Hello Friends,
Happy New Year! Hopefully y'all had a great first week back and are getting settled in.
Don’t forget to submit nominations for the Salute Awards! Submissions for outstanding staff members are due Jan. 15. Award recipients will be recognized at the Salute Awards on May 7.
Starting Jan. 20, the Austin ISD Performing Arts Center garage will begin charging all vehicles an hourly parking fee for all NON-DISTRICT related use.
Exciting news on the technology front: All staff will have access to an AI tool Gemini. It's a Chatbot feature from Google that will be available once you complete a prep course.
Now, let's get started…
This week one of our vendors, PowerSchool, notified us of a cybersecurity incident with one of their products.
What to know: The product affected, PowerSchool SIS, is not used in Austin ISD.
Yes, and…when it comes to our staff data, we will always practice due diligence. In the coming days, our legal and technology staff will be working with the vendor to walk through their processes and verify their assessment of the incident.
What they’re saying: According to PowerSchool, “the incident is contained, and we have no evidence of malware or continued unauthorized activity in any of the PowerSchool environments. PowerSchool is not experiencing, nor expects to experience any operational disruption and continues to provide services as normal to our customers.”
What’s next: We will follow up with staff next week to share what we learn through our review of their assessment.
This next feature was originally published in Joy Diaz's Leader Letter, which is sent to Austin ISD community members. Joy is an expert at finding the human stories in the work and she noticed an interesting pattern...specifically with the name Angel. Come along as we learn more about the Angels Among Us in Austin ISD.
Back when my kids were little, I worried about many things. One was — who would teach them? My prayer was that they would encounter angels. No, I’m not talking about celestial beings. I’m talking about teachers and staff who could AND WOULD love them as they are.
And, my prayer came true.
Now that I work at Austin ISD I’ve realized there are angels in every department.
Let me introduce you to three.
Angela Frageman — whose mother is from Vietnam and whose father is from Taiwan — was named after a nurse who showed kindness to her immigrant parents. Whether her parents knew it or not — she would become an angel to children.
Frageman is a principal at Mills Elementary School.
“The nature of our job,” she says, “is to sprinkle angelic dust.”
How does she do it?
Simple. She doesn’t let children go unnoticed. She makes sure she says their names.
“As educators,” Frageman says, “we know the names of the students who have challenges, but we often forget the names of those who are on the margins. And how ironic, right? Because those are the students who do what they are supposed to do. They are not good or bad. They don’t — naturally — demand our attention. So, I ask each of my staff to spend time with two of those kids per week — to look into their faces and not let them fall through the cracks.”
Her work is transformational.
Austin ISD transforms lives. Angel Vales — originally from Puerto Rico — transforms systems as Assistant Superintendent of Technology. His goal for this year is to visit every school campus.
"There's a clear digital divide and connectivity gap among families," Vales says.
One in every three families in Austin ISD lacks reliable internet connectivity at home and many lack devices.
"I need the data to better advocate for families," Vales told me. "Because for many families the needs are more basic — if you think of Maslow's hierarchy of needs — here I am talking about technology, but what many families desperately need is basic things such as food."
And yet, as an education institution, we can't dismiss the need for technology because, as Vales puts it — technology is not slowing down. On the contrary, it's rapidly changing. Part of Vales' mission is to teach basic technology skills to families. And he wants that to be part of his legacy.
As you can see, angels at Austin ISD go above and beyond their mission.
Angel Wilson has always known her parents wanted her to have a mission-focused life. Angel means "messenger". And she's embraced her name.
Wilson is Assistant Superintendent of Secondary Education.
"I want to make a difference in a meaningful way," Wilson says, "especially for people still experiencing the vestiges of slavery."
Wilson's "WHY" is her father who grew up in Louisiana picking cotton.
"He only went to school a couple of months out of the year. Even today he struggles with literacy," she says.
Dismantling those systems will take time. But Wilson is strategic about it. She does it by educating others. She even plans to be a superintendent one day. Where? She doesn't know yet. When? That is also a moving target. In the meantime — she says she's learning from Austin ISD's Superintendent Matias Segura.
"I never thought I could learn so much from him," she says. "Watching him work, how he leads, how he connects, and how he's not formulaic."
One thing I am learning from these angels is that your name doesn't have to be "Angel" for you to embrace a world-changing mission. Angel Wilson put it beautifully.
"We all have the power and the capacity to inspire others. Sometimes we think we have to do monumental things. We don't. There are a million little miracles we can provide others."
//Joy Diaz
Can you believe it's 2025?! I hope everyone enjoyed the break and had the chance to unplug and unwind.
Anyone else doing New Year's resolutions? I'm making it a point to try and eat healthier and get to the gym more often! Not as a resolution, but more as a goal for the year. What are your goals or resolutions for the new year? Here's a quick read on New Year's Resolutions and how setting intentions and habits can go a long way.
-JJ
For questions or comments you may email me at jorge.maldonado@austinisd.org
For languages other than English and Spanish, we use an AI-powered translation tool. As a result, there may be some contextual inaccuracies or other errors. We apologize for this. Please email translation@austinisd.org if you are in need of clarification. To change your preferred correspondence language, contact your school's front office.
