For the first time, General Marshall Middle School, which opened in 2023, will have a permanent attendance zone. The new boundary encompasses a large section of East Austin around Mueller, stretching from Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard to U.S. Highway 290 and east to Colony Park and Overton Elementary. Students in the zone currently attend Dobie, Webb, Kealing, and Lamar middle schools, but will be reassigned to Marshall. Current students at those schools may choose to remain for the rest of their middle school years.

Trustee Kevin Foster, who has championed the integration of Mueller with the wider Eastside, said at the zone’s first presentation on Oct. 15 that Marshall was built to “facilitate the seamless integration of the Mueller neighborhood with the entire Eastside.” He added, “Making this move now – you could say finally – I think is right. Maybe even last November we could have, I don’t know, but we’re here today. And I’m glad we’re here.”

However, the new zone splits Mueller in half along Berkman Road, with parts of west Mueller assigned to Kealing Middle School even though Marshall is just blocks away. Foster urged the district to allow those students to opt in to Marshall. “You’ve got kids in Mueller who are like, right next to the school. I would love for them to have the opportunity to at least opt in,” he said.

In addition, a square section of the southeast Riverside neighborhood will now attend Travis Heights Elementary instead of the overcrowded Linder Elementary. Travis Heights is the best-rated alternative in the area but is one of the district’s older campuses, built in 1939.

The board also approved improvement plans for 26 campuses that received D or F ratings from the Texas Education Agency in late August. Six schools require more intensive “turnaround plans” that involve academic, faculty, and leadership restructuring: Allison, Cook, Harris, Menchaca, and Walnut Creek elementaries, as well as the Rosedale School, which serves students with special education needs. Andrews, Odom, and Pillow elementaries and Travis High School will implement “targeted” improvement plans. The remaining schools, including Brown, Campbell, Davis, Kocurek, Oak Hill, Ortega, Padrón, Patton, Travis Heights, Wooldridge, and Zavala elementaries, General Marshall, Lively, Mendez, and O. Henry middle schools, and Garza Independence High School, will set new academic goals.

AISD must submit the plans to TEA by Nov. 21. District officials noted that last year, 18 of 27 schools with active turnaround plans earned higher accountability ratings in August 2026.

During the Oct. 15 discussion, several trustees raised concerns about limited parent feedback on the turnaround plans and emphasized the need for clear parent roles. Trustee Candace Hunter said she had heard from parents that principal coffee meetings were canceled and that parents felt unwelcome on campus. “Somebody should be monitoring that to say, ‘Hey, you haven’t had a principal coffee this month. Hey, I know you’re busy, but you didn’t make it to the last three, four, five PTA meetings,’” Hunter said. “We could do so much good if we actually let parents be our partners.” She added, “The stories I’m getting are horrific. It’s shameful, actually.”

The board also discussed the district’s first-ever policy on artificial intelligence, which is scheduled for a vote on Nov. 12. Trustee Arati Singh referenced existing AI bans in New York and California public schools and noted that AISD students have called for a public-facing policy. “You also have AI schools popping up all over the place,” Singh said. “I think there is an opportunity for us as a board to just say, ‘These are our values, these are some guidelines, and these are our expectations of the administration.’”

Board President Lynn Boswell recalled first raising AI as an issue in 2023. “I made a suggestion to the policy committee when it was just ChatGPT, and I was worried about people writing papers with it, and some districts had banned it,” Boswell said. “The gap between January 2023 and now – that just feels like such a quaint worry. I mean, it’s ancient. And I feel like there is some urgency to getting something in place now.”