Enrollment Honesty and a Path Forward for Austin ISD

I’m a proud Austin ISD graduate, parent and volunteer. I want the district to succeed through providing an excellent education to all of its students. I want AISD to be a first choice, not a last choice, for education in our area. But we must look at the enrollment data head-on, have an honest reckoning about why thousands of families choose other districts, charter, private, or homeschooling over AISD, and then make a plan and act upon it. With a governor dead-set on helping families out the door, we have everything to lose.  

Almost four out of ten families in Austin ISD boundaries are opting out. With eight years as a parent in AISD, and having graduated from Austin High myself, I’ve seen the trends first hand. Enrollment has been declining for a decade, but there’s been a net increase in the number of kids in our area.

The district has claimed as recently as October 8 that 81 percent of the students in Austin come to AISD, but that didn’t add up to me based on the number of students enrolled in charter schools and AISD’s own enrollment. 

I dug through enrollment data and census tables from my education policy work and what I could find from the district. From there, the calculation was fairly straightforward - I divided the number of students enrolled in AISD by the number of school-age kids living within our district boundaries. Solving for a few other factors, like leaver codes and transfers, my numbers came out much lower, to about 61 to 66 percent of students in AISD boundaries. This was confirmed with a separate analysis published in April. 

Why does this matter? For two reasons. One, is funding. The difference between 81 percent and 61 percent of kids attending amounts to well over $100 million in lost state funding alone. Austin’s affordability crisis has only been heightened by the massive tax rate increase that Austin ISD lobbied mightily to pass. In return, AISD only keeps about 25 percent of the additional taxes raised; and only 10.5 percent of taxes raised are actually going to fund staff pay increases, the primary rationale given to taxpayers why “Prop A for Teacher Pay” was needed.

The second reason is the larger policy landscape. With the specter of vouchers - public dollars put in private hands with likely no accountability - looming over our public schools, we must ask: Why are so many families not choosing Austin ISD? Are there any strategic district initiatives to better understand this? There aren’t. But there really should be.

Right now, district leadership says that AISD is losing students to charters and affordability. While I’m confident that’s true, it’s not the whole story. Austin ISD is also losing students to other districts, private schools and homeschooling and in growing numbers. If (and now it might be “when”) vouchers are passed by the Texas Legislature, families who have one foot out the door may leave altogether. If a parent felt they could get a better education for their child in the private sector and then received the money to help them do so, who could blame them? 

With a trend of stagnant and disparate student outcomes, declining enrollment, decreasing revenue, and aging infrastructure, who is left holding the bag? It’s our most vulnerable student populations, who have for decades been provided with a much poorer education in AISD. These disparities show up in the recently adopted district scorecard.* Further, private schools don’t have to accept all students the way public schools do, so families with limited resources, kids with special needs, our LGBTQ+ students and families, and emergent bilingual kids simply won’t have the same “choices”. 

What are some possible solutions to begin to solve for the enrollment crisis in Austin ISD?

  1. Overhaul the enrollment process, not just the technology system, especially at key entry and/or exit points such as kindergarten, transition to middle school, and transition to high school.

  2. Develop a comprehensive plan to support school staff with implementing customer service practices to drive engagement and retention.

  3. Connect with recent district leavers to better understand why they left and what could have made them stay.

*I’m hosting a copy of the district scorecard updated as of 12.06.2024 as links to the scorecard have ended up dead on AISD’s website. This is the most recently available live link.