Voters will choose Austin ISD school board trustee to represent entire district in runoff election

Voters living within Austin ISD’s boundaries will elect a new school board member after none of the six candidates running for at-large position 8 got enough votes to win the Nov. 5 election outright. Fernando Lucas de Urioste and Lindsey Stringer, the two candidates with the most votes, face each other in the Dec. 14 runoff election.

De Urioste got more than 32 percent of the vote last month, while Stringer got about 26 percent.

The winner will replace outgoing Trustee Noelita Lugo, who did not seek reelection. Early voting is underway and lasts through Tuesday.

The at-large trustee is one of two board members representing the entire school district. The other is President Arati Singh. The remaining seven trustees represent specific districts and schools within Austin ISD boundaries.

De Urioste, whom Lugo endorsed, is a former Austin ISD teacher. He now works as the director of advocate services at Cirkiel Law Group, which focuses on “championing the rights of children and adults with disabilities.”

He said while he’s been block-walking, he’s heard from people who wonder why it’s important to vote in the runoff, especially if they don’t have kids in Austin ISD schools. For one thing, he said, school boards are able to represent the values of the community. Although school board elections are nonpartisan, De Urioste emphasized that he is a progressive Democrat and said that’s increasingly important if local values differ from those of the state or federal government.

De Urioste said another reason this election is worth participating in is because public schools are the “lifeblood” of the community.

“Those are students that are going to grow into community leaders, community members – the workforce that we need for the future,” he said.

Stringer is also a former teacher. She is currently the vice president of technology and business operations at the National Math and Science Initiative, a nonprofit that works to ensure all students can thrive in STEM. Stringer encourages voters to turn out for the runoff because public schools are part of the fabric of the community.

“If they’re not serving our families, well then that fabric is being torn up a little bit over time,” she said.

Stringer, who is an Austin ISD parent, said she is concerned about the number of families within the district’s boundaries who choose to go elsewhere.

“If almost four out of ten families living in Austin ISD boundaries are not choosing our schools in favor of other districts, charter schools, private schools, and homeschooling, then we have to ask the question of ‘why?'” she said. “As a Trustee, I would want to see a strategic initiative that seeks to understand why families do and don’t choose our schools, and if there are changes that we can make to become a first-choice education option for more families.”

Tough decisions are ahead for the school board. KUT sent the candidates the same five written questions and conducted phone interviews with them to get a better sense of how they would address key issues facing the district. You can find De Urioste’s full responses to the questions here and Stringer’s here.

Budget deficit

Austin ISD – like so many districts in Central Texas and across the state – is facing a budget deficit, which administrators blame primarily on the fact that state funding for public education hasn’t kept up with inflation. While voters did approve a measure last month to raise about $41 million to help pay for salary increases and reduce the deficit, the district is still $92 million in the hole. Austin ISD has been working on a plan to cut spending and eliminate that deficit over the next three years – a plan that will require board approval.

Both De Urioste and Stringer said the district should avoid cuts that will impact the classroom.

“Our financial resources should be focused squarely on supporting and improving student outcomes,” Stringer wrote.

De Urioste said it’s important to maintain direct services and programs for students.

“Special education in particular has shown us that losing staff positions connected to service delivery results in compounding issues and failures in ways that we cannot afford to repeat,” he wrote.

De Urioste and Stringer also said finding ways to increase the district’s revenue is going to be vital.

“Austin ISD needs comprehensive strategies for increasing enrollment and improving attendance, in addition to looking for creative ways to monetize the properties that we have,” Stringer wrote.

De Urioste said, if elected, he would support efforts to create “new revenue streams that will not be subject to recapture.” Recapture is a statewide system that was created decades ago to redistribute money from districts with high property values to those with low property values.

Improving special education

Another top issue for the school board is continuing to comply with a state order to improve special education services. The Texas Education Agency released an investigation last year that found Austin ISD violated federal and state laws by repeatedly failing to provide legally required services to students with disabilities. The school board ultimately agreed to a plan with the TEA that allowed the district to avoid a more severe form of state intervention.

