AUSTIN (KXAN) — As Austin Independent School District works to find its next superintendent, KXAN’s Nabil Remadna sat down with the current interim leader, Matias Segura.

Remadna: You’re just taking on the position here. What are your first priorities?

Segura: Well, I mean, priorities are, you know, for me in this role, it’s kind of what I said in the beginning, right. It’s about compensation, special education, multilingual… Making sure that we’re improving our teachers experience.

We certainly know that there are a lot of things that are impacting the classroom and the weight and the responsibilities have to be re-evaluated. We have to think about the things that need to be taken off the plates of our teachers, right? All the things that they have to do to create space so that they can be more effective in the classroom right now. We’re just asking a lot. So, we’re really thinking about reducing the pressure and supporting them better.

Remadna: Safety audits: are they still ongoing? Have y’all continued success? Have you had any schools come up and they might have left doors unlocked, things like that?

Segura: So yeah, safety audits continue as they have been the entire year. For us, we’re doing very, very well. We do report to the board, if there is a finding. Fortunately for us, we’re performing at a very, very high level. Anything more than that, you know, obviously can’t be shared publicly. But, you know, our number one priority is keeping our students safe, our staff safe.

Remadna: A lot of bills, a lot of lawmakers pushing for more funding in public education right now at the Capitol. Have you had any talks with any lawmakers? Are you pushing? You know, recaptures is a big talking point, and I know AISD loses a lot of money.

Segura: We have. We absolutely do. So recapture does impact us in a very real way. Over $840 million is sent to the state.

Several weeks ago, we started the legislative session with a conversation with our central delegation. So, in that conversation, we talk about AISD’s priorities. At the top of the list is allotment, right? The amount that each student is budgeted, by way of the state. So for us, that’s like raising the sea for all. So, if we can really push for the state to increase allotment, it’ll help us, you know, increase the amount of compensation we have for our teachers and staff. It will help us support programming in a different way. It’ll help us look at different solutions to improve the system. So, that is like the single focus. There are many, many others. But if I could distill it down into one single priority, it would be the allotment.