Austin school district administrators are moving forward with the emotionally wrenching and politically charged process of closing and consolidating campuses by the 2020-21 school year.

To start the challenging task, they have created a planning map showing five regions that will be used as a starting point for those decisions. The map orients the regions in east-to-west swatches across the city of Austin to help ensure that school closures don't occur solely in historically marginalized areas of the district. On Thursday afternoon, the district emailed a finalized version of its map to district families.

Click here to view a version of the map.

On Monday, the school board will vote on a set of guiding principles to be followed during the consolidations. The proposed principles include placing more students in improved learning environments; ensuring they have equitable access to academic programs; and reducing costs that aren't directly tied to student learning, such as rising maintenance costs for aging schools or transportation costs associated with busing students. In August, district administrators are expected to specify schools for possible consolidation. And in October, trustees are slated to make the final decisions.

This week, Matias Segura, the Austin school district's operations officer, answered a series of questions about the new map and the consolidation process. Here are excerpts from his responses:

What is the purpose of the map?

These are planning maps used to start the analysis for the reinvention process. The reason we are using planning areas when starting a process like this is because we want to be as open as possible to new ideas and introduce creative solutions that we might otherwise miss. The concern is if we start with things we’ve historically used, like already established vertical teams and feeder patterns, we might miss some creative solutions. We don’t want underenrolled schools, or any school for that matter, to be looked at from a deficiency mindset initially. We want to look at the opportunity for the region first, then work from there. We’re going to identify the academic vision for each region, then understand given the number of facilities we have in that region how we might be able best meet its academic vision. You’ll find the planning regions stretch from east to west, hopefully introducing socio-economic opportunities and academic planning opportunities.

What isn't this map?

This map does not represent proposed boundary changes, proposed feeder pattern changes or proposed vertical team changes. This map does not represent any proposed changes at all. It represents a starting point for identifying creative solutions and the approach will help us target localized opportunities and challenges. The map helps us innovatively re-imagine the development of academic planning opportunities and facilities that will meet the needs of our students. We were intentional in how we developed these planning regions in an effort to think outside the box, challenge what we’ve done in the past and introduce new ideas that we would not have otherwise considered.

How will this map play into school closures and consolidations?

Each region will be looked at in a way that improves academics and facilities and could include consolidations and re-purposing in order to do that. We will be identifying improvement targets for each planning region. Academics will produce programming and different strategies to support teachers. Finance and operations will be looking at costs associated with maintaining our facilities, as well as utilization and future capital expenditures. So we can look at a hypothetical region and say it is about 75% utilized. So to move the needle, being mindful we have academic goals and targets we want to achieve, we can look across the region and say we have X amount of seats, and if we pull those seats out of the region, we can do it through a variety of ways: We can do it through a consolidation, we can do it by re-purposing, we can do it by changing the programs within a school, we can do it with developing a (out-of-district) partnership on that site and therefore reducing that site’s utilization. Any final determinations will be made in support of regional and district goals.

Is there a target for the number of consolidations?

I can’t confidently say what the number will be. It is helpful, however, that there are industry standards for how you want to manage these types of facilities. We’ll be looking to industry standards and best practices around the country so we recognize when we move the needle regarding efficiency. Key performance indicators, which are ratios to measure efficiencies. You have efficiencies regarding custodial dollars, minor maintenance, major maintenance. There are so many different indicators that the challenge is coming up with a balanced model that yields an improvement in an efficiency. Is 100 percent utilization across the district a logical place to try to get to? It’s not palatable given students are not distributed equally across the district efficiently. So you always have to be thinking about what is that target for the district and how does that target need to be adjusted for the region. So it’s always difficult to say what the number of consolidations will be once this process plays out.

Will attendance boundaries be changed?

Once we’re past the first round of scenario developments, and we’re working through all the changes proposed in each scenario, then a scenario will have a complete sequence of things that must occur to accomplish that scenario, whether that is adding programing, a consolidation, a recommended boundary change. All those will be considered. Once the scenarios are developed in these workshops and validated a second time in late July, we’re going to have to show the various things that will have to take place to create that scenario, which will include consolidations, strengthening of feeder patterns, changing of boundaries. But it’s not going to occur everywhere.The presumption should not be that every boundary should change. The presumption should be that every boundary will be evaluated.