Update — June 27, 2026

AISD has postponed most of its districtwide boundary changes. On June 26, the superintendent split the process into two phases: a near-term Phase 1 covering consolidating and over-enrolled campuses (draft to the board Aug 7, board vote in September), and a districtwide Phase 2 — which is where the Allandale/Gullett boundary sits. Phase 2 won't begin until January 2027, with a new consolidation rubric and a community feedback window this fall, a board vote in 2027, and changes taking effect in 2028–29. The concerns below still stand; the timeline to raise them has moved.

Help shape the final AISD map: keep Allandale whole.

Austin ISD is considering changes to elementary school boundaries across the district. One draft scenario, called Oak, would split Allandale and move the northern part of the Gullett attendance area to Pillow Elementary. AISD says Oak and Elm are drafts, and that community feedback will shape the final map. Our ask is simple: as AISD builds that final map, don't carry forward Oak's Allandale/Gullett split.

Comment to AISD — 2 minutes → See the 5 concerns

Comment card closes July 31 — but the draft map follows soon after, so sooner is better. comment now.

Oak scenario map: Allandale split at Greenlawn, north half rezoned to Pillow; Gullett lands at 304, Pillow at 257

The five concerns

What AISD should weigh - and how you can help

These are draft maps. AISD has committed to combining them into a single final plan, and community comment shapes it. Here are the five concerns Oak's Allandale/Gullett split raises, in order of weight. Under each, tap to grab a ready-to-send comment — submitting more than one is allowed and helps.

1 Read the five concerns below.

2 Copy the comment next to any that resonate.

3 Paste each into AISD's comment card and submit — one or all five.

Open AISD's comment card

Our kids are being moved into a future closure risk

Healthy size & long-term stability

Oak sends most of Pillow's current students away, backfills some of the empty seats with Gullett kids, but still leaves the receiving campus projected at just 257 students — right on the margin of where AISD considers closing elementary schools. This sets Pillow up for failure if closures are reconsidered, risking disrupting the same families a second time.

▶ The district's own words — June 2026 board meetings

"I would rather see us go back and reconsider closing more schools… than cutting SPED services or librarians or bus routes…"
Trustee Singh — June 11 AISD board meeting

"We're immediately, immediately going to have to be… considering really tough cuts again just a few months from now."
Trustee Singh — June 18 AISD board meeting

Trustee Singh: "How much are we going to have to cut for the 27–28 budget?" Supt. Segura: "60 million."
June 18 AISD board meeting

AISD has not said Pillow will close. But if the district already expects another $60 million in cuts, and trustees have openly discussed future closures as a possible tradeoff, families deserve to know why Oak moves students into a campus projected at only 257 students and 53% utilization. See the full budget context →

Comment you can submit for this issue

Please do not carry forward Oak's Allandale/Gullett split. Oak moves many current Pillow students out, backfills the building with Gullett students, and still leaves Pillow projected at only 257 students / 53% utilization. That is not long-term stability; it leaves little margin for forecast error, transfers, or normal enrollment decline. Because closures are suspended, not permanently off the table, this creates a real risk that the same families could be disrupted twice. AISD should not move elementary students into a thin receiving campus without showing the grade-level enrollment, section counts, transfer assumptions, and attrition assumptions that make Pillow stable over time. Please keep Allandale whole.

The new boundary breaks safe, walkable school access

Student safety & neighborhood schools

The Oak plan takes families who can walk or bike to Gullett today and rezones them across two City of Austin High-Injury Network (HIN) roads: W. Anderson Lane and Steck Avenue. These are not ordinary neighborhood streets; HIN roads are the small share of Austin streets associated with a disproportionate share of serious crashes. That is not a minor inconvenience — it is a student safety problem, especially for elementary-age kids.

Comment you can submit for this issue

Oak fails on safe access. Families in the affected Allandale area can walk or bike to Gullett today. Oak rezones them across two City of Austin High-Injury Network roads: W. Anderson Lane and Steck Avenue. That is not a minor commute issue; it is a student safety problem for elementary-age kids. A boundary map that breaks a walkable school connection and sends children across two high-risk corridors is not protecting neighborhood access, community stability, or student well-being. Please do not carry forward Oak's Allandale/Gullett split into the final map.

Neighborhoods are torn apart for no clear reason

Campus culture & fiscal responsibility

Oak's stated job is to fix building utilization — but it does that by creating a worse problem than the one it solves. A neighbor-built data tool, using AISD's own published numbers, puts each change's student impact next to its effect on utilization — and for the Allandale moves, the disruption is heavy while the utilization gained is small. Dividing and reassigning established school communities comes at a high cost, but what it buys is unclear.

