ATX116 Newsletter #3 - 2025: A Year of Truth-Telling, Community Power & Clearer Pathways
Hello ATX116 Friends,
As we reflect back on 2025, we must pause and honor the foundation our communities built together this year. Austin ISD has navigated one of the most unprecedented and unstable periods in recent memory—TAP restarts, campus closures, leadership changes, and ongoing state pressure. Through all of it, families and educators stood firm: asking hard questions, telling the truth, and relentlessly choosing each other.
This newsletter offers a first look at highlights from our work in 2025—a powerful picture of what you made possible.
2025: The Movement We Built Together
What began with two school communities ignited a movement connected to all 116 campuses across Austin ISD. This wasn't by chance—it was driven by shared need, urgency, and unwavering commitment.
Here’s the data that tells your story:
Community Engagement & Listening: Finding Our Collective Voice
Across Austin, people showed up to find clarity, build connection, and practice community care:
Listening & Learning Spaces: We created safe spaces for dialogue and strategy.
6 cross-community listening and learning circles
30+ participants in listening circles
60+ participants in ATX116 + WPNA partnership gatherings
Reach & Regions: Our network expanded deep into the district.
Direct engagement with 13 schools, neighborhoods, and communities in 6 geographic regions: North West, North, North East, West, Central, and East.
Dozens of one-on-one conversations with families and educators
Visibility & Action: We brought community voices to the public sphere.
A shared education resource page: ATX116 Community Resources
Speakers at the Against TAP Protest outside of TEA Headquarters: ATX116 In the Community
Chosen Organization for the Education Village at the No Kings Day (IG: Hands Off Central TX Post)
Here’s a Snapshot of our work in 2025:
Families & Educators Engaged: 206
Gatherings/Meetings Held: 77
Established ATX116 Friends: 92
Campuses/Communities Supported: 13
Public Comment Cards Facilitated: 105
Public Letters Written/Supported: 10
These collaborative spaces shaped:
Our guiding Mission, Vision, and North Star
Our recommendations to district leaders and trustees
Our understanding of the emotional and cultural needs of communities navigating instability
Advocacy, Clarity & Policy Influence: Translating Experience into Power
Throughout the year, ATX116 served as a vital connector, transforming community experience into actionable policy influence by providing:
Call-in & in-person policy explainers, meeting summaries, and accessible info-sharing
Clear breakdowns of TAP, closures, boundaries, and TEA risk
Policy recommendations grounded in lived experience
Shared advocacy scripts
This work ensured:
The public narrative around TAP was humanized and reframed.
More voices from Title I schools were elevated into critical board discussions.
Families were met with clear, accurate information and supported in finding meaningful pathways for advocacy.
Community Feedback From ATX116/Windsor Park Neighborhood Association School Committee Event:
“Thank you for offering this opportunity to talk with neighbors... It helps to feel less isolated in how I'm experiencing this process, and to learn from people with experience advocating with AISD.”
“I really appreciated hearing from the panelists who have advocacy experience since this is my first experience wading into something like this.”
Coalition Infrastructure & Trust-Building: Building to Last
We didn't just advocate; we built the early scaffolding for a sustainable, resilient advocacy ecosystem:
Direct community-first communications
A reliable rhythm of sustainable and responsive meetings
Shared resource library and robust cross-neighborhood partnerships
A mission, vision, and North Star rooted in lived experience and strategic clarity
These are the essential, structural foundations we needed—not flashy, not public, but absolutely critical for long-term community power and success.
Storytelling & Public Narrative: Connecting Our Shared Struggle
Our writing, media shares, and community-centered synthesis helped shift public understanding and unify our city:
We humanized the impact of closures, connecting district instability to long-term structural inequities.
We lifted parent and educator stories into local and statewide conversations.
We helped families see their experiences as shared, not isolated.
We built collective power through shared language and clearer information.
After ATX116 + WPNA partnership events, community members shared that they left feeling:
“Wiser,” “unified,” “encouraged,” and “motivated to act.”
After ATX116 circles and call-in support, they shared gratitude:
“Thank you for holding space.”
“Our conversation helped me support families on my campus.”
These are the stories that forged this movement.
What This Year Revealed: The Truth We Own
Across all regions, one unifying truth keeps showing up:
Communities are being asked to respond without full information. We don't need or want decisions made for us. We need the district and the state to engage in complex and nuanced conversations - and treat us not as an obstacle, but as the critical partner we are. This point isn’t meant to be divisive, but direct. The situation is urgent and true partnership includes holding one another accountable.
Families demand clarity.
Educators demand stability.
Communities demand a meaningful voice in decisions shaping their schools.
This year, we co-created pathways for that clarity—and for many people, it changed everything.
Our Commitment to the Future
In 2025, we built something indelible together: trust, clarity, connection, and a citywide network grounded in truth-telling and community care.
We look forward to sharing how our work is unfolding in 2026.
For now, we want to say, from the bottom of our hearts:
Thank You. Thank you for showing up, speaking up, supporting each other, and for your courage to refuse to look away. This work is demanding, but it is deeply necessary.
And we are not done.
With deepest gratitude and firm resolve,
Heather & Jessie, Co-Founders of ATX116
116 Schools. 1 Future. Stronger Together.
hewong@atx116.org | jessie@atx116.org
www.atx116.org | IG: @ATX116Alliance | FB: ATX116 FB Group
