AISD Plans for the Future of Its Facilities—You Can Help
by Mark Grayson, AISD FABPAC and NACA member
Austin is blessed to have some great public schools with creative and caring teachers and staff. At the same time, the Austin Independent School District also faces challenges. A big one is that the average age of the district’s 130 school buildings is well over 40 years, and many of them are not aging “gracefully.”
Instead of short-term fixes, AISD is working on a long-range plan for the next few decades. The goal is to create a 24-year plan that will result in the modernization of all of AISDs school buildings to meet the goals of 21st-century learning.
I’m a member of the Facilities and Bond Planning Advisory Committee (FABPAC for short), a volunteer committee of citizens appointed by the AISD Board. For 18 months, our group has been working with district staff and consultants. We’ve been examining objective data about the buildings, considering future trends in population growth, and reaching out to the community. That’s where you come in.
Through that work, we’ve come up with a draft set of recommendations for the next few decades that covers every school, and we want to hear from you and your neighbors—especially from children and young adults attending AISD schools—about how our plan seems right and how it doesn’t.
We’ll be holding a series of community meetings from 6 pm to 8 pm on these dates:
Tuesday 31 January—Martin Middle School
Wednesday 1 February—Burnet Middle School
Thursday 2 February—Gorzycki Middle School
(Materials for every neighborhood school will be available to discuss at every meeting.)
We’ll take that feedback and revise our plan before checking in with the community in a series of meetings one last time before taking the plan to the AISD Board for approval in March. The dates for these meetings are:
Tuesday 21 February—Webb Middle School
Wednesday 22 February—Kealing Middle School
Thursday 23 February—Anderson High School
Tuesday 28 February—Austin High School
Wednesday 1 March—Perez Elementary School
Thursday 2 March—Travis High School
If you can’t make it to a meeting, you can get details on the plans at the AISDFuture.com website. (AISDFuturo en Español). You can provide feedback by emailing [email protected] (English o Español) or calling (512) 414-9595 (English o Español).