▶ See it in the districtwide data

The neighbor-built districtwide data tool lays the scenarios side by side: a substitution-vs-capacity view where the Allandale moves land high on disruption and low — sometimes negative — on utilization benefit. Oak spends some of the largest student moves in this part of town and barely moves the numbers it's meant to improve.

Comment you can submit for this issue

Oak appears to trade one problem for a worse one. It uses major student disruption to address building utilization, but leaves Pillow projected at only 257 students / 53% utilization. A half-full building and a thinly enrolled campus are not the same problem, and should not be treated as interchangeable. Oak is a three-community shuffle — it moves Gullett students out of a stable, walkable school, sends many current Pillow families elsewhere, and backfills Gullett from Highland Park/Rosedale. Before this split is carried forward, AISD should show the specific fiscal, staffing, academic, or access benefit it delivers. The disruption is clear; the return is not. Please choose a lower-churn final map that keeps Allandale whole.

Oak creates a transfer crunch AISD hasn't planned for

Open and up front

AISD has proposed significant boundary changes without forecasting the impact of transfers on school population. Where new boundaries would create heavy turnover (Gullett: 42% assigned away), the district hasn't addressed how transfer policy would accommodate families newly rezoned away from Gullett — and their younger siblings — who want to continue there. Preexisting Gullett transfers would be competing for the same seats even as demand surges.

Comment you can submit for this issue

AISD has proposed major boundary changes without forecasting how transfers will affect school populations. Oak assigns a large share of Gullett families away from their current school, yet the district has not explained how transfer policy will handle families who want to keep their children — and younger siblings — at Gullett, or how existing Gullett transfers will compete for the same seats as demand surges. Before carrying Oak's Allandale/Gullett split forward, AISD should publish its transfer and sibling assumptions and the projected seat demand at each affected campus. Without that, families cannot tell whether the plan is workable. Please keep Allandale whole.

The drafts force tradeoffs that don't have to exist

Fewer splits, healthy-sized campuses

Take Allandale and Crestview. Oak splits Allandale but keeps Crestview whole; Elm flips it — so side by side it looks like a choice between two neighborhoods. It isn't: the two splits aren't tied together by any capacity or feeder logic, so AISD can put Elm's whole Allandale and Oak's whole Crestview in the combined map — two neighborhoods kept whole, zero tradeoff. That's what the combined map is for: wherever a draft splits a neighborhood for a reason the other draft didn't need, the final map can keep it whole.

Comment you can submit for this issue

AISD has committed to combining the drafts into a single final map, so the choice is not simply "Oak or Elm." The two scenarios put the upheaval in different neighborhoods — Allandale under Oak, Crestview under Elm — but they are not mutually exclusive. AISD's own stated goals are to reduce how often a student cohort is split and to keep every campus at a healthy size. A combined map can do both: keep Allandale whole, avoid the three-community Oak shuffle, and still maintain healthy enrollment at every school. Please build the final map around those goals rather than carrying forward Oak's Allandale/Gullett split.

Submitting more than one comment is allowed and helps. Each comment that ties to one of AISD's own goals is harder to set aside than a single long message. The most useful thing you can do after commenting is get a few neighbors to do the same.

Make your comment stronger

Comments are strongest when they connect directly to AISD's own stated criteria: keeping communities together, reducing disruption, supporting long-term stability, using accurate data, and making safe, practical boundary decisions.

A few framing tips:

Skip property values. They don't carry weight with the district and distract from our strongest points about community and belonging.
Don't lead with convenience alone. Walkability and access are valid points worth a line, but our strongest case is stability and keeping a neighborhood together — let that carry the argument.
Don't frame it as a "good school vs. bad school" move. It reads as rejecting another community and undercuts the equity-neutral, criteria-based case we're making.

What the district's data shows

Nearly half, moved out

Under Oak, 163 students — nearly half of Gullett's enrollment — are reassigned out of our neighborhood school and sent to Pillow Elementary.

Into an emptied school

The plan first sends most of Pillow's students (its northern area) to Padron, then refills the half-empty building with the Gullett kids — so most students assigned to the Pillow building would be newly reassigned from Gullett.

That's a closure risk

Even after the Gullett kids arrive, Pillow sits barely half-full at a projected 257 students. The receiving campus is left with a thin enrollment margin — staging it for a closure that disrupts the same families twice.

It empties a school, refills it — and still doesn't fix it.

