Almost a year after the Austin Independent School District board of trustees made a declaration of financial exigency, the board voted unanimously to officially exit the state of financial crisis.

Board president Mark Williams said the action is a good sign, but not a complete relief.

"What it's signaling is that over the next year and the next school year, we're not going to have to go to a reduction in force," Williams said. "There's been enough financial planning to get us up to the next legislative session. But who knows what the future is going to hold?"

Austin ISD Superintendent Meria Carstarphen presented her case to the trustees at the Jan. 30 board meeting, saying that the district is on sound financial footing for now. Much of what she said echoed her State of the District Address in November, when she announced that she would request that the board remove the declaration.

"When we were in the moment last year, it was really hard for people to see why it was important that we bring sound closure and be smart about the elimination of positions and think through programs that perhaps weren't the highest-quality programs," she said in November.

Declaring financial exigency allowed the district to terminate contracted teacher positions without the risk of unlawful termination lawsuits. The situation that allowed the board to lift the order was in stark contrast from when the board—by way of a 7–2 vote—implemented it in March 2011 after the state Legislature cut $4 billion in education funding, forcing more than 1,100 job cuts district-wide. Of those cuts, roughly 650 of those employees have been rehired, according to staff data.

The direction also shows progress toward a staff salary increase that the superintendent advocated in the November address, which could be as much as 3 percent. According to numbers provided by AISD, the cuts made in the past year have helped to build up reserve funds that could pay for an increase in wages, though sustaining such a raise could mean a tax-rate increase in future years.