AUSTIN, Texas — Austin ISD has reached a settlement agreement over a 2021 lawsuit filed by Disability Rights Texas that accused the school district of failing to provide timely special education services to five students.
Last Thursday, the Austin ISD board voted to approve the settlement. However, neither the district nor Disability Rights have released additional details.
"This is something that has been a long time coming and this is really, really huge for us," Trustee Kathryn Whitley Chu said, later adding, "Our families, our evaluators, our teachers were sounding the alarm on this situation, and this is just a huge milestone."
In the March 2021 lawsuit, Disability Rights Texas accused Austin ISD of failing to serve students with disabilities because of a years-long backlog of evaluation requests.
By law, once a parent requests that their child be evaluated for special education services, a school district must complete that analysis within a specific timeframe. But for years, Austin ISD racked up hundreds of overdue evaluations, in part because of staffing turnover and data collection issues.
Austin ISD's history of special education issues
A few months after Disability Rights Texas filed the lawsuit against Austin ISD, the district cleared its backlog of special education evaluations – but that wasn't the end of the district's special education woes.
In May 2022, a report found that the district was not meeting the minimum Texas exam requirements for disabled students. Then, in March of 2023, the Texas Education Agency (TEA) announced it would be appointing a conservator over Austin ISD, citing what a special investigation called "systemic failures" within the district's special education department.
That planned move received pushback from Austin's teachers' union and in April 2023, the district requested an informal review of the TEA's decision to assign a conservator to oversee its special education services.
Then, in August 2023, Austin ISD announced that the TEA had provided it with an alternative pathway in place of a conservatorship over special education, as an acknowledgment of the district's progress toward implementing improvements.
In September 2023, the district's board approved a plan that would prevent a state takeover. That plan included adding a 10-day period to allow leaders to address areas of concern identified by the TEA. Part of the plan was also to clarify requirements for high-quality special education instruction at all campuses.
In April of this year, an audit of the special education department determined seven specific areas where the district could improve.
KVUE's media partners at the Austin American-Statesman report that Austin ISD has been making progress toward reducing its backlog and closing corrective action plans for students who filed grievances with the state. The Statesman previously reported that during 2023, district staff members reduced overdue evaluations from 1,780 in January to 306 in December.