Oak doesn't add students to the system; it just moves three communities around each other. Here's the actual sequence:

1 First

Pillow's north end leaves

Most of Pillow — its area north of US‑183 — is reassigned to Padron, emptying much of the building.

2 Then

Gullett's north end moves in

The 163 Gullett kids are sent across Anderson Lane into the half-empty Pillow building — which becomes mostly former-Gullett students.

3 And

Highland Park backfills Gullett

121 students are pulled north from Highland Park (Rosedale) to refill Gullett — a third neighborhood drawn into the shuffle.

The bottom line

The children moved bear the cost

Oak uproots nearly half of Gullett (163 students), reshuffles most of Pillow, and pulls 121 north from Highland Park — yet the receiving school still lands below the enrollment level the district uses to deem a school healthy, leaving it a future closure target. The same families could stay whole under Elm, and the district's enrollment math works out either way. This is a choice, not a necessity.

An independent re-run of AISD's rubric

Oak sharply increases Pillow's future consolidation risk.

Last fall, AISD scored every campus on a five-factor rubric to flag schools for consolidation. We re-ran that rubric on the published scenario numbers. Pillow sits safely in the middle today — and under Oak, our independent re-run moves it near the top of the list. (AISD has suspended further closures, but Oak sets up the next fight.)

Today

#62

score 2.04

Safe middle

Under Elm

#14

score 2.80

Still clear

Under Oak

score 3.50

Near the top

For scale: a campus the board already voted to close for capacity last year scored a 3.45 on this same rubric. Oak puts Pillow at 3.50 — past that line, and above the score that closed a campus in our own District 4. Elm leaves Pillow at 2.80, well clear of it.

The budget pressure points toward more closures

AISD balanced this year's budget with ~$60M in one-time cash from selling closed campuses. At the June 18 vote, the superintendent said the district will need a permanent ~$60M cut for 2027–28 to replace that one-time money — and closing campuses is how a district both trims recurring cost and raises the next round of sale revenue. Routing families into Pillow, already at 53% utilization, moves them toward exactly the kind of under-filled campus that pressure targets.

See the budget math, in their own words →

See the full rubric analysis, factor by factor →

Measured against AISD's own criteria

Oak isn't fixing a feeder, academic, or school-size problem at Gullett or Pillow. It's spending the disruption here to solve a utilization problem somewhere else.

AISD set out the goals this process is meant to serve. We're not arguing the district is wrong — we're asking that Oak be held to its own test before it's carried into the final map. On each measure, Oak raises a question it hasn't answered. Before carrying Oak forward, AISD should explain what specific problem the Allandale/Gullett split actually solves.

AISD's goal

The Oak concern

Goal

Academic baselineStrong programs at every campus

The Oak concern

Oak moves 163 Gullett students into a receiving campus whose by-grade enrollment, section counts, and staffing impacts aren't public. Families are asked to weigh the move without knowing what it does to class sizes or programs.

Goal

Campus culture & neighborhood boundariesKeep communities together

The Oak concern

Oak splits Allandale along interior side streets and reshuffles Gullett, Pillow, and Highland Park/Rosedale — three communities moved around each other, not one boundary adjusted.

Goal

Healthy-sized populationsRight-sized, well-utilized campuses

The Oak concern

Oak empties most of Pillow into Padrón, backfills with Gullett families, and still leaves Pillow at 257 students · 53% utilization — a thin margin for transfers and attrition.

Goal

Long-term stabilityChanges that hold up over time

The Oak concern

A campus left at 53% with little margin is one enrollment dip from becoming a future consolidation candidate. That risks more disruption later, not less.

Goal

Fiscal responsibilityResources spent where they pay off

The Oak concern

Oak spends significant student disruption on the Gullett/Pillow/Highland Park shuffle without showing the fiscal return from this specific move. The disruption is clear; the benefit isn't.

Goal

Open and up frontHonesty in the hard decisions

The Oak concern

Families are being asked to respond without the grade-level projections, staffing impacts, and transfer assumptions that would show whether the Allandale split is necessary at all.

A note on the numbers: district staff have discussed roughly 225 students as a practical elementary viability reference point tied to baseline staffing — a planning rule of thumb, not a formal board-adopted closure trigger. But if AISD is moving families into a campus projected at 257, it should show the by-grade section counts, transfer, and attrition assumptions that make that campus stable.

Short on time? One comment covers it.

If you only send one thing, send this.

