Edna Butts, Austin ISD's Director of Intergovernmental Relations & Policy Oversight, and Katrina Montgomery, Chief Financial Officer of Austin ISD, will explain the mechanics of school finance in Texas including how the Robin Hood Law, aka "recapture", affects Austin ISD.
About our Speakers:
Edna Butts currently serves as Director of Intergovernmental Relations & Policy Oversight for the Austin Independent School District. Her responsibilities include monitoring legislation affecting education on the state, federal and local level, and fostering communications with federal, State of Texas, Travis County and City of Austin elected officials and their staffs. In addition, Edna is responsible for drafting school district policies and regulations and ensuring their final approval by the Board of Trustees and the Superintendent. She is also the Elections Administrator for the school district.
Prior to joining AISD, Edna served as General Counsel and Senior Policy Advisor for Senator Kirk Watson. She also served as an Assistant Attorney General for several years where she served as Chief of the Financial Litigation Division and as Special Assistant Attorney General.
Edna has been very involved in the Austin community. Edna is a member of the Communities in Schools Leadership Circle and served on the Communities in Schools of Central Texas board of directors for seven years, where she served as board president. She also serves on The University of Texas System Chancellor’s Council Executive Committee. She has served on United Way’s Success by Six Leadership Council, and on the boards of directors of the Long Center for the Performing Arts, Any Baby Can, Girl Scouts Lone Star Council, Reading is Fundamental (RIF), and the YMCA.
In January 2024, Edna was named a Distinguished Lawyer by the Austin Bar Association and received the 2013 Corazon Community Award given by the non-profit Con Mi Madre.
Edna earned her undergraduate and law degrees from the University of Texas and is a graduate of Leadership Austin.
Katrina Montgomery brings over 30+ years of accounting and finance expertise, over three decades of strategic leadership experience and a proven track record as a transformational, people-focused financial leader to Austin ISD. Montgomery excels at cultivating tight-knit, high-performing teams and creating opportunities in underserved communities for students to achieve success.
Montgomery received her B.S. in Accounting from Grambling State University and her MBA from University of Phoenix. She has served Austin ISD for three years as Assistant Superintendent of Finance and is now the Chief Financial Office. Before serving at Austin ISD, she was interim VP of Administration and Finance and Controller at Huston-Tillotson University. Outside of work,
Mrs. Montgomery is fiercely committed to her family. She and her husband Michael have two children.
