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atomheartbevo

Certifiably Surly
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Everything posted by atomheartbevo

  1. You'll get no argument from me there, and it's not helped that we send $750 million fucking dollars to other school districts. We could do amazing shit with that much money. But AISD administration at times has seemed like past UT football coaching staffs. Regardless, the current administration will get to basically oversee the end of the district as we know it. And other area districts are suffering - Eanes has been having to deal with their own recapture bullshit fucking them over - https://www.eanesisd.net/dept/bs/budget#recap But damn, it's going to hurt AISD next year.
  2. The state will just change the formula. We help keep way too many smaller districts afloat, and none of those fuckers ever stand up for us.
  3. It's probably too late at this point. When the state takes over, everything changes for the worse, and a shitload of teachers and parents are going to bail (which will mean more school closings). Some will be going to private schools (but not the kinds of schools that could be covered by a $7,500 voucher) but many will head to the numerous districts around us. That's what really concerns me. It's going to be a fucking shitshow. It's absolutely fitting that UT is about to destroy its reputation as well.
  4. The state will be making decisions soon enough.
  5. It's Austin. Developers spend a shitload of money on campaign donations and wheeling and dealing with politicians. I wish YGIFs were here to expand on that, but Austin politicians love their developers. Just this last March, the board told the Superintendent to go and sell off Rosedale, and he did. I will not be surprised if they try and do the same thing on the way out the door when the state takes over. I'm willing to give the conspiracy theories the benefit of the doubt as they correctly predicted all of the schools that would be closing.
  6. My kids' school district is going to be turbo-fucked by the state when they take over school operations, and now this bullshit. My oldest still has 5 years to go, and he loves UT, but I imagine that UT 5 years from now is not where we will want him to go (or where he will want to go).
  7. When my kid was there, they were in the SPED program, so I'm very familiar with the SPED program there, and my wife has known one of them for almost 20 years, but that's beside the point. And Bryker has had around 500 kids when my kid was there - they got fucked by the Bull Creek/Grove stuff when the city promised there would be more young families there. Our neighbors had their kid in the first pre-k class at Bryker Woods, and they were told by the people at the district when they were getting them enrolled that Bryker Woods was under-enrolled and the pre-K was going to help boost attendance. A year or so later, it's claimed they are over-enrolled. Look, I saw a list almost a month ago, from a Pease parent who went through the Pease closure and who apparently made it their purpose in life to be in the know with this stuff, and they were basically saying "these are the schools they are going to close, and they know which schools they are going to close already and so the various options they ultimately release are just smoke and mirrors - they have decided on their final plan a while back and it will be rubber-stamped with the final vote. A few of the schools on that list are a priority to be closed off and sold off to developers ASAP and we've known about this final list for several months. Parents and the communities were never going to have a say - decisions were already being made long before parents really knew and before any specific public discussions were really happening. It doesn't matter when the final vote happens, it's a foregone conclusion that these schools are closing." There were a few (2) schools on the list that ended up not being closed, but that most likely came down to re-zoning from closing schools and potential pushback/overcrowding at other schools. And in hindsight, while the Pease folks who started following this closely and figuring this stuff out (or having it told to them) may have had specifics, the clues were there if we had all been paying attention. The district botching the Dobie/Webb/Lamar stuff should have been an indicator that things were not what they seemed. The people in upper management didn't seem to give a shit that the state would end up taking over. I didn't say anything here in case the list was wrong or pure projection, but it was dead on with the exception of 2, and based on the accuracy of the list I saw and the comments made, those two will most likely be on the chopping block in the next few years if AISD hemorrhages kids from these closings and the state takeover, because they. had plans for the kids from those schools. And there are a lot of recordings of Boswell out there talking about this stuff, and it's being passed around. Everybody is done with her. I hope she enjoys the last few years left in her term because I don't see elections going her way in the future. I could run into her on Monday and ask her if my kid's elementary is fine next year and if she says it is, I will assume it will be closed the following year. Regardless, it all won't mean shit when the state takes over. They are going to fuck this district even harder than HISD. There's going to be a lot of families moving out of the city.