The five concerns above each have their own ready-to-send comment, and submitting more than one helps. But if you'd rather send a single message, this one ties the whole case together — copy it, make it yours, and send:

Please do not carry forward any final map that splits Allandale/Gullett. The Oak scenario disrupts three communities, separates part of Allandale from its school community, and leaves Pillow projected at only 257 students and 53% utilization. AISD has not shown the enrollment, staffing, transportation, or budget assumptions needed to justify this disruption under its own criteria for stability, fiscal responsibility, safe access, and minimizing disruption. Please keep Allandale whole, avoid unnecessary student displacement, and adopt a final map that protects neighborhood continuity and strengthens long-term school stability.

The throughline: maximum disruption for little gain. Don't implement student disruption unless the district can show the return.

The transparency ask

Total enrollment isn't enough.

A single headcount can't tell families whether a move works. For each affected campus, AISD should publish the full before-and-after picture:

Projection by grade, before and after
Section counts and staffing allocation
Transfer assumptions
Attrition assumptions
Estimated cost impact

With those numbers public, the disruption can be weighed honestly against the benefit. Without them, families are asked to trust a tradeoff they can't see.

What we're asking for

OAK → Don't carry it forward

Don't carry Oak's Allandale/Gullett split into the final map. It cuts Allandale in two, sends nearly half of Gullett to Pillow, and still leaves that school below the size the district plans around — disrupting three communities without showing the benefit.

ELM → Proof it's avoidable

Elm isn't the only acceptable map — but it's proof that Allandale can stay whole while the process still works. Use community feedback to build a final map that keeps the neighborhood together and avoids unnecessary churn.

We're not asking AISD to stop planning. We're asking AISD not to split this community without a clearly justified benefit.

The two maps, side by side

Oak splits Allandale. Elm keeps it whole.

These are AISD's own proposed boundary maps for the Gullett area. Under Oak, the neighborhood is cut at Greenlawn — the northern half is rezoned to Pillow, and 121 students are pulled north from Highland Park (Rosedale) to backfill Gullett.

Elm scenario map: Gullett attendance zone whole — Allandale stays whole — one neighborhood in one school, with no split and no reshuffle.

Oak scenario map: Allandale split at Greenlawn, north half rezoned to Pillow — The neighborhood is cut at Greenlawn. The north half goes to Pillow, which still lands at just **53% — 257 students.**

Go deeper

The head counts, the maps, and a combined option.

A neighbor-built analysis measures every scenario against head count — one lens AISD staff have discussed, roughly 225 students — and draws a combined map that keeps Allandale whole. An illustration that the Oak-vs-Elm tradeoff isn't forced by the numbers.

See the scenario analysis →

Cross-check

Impact numbers for every school.

District data showing how many students each school gains or loses under Oak vs. Elm, and whether each building actually gets fuller. Downloadable spreadsheet included.

Explore the data →

Two minutes. Add your voice.

The comment window is open now, and your feedback genuinely shapes the final map. Do these two things — the first one takes two minutes.

Step 1 — the one that matters most

Comment online: keep Allandale whole.

AISD's comment card is open through July 31 — but the draft map comes together right after, so the sooner you comment, the more it counts. Open it, ask that the final map not carry forward Oak's Allandale/Gullett split, and submit. That's it.

Open the AISD comment card →

On the form, choose Gullett ES and the boundary topic for your area, then add your comment.

▶ Not sure what to write? Tap for wording you can copy.

Keep it about the planning, not about any school being “good” or “bad.” Comments grounded in the district's own goals — balanced enrollment, keeping communities together — carry the most weight. Adding one personal sentence helps even more.

Short version

Please don't carry forward the Oak split of Allandale/Gullett into the final map. Oak moves students through a three-community shuffle and leaves Pillow at a projected 257 students / 53% utilization, without clearly showing the academic, staffing, budget, or access benefit. Please keep Allandale whole and publish the grade-level enrollment, transfer, attrition, and staffing assumptions before any final vote.

Fuller version

AISD has said Oak and Elm are draft scenarios and that community feedback will shape the final map. My feedback is that the final map should not carry forward Oak's Allandale/Gullett split. Oak reassigns 163 Gullett students, reshuffles most of Pillow, backfills Gullett from Highland Park/Rosedale, and leaves Pillow projected at only 257 students / 53% utilization. Before adopting that tradeoff, AISD should show what specific problem the split solves and publish the grade-by-grade enrollment, section count, transfer, attrition, staffing, and budget assumptions behind it. Elm already shows Allandale can stay whole, so the moves both maps agree on can be kept either way. Please prioritize student stability, neighborhood continuity, and transparent decision-making.

Step 2 — the multiplier

Send this to three neighbors.

A split only gets reversed if enough people speak up. The single most useful thing you can do after commenting is get three more families to do the same.