and the modernization of Austin schools, including $175 million allocated to the 10 now-closing schools.
Promoting the bonds in 2022, AISD wrote, “Long-range planning allows us to anticipate student needs to align our resources and better serve our community, chart a course toward a more equitable distribution of resources, opportunities and investments and support excellence at every level.” Affected parents, however, say that AISD planning failures made a mockery of such “excellence” when the district invested millions of dollars in the 10 schools just to close them.
The district has not publicly explained what role these bond investments played in its decision to close the schools. Nor has it said what it will do with the unspent, leftover bond funds that it had allocated to those schools.
Parent and community concerns go beyond the waste of those sunken costs. They say that the closures raise broader questions about stewardship of public assets, especially in neighborhoods where school campuses anchor libraries, gardens, after-school programs, and informal community networks that could be lost when the campuses go dark. And they don’t trust the district with these concerns.
“It wasn’t that people didn’t understand the financial pressures,” Barrett said. “It was that the district kept saying they were listening and then did exactly what they were going to do anyway.”
No Winn
Parents at Winn Montessori Elementary in Northeast Austin say they’re witnessing the unraveling of a carefully built school community. Amber Welsh, whose daughter is in second grade at Winn, said that a closure would erase a culture that took years to create.
“It’s not really about the building,” Welsh said. “It’s the loss of the relationships between families, between teachers, between students that feels hardest right now.”
Winn serves a diverse mix of local and transfer students, including families drawn by its Montessori program. Welsh said a shared investment in diversity made the closure especially painful. Unlike schools where entire student bodies get reassigned together, Winn families will be balkanized across the Andrews, Pecan Springs, and Riley Elementary campuses, fragmenting a community.
Image credit: AISD
Parents say it’s unclear how Montessori instruction will survive Winn’s closure or if students can remain with teachers they have worked with for years.
“A lot of people just aren’t ready yet,” Welsh said. “It feels like we’re still in a period of grief, and at the same time we’re being asked to make big decisions without enough information.”
As at Becker, Winn parents are left speculating about what comes next for their publicly owned campus. Will AISD prioritize educational, community, or financial considerations? AISD officials haven’t provided answers to such questions.
Nothing Burger
East Austin’s former Rosewood Elementary School offers a recent school-closure precedent. The Austin City Council voted in November to rezone that land so a developer can convert it into a commercial, mixed-use site. Neighbors had hoped to reserve the site for community uses such as tutoring, childcare, or affordable housing for teachers.
Image credit: Andrew Wheat
Another case study is the Toney Burger Center, a former AISD administrative campus in South Austin now slated for redevelopment. AISD and the city of Austin’s economic development arm, Rally Austin, are hatching plans to redevelop the 57-acre site as a mixed-use project that could include office space, nonprofit tenants, and potential revenue-generating uses to supplement district finances. The Travis Central Appraisal District values that tract at $50 million.
Although district leaders emphasize that the Burger site isn’t a former school campus, community members nonetheless are scrutinizing it for clues about what might become of their closed schools.
Burger Center discussions have focused on the district retaining ownership of the property while seeking long-term lease partners to activate the site. But those plans have been murky and shifting, creating suspicions that when AISD properties go dark the cash-strapped district will seek the most lucrative deal it can find.
Image credit: AISD
Community members affected by the closures say that they want AISD to provide a clearly articulated long-term vision that connects school bond investments, school closures, and abandoned-campus decisions into a coherent narrative about the future of public education in Austin.
As the district moves forward, parents say trust is less about justifying past decisions than it is about transparently redirecting the remaining bond funds, how shuttered schools are repurposed, and how displaced school communities are supported over time.
“There’s still a lot of uncertainty and honestly still a lot of grief,” said Winn Montessori mom Welsh. “A lot of people are saying, ‘It’s a little too soon for me right now.’
“I need some time just to like sit with the difficulty and just mourn the loss of the community that we’ve built.”
Chad Swiatecki is a 30-year journalist who relocated to Austin from his home state of Michigan in 2008. He most enjoys covering the intersection of arts, business and local/state politics. He has written for Rolling Stone, Spin, New York Daily News, Texas Monthly, Austin Monitor, Austin Business Journal, Austin American-Statesman and many other regional and national outlets.