District officials have said they’ve made significant progress in complying with the order, but Stringer said there is still more to be done. As a mom of a student with special needs, she said she has seen firsthand that the district needs to go beyond what it’s already accomplished.

“A lot of initiatives are underway to implement the special education strategic plan, which is good, but the focus needs to start shifting to outcomes – what the tangible results are for students – and making adjustments to the plan if we aren’t seeing improvement,” she wrote.

De Urioste said continuing to improve special education services is a high priority for him and he has several areas of concern. One of those concerns is ensuring the district has enough staff to effectively serve students with disabilities.

“We need to ensure that our staffing rubrics are correctly addressing the realities of our students’ unique needs,” he wrote. “We also need to be transparent about any gaps and provide families with realistic plans that detail how we will close staffing gaps when (they) occur.”

State laws vs. local values

The Texas Legislature in recent years has passed laws restricting how students learn about race and ethnicity in the classroom and which books they can access in their school libraries. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has even claimed that Austin ISD’s annual Pride Week violates state law. De Urioste said these types of state laws don’t align with the community’s values.

“Austin families want all children, regardless of race, religion, gender expression, socio-economic condition, or disability; to feel safe and welcome at school,” he wrote.

De Urioste said he has heard from families who are concerned about how the outcome of the state and national elections will impact their families and schools. He said AISD needs to be poised to fight for its students and values. He added that he “wouldn’t be running for this position if I didn’t personally feel aligned with the wishes of the vast, vast majority of families that I am trying to represent.”

Stringer said while school boards do have to follow state law, it’s important for Austin ISD to advocate at the state level “to ensure that our district can effectively pursue its mission to prepare students for college, career and life, which includes learning about race, racism, and LGBTQ+ issues.”

She said Austin ISD also has the freedom to use lessons that align with district values. She and De Urioste both said a TEA-developed elementary reading curriculum that includes Bible stories is out of step with those values. The Texas State Board of Education last month approved the materials for use in public schools. Districts do not have to use the materials, but would receive up to $60 per student if they do.

Stringer said she has “serious reservations” about what the State Board of Education approved.

“We should not be doing anything that would violate the First Amendment and the separation of church and state or put undue favoritism on one religious tradition over another,” she said.

De Urioste said he personally does not want the curriculum in schools, and he doesn’t think Austin families want it either.

“As a trustee, I think the job is to reflect the type of public education Austin at large wants for its students and I don’t think those materials are in line with what the district wants,” he said.

Student achievement

One of the school board’s main responsibilities is hiring and firing superintendents. One way it evaluates a superintendent’s performance is through a scorecard. Austin ISD trustees this year adopted a new five-year scorecard focused on improving student outcomes and preventing academic disparities for Black students, emergent bilingual students and students receiving special education services.

Stringer said the district needs a new approach to close “racial equity gaps, which have persisted for decades.” She said one step Austin ISD should take is ensuring all students, regardless of campus, are receiving high-quality instruction that is engaging and on grade level.

“For example, a student who attends 1st grade in one campus and then has to move to another campus mid-year, perhaps because their family’s housing situation changed, shouldn’t have a significantly different experience in their core math and reading instruction at their new school,” she wrote.

De Urioste also raised concerns about whether there is consistency in instruction across campuses. He said the district needs to do more to support staff and students, as well as engage families.

“The inequities in student achievement will not be addressed simply by changes to our intervention approaches, though we do need to support staff so they can do the work we ask of them,” he wrote. “I believe success here also requires a wrap-around approach that addresses the needs of the ‘whole child’ so that our interventions can be better received by the students that need help the most.”

The winner of the Dec. 14 runoff will serve a four-year term. More details about where, when and what you need to cast a ballot are available here.

This story was produced as part of the Austin Monitor’s reporting partnership with KUT.

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