Who Gets to Lead in a Broken System?
Rethinking “Qualified” in Austin ISD Turnaround Schools
Author’s Note: This reflection chronicles the events and decisions that unfolded at the district and state level between April 3rd and July 3rd, 2025, during my time as an Instructional Coach at Dobie Middle School. It captures the personal and professional tensions of navigating rapid reforms and raises critical questions about equity, leadership, and the human cost of education policy. The reflections and views shared here are my own.
Dobie Middle School student holding a sign that reads: “My Future, My Voice, My School, My Decision” during this spring’s walkout protest for agency in their school’s future.
Context
In the spring of 2025, Austin ISD announced full restarts at Dobie, Burnet, and Webb Middle Schools under the district’s Turnaround Plan (TAP), aligned with the Texas Education Agency’s Accelerated Campus Excellence (ACE) model. Promoted as a pathway to rapid improvement, ACE ties additional funding to staff displacement and strict accountability metrics. Under pressure from state policy—particularly Senate Bill 1882, which enables TEA to intervene in “failing” schools—district leaders acted swiftly. But in the rush to comply, the human cost was overlooked. Educators were dismissed, communities destabilized, and long-standing relationships discarded under a definition of “qualified” that prioritized test scores over trust. Yet when projected accountability scoreswere shared this summer, Dobie was expected to receive the highest rating of the three TAP campuses: a 59 overall and a C in Domain 3 (“Closing the Gaps”). These projections are not final, but they challenge the dominant narrative.
This data matters because it challenges the assumption that Dobie—and schools like it—aren’t worth investing in. We were showing growth. We were doing the work. With strong leadership, committed staff, vibrant fine arts, trusted community partnerships, and dedicated support teams, we were making real progress—even within a system not built for us to succeed. Dobie didn’t need disruption. It needed support and long-term systemic change to make that progress sustainable and equitable for all students in Austin ISD.
Who Gets to Decide?
In the midst of these sweeping educational reforms and state mandates, I kept returning to a question that felt both intimate and institutional:
Who gets to be called “qualified,” and who decides who gets to stay on TAP campuses?
This question is not theoretical. The answer shaped decisions that disrupted the lives of students, displaced trusted educators, and undermined the stability of an entire school community.
If we care about education reform, we need to ask harder questions: What and who gets erased when fear drives decisions and compliance becomes the main goal?
The threat of takeover is real, but so is the danger of internalizing an A-F accountability model that was never designed for our communities to thrive or reflect their strengths.
I respect many of the district leaders I’ve worked with. I’ve seen their integrity and their care. But the broader patterns are hard to ignore, especially for schools in Austin's eastern crescent. Again and again, these campuses are asked to shoulder the burden of reform. How do we remove the barriers that have long denied communities the power they already possess?
This is a systemic message. And if we don’t come together—families, educators, and community members—we may soon find ourselves fighting for what’s already been taken.
Redefining What Matters
I’ve worked in education long enough to know that the most impactful educators in our buildings aren’t always the ones with the newest titles or most polished résumés.
They are the ones who:
Earn students’ trust
Know families by name
Understand the generational trauma our communities carry
Stay late to design meaningful lessons because they care
Return year after year despite underfunding, policy churn, and staffing instability
And yet, as AISD rushed to implement its turnaround plans to avoid TEA takeover, the definition of “qualified” seemed to shrink. Only educators deemed “high impact” by opaque, largely test-based metrics were invited to return, regardless of their historical contributions or deep community ties.
Those who were invited back were offered financial incentives: hefty recruitment and retention bonuses, and the potential to earn a Teacher Incentive Allotment (TIA) designation, a TEA-driven program that ties teacher compensation to student performance data.
This created a distorted incentive structure: one that rewarded detachment from the system’s failures while disregarding those who had stayed through years of instability, inequity, and neglect. In this model, proximity to struggle became a liability, not a strength—as if surviving under-resourced schools somehow disqualified you from leading meaningful change.
When Data Ignores the Human Story
In April, we were told that staff at all three TAP campuses would need to reapply for their positions. At Dobie, the process was confusing and chaotic, with staffing changes reversed, miscommunications, and sudden shifts that left us reeling. Read some of that story here. Many of us, including me, were deemed "ineligible" and notified by phone without written explanation or clear criteria. Nearly 70% of our staff were turned away, including the administrative team.
The entire Fine Arts department—the cultural heart of Dobie—is not returning, despite years of commitment through leadership churn and chronic underfunding. No band. No theater. No dance. No mariachi. An entire world of expression, silenced.
The Eligibility Call That Cut Deep
I received my eligibility call during my birthday dinner with coworkers in mid-May. I was told I didn’t qualify to remain at my school.
