Cindy Anderson

$65K+ stolen from taxpayers by AISD executives. $95M spent on schools that were shuttered within months. A $500M swing in reserves on this board's watch. And a superintendent telling the public it's not their fault. This is the story of Austin ISD: buff.ly/1qJJJpm At some point, the failing becomes a choice. Not a crisis. Not bad luck. Not underfunding. A choice — made slowly, repeatedly, by people who knew better and decided not to care. While your kids sat in classrooms where less than 1 in 5 students could do grade-level math, the district held a groundbreaking. Speeches. Shovels. Kids cheering. Two months earlier, behind closed doors, they'd already started the process of closing that same school. While 600+ disabled children waited — some for nine months — for evaluations the law required AISD to conduct, three senior AISD executives in the same building were stealing gift cards meant for employee wellness programs. Not one. Three. Same department. Different days. While the board told you the deficit was $19.7 million and manageable, the real number — the one they knew, the one hiding behind COVID money and property sale assumptions that never closed — was $181 million. -They held the groundbreakings anyway. -They approved the budget anyway. -They told you scores were improving anyway. Austin ISD has more F-rated schools than any peer urban district in Texas. Houston — serving kids who are 30 points poorer — has zero. We read @KendallGPace's exhaustive investigation and spent weeks verifying, simplifying, and putting a new perspective on it. What we found is not a district that failed despite trying. It's a district that kept choosing the ceremony over the correction — over and over — while the children paid for it. --- Note: We are volunteers. See something wrong/off? Let us know, and we'll get it updated right away.