The Austin Independent School District Board of Trustees on Thursday voted to narrow the district scorecard and to approve a single, revised set of board guardrails after more than two hours of presentation and debate.

Trustees voted 6–2 to reduce the number of board goals from five to three, keeping third-grade literacy, third-grade numeracy and college, career and military readiness as the district’s formal goals. In a second vote, trustees approved maintaining three constraints—focused on underserved students, dual-language implementation fidelity, and accountability—while removing caregiver engagement and an early learning constraint. The constraints vote passed 6–2.

The measures received sharp attention from trustees who said they wanted both to reduce reporting burden and to make sure the board publicly affirmed work on family engagement, developmentally appropriate early learning and bilingual instruction.

Superintendent Christophe Segura, presenting the administration’s materials earlier in the meeting, described the pace of state-driven deadlines and district priorities, and said the district would continue to present additional materials and monitoring updates to trustees. “We would prefer more time, but the constraints given to us by the state require that we maintain this current effort,” Segura said during his update on turnaround plans and the academic framework process.

Trustees split over whether to retain a separate goal for middle-school algebra. Trustee Josh Kaufman said he preferred to keep it, arguing the district should continue to track access to advanced math. “I would prefer not to strike goal number 4 related to middle school algebra because of the importance of our students continuing into, well, I’d like to have that discussion at least,” Kaufman said. But others said the algebra goal duplicated state reporting and added paperwork without substantially changing practice.

Vice President Willie Chu moved the initial motion to reduce goals to three; the motion received a second and passed. Later, after a separate discussion, trustees approved a revised set of constraints that retains the district’s monitoring of outcomes for underserved students (including metrics related to special education evaluations and exclusionary discipline), dual-language implementation walk-throughs and accountability outcomes tied to unacceptable campus ratings under the state system.

Trustees and the superintendent repeatedly emphasized that narrowing the scorecard is intended to reduce administrative reporting burden, not to stop work in areas removed from the public scorecard. Trustee Katrina Foster urged trust in the administration to continue work off the formal scorecard, while others said keeping certain items on the scorecard sends an important public signal to families and staff.

The board also approved updated board guardrails and a streamlined board handbook aligned to the revised scorecard during the meeting. Those approvals were taken after the scorecard votes so the handbook and monitoring calendar reflected the board’s final choices.

What the board approved:
- Goals kept: third-grade literacy; third-grade numeracy; college, career and military readiness.
- Goals removed: middle-school algebra (goal 4); seal of biliteracy (goal 5 was not in the posted packet and was dropped).
- Constraints kept: underserved students (special education timelines and exclusionary discipline); dual-language fidelity (walk-throughs); accountability (campuses rated “unacceptable” under the state system).
- Constraints removed: caregiver engagement; early learning developmentally inappropriate practices.

The votes were recorded as counts rather than roll-call name-by-name tallies. The motion to reduce goals passed 6–2. The motion to reduce constraints to the three kept items passed 6–2.

The board directed the superintendent and staff to continue providing detail to trustees and the public about how the scorecard ties to budget decisions and to post the revised monitoring calendar and handbook as amended.

The vote marks the most substantive board action in recent meetings to reduce the number of items the board will formally monitor each year while keeping several issues—bilingual fidelity and accountability—explicitly on the board’s public monitoring agenda.