Meria Carstarphen

We know we are competitive in some of our other employee groups, but our teachers really do need a salary lift. While it's baked into the budget right now, if we want to be able to sustain that for the long term, we have to do a lot of planning this year for that. ...

Another part of our context is the recent bond election and ensuring that we implement the May 2013 bond with fidelity and also creating our facility master plan that will help us keep our strong AAA bond rating, which saves taxpayers and the district millions of dollars. ...

Finally, we're a business of people, and so everything we can do to support and professionally develop our staff will be another [consideration].

We're going to be analyzing our strengths, both in academics and in our talent pool of employees.

What is the status of the facility master plan?

At the end of the school year, the board directed the administration to work on guiding principles [for the plan] ... and work with our facility work group, which includes community members and members from advisory committees for the board and the administration.

[The work group will] take what the board said and try to ... shape those guiding principles into something that the board will finish, polish up and provide to [the administration] as the guiding tool for how we build out strategies and an implementation design.

With the Legislature wrapped up, how did the district and Texas schools do in terms of funding?

Happily, the state Legislature put $3.9 billion back into public schools across Texas, and that's a really good thing for education.

But sadly, AISD's share of that money was about $11 million, and that's only 18 percent of the original, permanent $60 million loss that we had to manage on our district's side back in 2011. ...

We will never get the $60 million back, and the money that we did receive, our portion of that state funding is far short of what Austin needs. ...

We're a Chapter 41 district, which means we are defined by the state as a "Robin Hood," property-rich city, but our school district is actually poor. ...

Our reduction strategy will be taking about $18 million out of our reserves and then another $12 million from cost reduction strategies. We've already started implementing a hiring freeze. We've already started reducing extending contracts to any external providers.

We'll do a lot around careful analysis of positions. ... We will of course hire for our schools and ensure that [our schools have what they need] but anywhere else we're really trying to make those reductions. And a lot of that cost is tied to the district wanting to honor [the 2012–13 pay increase equal to a one-time 3 percent raise] for our staff and then trying to add 1.5 percent on that.

What is the likelihood that AISD will call for a tax ratification election during the 2013–14 school year, and what would that mean for Austin residents?

Our school board will be talking about that as we launch into our budget planning for school year 2014–15 and that starts as early as our meetings in August. ... I definitely don't see [a TRE] happening for November, ... and then of course the next window would be May.

Until I talk to [the board], I don't know to what extent there's a desire to move forward with the TRE this school year.

But it's not—just to be clear—it's not a question of if, it's a question of when. We absolutely have to have a new funding stream, a permanent funding stream, to ensure that we're able to maintain the budget that we have today.

And most importantly, the district is still growing. ... So, we have to really figure out to what extent the community can afford more tax pressure to support the general fund for the public school system.

What's the status of the school funding lawsuits?

We have Judge [John] Dietz's decision [the February ruling that the state's school finance system is unconstitutional], and I know that we're all supposed to be going back in [to court in] January.

Because we don't think that there are going to be legislative changes that would be significant enough, the argument will still stand [and] we will still believe that the school finance system is inadequate, inequitable and unsuitable.

Clint Small Middle School was among the campuses that has discussed potentially transitioning to an in-district charter school. Is there any update on that?

There are some schools that I believe are creative ... and are interested enough to still want to do outreach with their school communities and find ... ways for them to be able to explore the [public charter] concept.

But for Small, for example, it's still at the school site level, they're working with their local school community to figure out if there is interest. And if so, something will move forward; if not, nothing would move forward.

But as far as the bigger picture of [earlier district efforts to] create a large bucket of resources that included money for community engagement [around giving schools more autonomy and flexibility in terms of funding] ... we were not able to keep that grant.

Where does the failure of the bond proposition that included funds for a design and feasibility study for the South High School leave Southwest Austin schools in terms of overcrowding?

We've completed our work around the academic planning and the thoughts from the community. ... Now that proposition was not supported by South Austin, and it did fail.

So we'll keep moving forward with the resources and the information that we have now. ...

We have the academic programming work, we'll take that and work with the board, and then we'll use our board-approved framework guidance on how we do the [site selection] for a potential high school.

At some future date you still are going to need to do a feasibility study, and you still are going to have to get money for the building itself, but we'll use the time to still find the land, purchase the land and get prepared for whenever the next ask is possible.

Do you think parents would support changing district boundaries in the future to address overcrowding?

We have pockets [of overcrowding] all over the district. One of the [May bond] propositions really focused on just that. That one was not successful.

It is never popular in Austin to change a school boundary. That much I feel certain of.

But we have [changed boundaries before] ... so I think yes, parents and families understand that we have to do it. ... Every December we have a standard practice of making some small boundary adjustments because of the logistics of how roads and highways and things have changed ...

But [in terms of major changes to district boundaries] I think people's tolerance and willingness to support them are at different levels. ... I think [the response to changes] is mixed at best.