A few weeks later, I stood in the Dobie gymnasium, holding my baby daughter in one arm and my son’s hand in the other, as our 8th graders crossed the stage at their final bridging ceremony. The room was full, standing room only, filled with cheers, camera flashes, and quiet heartbreak. There was pride, yes, but it was layered with grief.
As my colleagues took turns holding my daughter—this tiny new life carried through a year of uncertainty—memories came rushing back. Just one year earlier, this same community had wrapped around me during a high-risk pregnancy: checking in after appointments, organizing baby showers, leaving handwritten notes of encouragement.
And now, I watched students I had coached, tutored, and cried with take the stage. Many had lived with the fear of ICE raids or the worry that a parent wouldn’t come home. Some had memorized legal hotlines and emergency contacts. They carried stories that most adults would struggle to hold. They walked that stage with grace, but they also carried the weight of a system that too often failed to protect them.
A wise mentor once told me: most educators in our East Austin schools have the heart to do the work but not the stomach to stay in the work.
People often think it’s the students or the trauma that drive educators away. More often, it’s the slow erosion of support—the cumulative effect of being asked to do more with less, year after year. The internal decisions made far from classrooms, stripped of context and justified by compliance, cut the deepest.
And then there’s the silence—the kind that lingers in systems where complicity becomes routine. The quiet neglect that slowly erodes school communities like Dobie. The moments when we don’t speak up. When we convince ourselves we have no power, or worse, that it isn’t our place to act.
This Isn’t the First Time We’ve Been Here
This wasn’t the first time I felt edged out by a system I was trying to serve.
I began my career in Austin ISD as a special education teacher. I left the district in 2020 after watching students with disabilities fall through the cracks of a system stretched too thin by the pandemic, deepening inequities that had long existed. I carried the weight of trying to serve all students equitably, even when it came at great personal cost, in schools facing deeply rooted systemic challenges.
I remember seeing some of my students ages three to five for only one hour a day on a screen, if they even had WiFi, a working device, and an adult who received information in their home language. We were asking children with disabilities to connect virtually without fully grasping the weight of the moment, while their parents—already over capacity—sacrificed greatly just to give our students that one hour. I had offline conversations with families about the barriers they were facing, and some of the stories they shared would break your heart.
What I saw then mirrors what I see now: reactive efforts to support schools under pressure, with little space for reflection, collaboration, or community-led solutions. Instead, we get rushed reforms that prioritize surface-level outcomes like test scores while ignoring root causes such as federal underfunding, outdated state accountability systems, local segregated schools, broken feeder patterns in East Austin, and inequitable transfer policies.
These initiatives often roll out under immense pressure and rarely allow the time, trust, or transparency needed for lasting impact. When you're racing against budget cuts and looming state deadlines, who actually gets time to build anything sustainable, let alone equitable?
Even the best-laid plans, without a holistic, equity-informed approach and historical context, tend to lead us back to the same outcomes: burnout, instability, and loss.
And we no longer have the privilege of looking away. Our district is at real risk—whether from a TEA takeover or losing East Austin schools to charter operators because of ongoing systemic inaction. Neither outcome would serve our community well. Challenges like staffing shortages, under-enrollment, and systemic inequities aren’t isolated; they’re symptoms of a larger, strained education ecosystem. And now, they affect all of us.
Much like the pandemic, they’ve revealed just how deeply connected we are.
If we want to preserve a strong public district for Austin’s future, we have to start addressing these root issues together with thoughtful collaboration and a long-term vision that reflects the community we say we care about.
If not, I worry that our communities across Texas and beyond will soon become unrecognizable—a hollow shell of what they once were, stripped bare from root to bloom.
Seeking Clarity, Finding Gaps
Naturally, I asked questions:
What made someone eligible?
Who decided?
Was there consistency?
When I asked about my role, I was told that I had served on the “leadership team,” and that this disqualified me. That rationale didn’t hold up, especially since others in similar roles were invited back.
The decision didn’t feel personal. But it did feel inconsistent. And that inconsistency, in a system already marked by inequity, made the harm worse.
I appreciate the leaders who engaged in these conversations with compassion. Still, I never received formal documentation outlining the criteria for eligibility for an instructional coach.
Context Matters
Eventually, I learned that eligibility decisions were aligned with the TEA’s ACE model. This framework emphasizes student growth, teacher impact, and leadership effectiveness primarily measured through standardized test data.
But numbers without context dehumanize the experience.
I had been on maternity leave during key testing windows. My work was relational and instructional—not easily captured in spreadsheets. Still, both department heads I supported were invited back.
Several colleagues took the time to share my impact with me:
You’ve helped me grow tremendously. I wouldn’t be here without you.
Mrs. Wong has been an unwavering pillar of support on our campus, especially within the math department.
You made a peaceful and meaningful impact. I wish you were still my coach.
Instructional coaches are at-will employees, often funded through grants. We aren’t protected by contracts or unions, yet we play a crucial role in teacher retention and instructional improvement.
What Stability Really Means
A few weeks ago during a family vacation, I received an email informing me I had been placed at Eastside Memorial Early College High School, a campus I had formally applied and interviewed for during this transition. I stayed open to this next chapter because of the strong leadership at Eastside, but the district’s communication throughout the process was delayed, transactional, and impersonal. With plans already underway to cut over 170 central office positions, including communication support, there was clearly little room for meaningful connection or acknowledgment of the relationships we were leaving behind and the disruption caused.
In May, I requested part-time consideration to meet family needs while continuing to serve. My new principal advocated for this, but the request was never formally explored. On July 2, I made the difficult decision to resign. I still believe flexible roles—especially in centralized, support, and coaching positions—could offer sustainable options for educators and improve retention. These roles could help bridge staffing gaps while honoring family needs.
The Message Matters
At the June board meeting, the district discussed the difficult path and decision to keep campuses open under a district-led restart. But that framing ignores the harm.
Yes, Dobie is open. But at what cost? And for how long? And under what framework?
None of the three campuses has a named principal for the coming year. The displaced leaders are scattered: one in Del Valle ISD, one at Northeast Early College High School, one awaiting placement. Dobie still needs to hire 37% of its staff. Not a single Fine Arts teacher is returning.
That is not stability. It is structural fragility.
And yet, Dobie’s projected 2025 accountability scores tell a more complex story. Based on preliminary data, we are expected to earn a 59 overall—the highest of the three turnaround campuses—and a C in Domain 3, which measures how well schools support historically underserved students. These results are not yet finalized, but they raise important questions. I can’t help but wonder how much stronger our outcomes might have been if students and staff hadn’t learned about the school’s likely closure just four days before the STAAR exam.
A Call for Equity and Transparency
As I prepare to serve the public school community from a different vantage point, I carry forward my values: equity, integrity, and commitment to our community.
But I also call for something broader:
A consistent, transparent, equity-informed approach to defining eligibility in TAP schools
A process that does not penalize those who stayed through the hardest years
A system that values coaches and support staff who foster adult learning and retention—even when their impact isn’t directly tied to test scores
Instructional coaches deserve to know how we’re being evaluated. Our effectiveness shows up in the success of others. When data gaps exist due to family leave, staffing vacancies, or testing disruptions, context must be part of the conversation.
Redefining “Qualified”
What if we reimagined who gets to lead?
What if we honored proximity to the work, not detachment from it?
What if we trusted those who stayed because they chose to serve?
AISD has a long history of under-serving East Austin schools until crisis forces action. We are at that crossroads again.
So who am I calling in?
To policymakers who create reform from afar
To West Austin parents whose schools will never face “restarts,” and whose allyship must go beyond yard signs — uplift impacted communities and listen to understand their needs
To district leaders who know the harm and carry on regardless
Equity demands more than good intentions and reactive advocacy. We must shift our focus from chasing test scores to investing in people. It requires honoring educators who remain deeply rooted in their communities, listening before acting, and exposing systems that claim to fix schools while quietly dismantling them.
If we continue down this path, we risk losing the public’s trust in public education itself. And once that trust is gone, it doesn’t come back easily.
Are schools meant to serve communities — or control them?
What would it take for institutions to yield power, or build shared governance with historically marginalized communities?
The system isn’t failing. It is functioning exactly as designed. And that is the problem.
We can choose to invest in those who have held the line year after year. Lasting change begins with the people who remain and with systems brave enough to finally value them.
This was never about restarting.
It was about finally starting to listen.
Sources & References
Texas Education Agency. Accelerated Campus Excellence (ACE) Model
The Austin Chronicle. “AISD TAP Plan Sends Schools Back to the Start,” April 2024
Learning Policy Institute. Teacher Turnover: Why It Matters and What We Can Do About It, 2017
Crenshaw, Kimberlé. Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence Against Women of Color, Stanford Law Review, 1991
The Austin Chronicle. “Fearing State Takeover, Austin ISD Plans to Replace Middle School Teachers,” May 16, 2025
The Austin Chronicle. “Bracing for School Closures,” May 30, 2025
Community Impact / Austin-American Statesman. June 26, 2025 reporting on turnaround approvals and staff returns
KUT – Austin NPR. “Austin offers a pay boost to work at struggling schools,” May 9, 2025
Community Impact and Austin American-Statesman reporting on eligibility models and ACE alignment ()
ERIC. “Staying Power: The Impact of the TAP System” 2013 study on coach/teacher retention