  8. Recapture sucks and is absolutely a massive part of the problem for AISD, and the state has been fucking with budgets to help setup the largest districts to have problems/be ripe for takeover. But the district leadership has known for a long time that the state could take over if they didn't improve things, and they saw what happened in Houston, and they were unwilling over the past few years to really do what needed to be done. After the first F a school got (and even really before - they knew where the problems were), the district should have busted ass to fix it, rather than waiting for them to accumulate more and then doing something drastic (or not enough). Offering high-performance teachers a bounty to switch to a lower-performing school was never going to work when the threat of closing the school was still looming over those teachers. The notion of "leave your job at the stable school where you are high-performing for a little more money at a low-performing school, and if we close that school, you can reapply to the district and maybe get a similar position back" was never going to work. Edit: Sorry for ranting, the birthday party I was at was nothing but an airing of grievances, and today's news confirmed what I had heard a few weeks back from a parent at Austin High (about which schools would be on the final list, with the exception of some minor changes on zoning). I'm just fucking sick that my kids are not even through middle school yet and we are going to face a state takeover.
  9. I got stuck at a birthday party for one of my kids' friends tonight, and there were parents from multiple schools represented by Boswell, including those affected (well I guess almost everybody is affected), and from what they were saying, she told parents from multiple schools a lot of stuff over the past few months that turned out to be false (my few interactions with her over the past year were not impressive at all, just another politician who tries to tell you what she thinks you want to hear and pretends to give a shit about your community). As one parent put it "she's either the dumbest fucking person to sit on the board and represent a district or she was straight up playing the parents of multiple schools." From what was said, she's got parents from multiple schools who plan on making sure she's never elected to an office again - any offices she tries for, the bat signal will go out and thousands of people will get emails about her actions over the past few months.
  10. The actions over the past few months all make a lot of sense if you think of the administration deciding the state is going to take over next year, and they are trying to close schools and sell off property to developers - it's not a mistake that some very desirable pieces of real-estate were a part of this. Those who were predicting that this was a last-ditch effort to reward some of the developers who helped get some people elected are probably much closer to the truth than they realize, from some comments made by some officials. Once the state fully takes over, the current folks running the district won't be able to easily get rid of desirable properties. And the state is absolutely going to drive a shitload of people to move their kids to private schools or to a neighboring district, not to mention driving teachers to other districts. We are in the last days of AISD being relevant. Enjoy the next year or two.
  11. As somebody who lives not far away, who had a kid there for a few years, and who has been to events there and has a bunch of neighbors who go there, enrollment has been up the past few years, and if you've ever had the misfortune of driving by in the mornings, you'd know a shitload of neighborhood kids walk and bike there, and that many parents live in the area because it's a neighborhood school. AISD deliberately chose to take portables out of the equation for enrollment to make Bryker Woods and other schools look over-enrolled. And that area pays a helluva lot more in taxes than other parts of AISD, and AISD could lose a shitload of those kids to private schools rather than parents being fine with them being bused to Brentwood or Mathews downtown.
  12. What's really pissing people off is why weren't the failing/near-failing schools closed last school year? Why are they talking about closing A schools, even the only IB-credentialed elementary (Bryker Woods) if they have failing schools like Dobie, Webb and Burnet that could shit-can the whole district and let Greg Abbott's people take over? All this consolidation doesn't mean shit if the state comes in and takes over. We have friends whose kids are at LASA or aiming for LASA, who were patting themselves on the back at fighting against Dobie/etc. students going there. LASA along with other such programs are fucking gone if the state comes in and I'm going to laugh my ass off at them taking a stand to keep a bunch of kids out, only to watch the state dismantle LASA for being a liberal arts program. One of our friends at Lee thinks AISD leadership gave up fighting off the state takeover and decided to try and close a bunch of schools with desirable properties to be sold off to developers that they know or who contributed to them in some way. Just so we are clear, Dobie, Webb and Burnet, one of them will fail again, and the state will come in and take over.
  13. Well, Casis is already pretty close to capacity, and Mathews is not far away from capacity either, but without the room for portables. I have friends whose kids are at Bryker Woods and they are furious - they were at Pease so this is their second rodeo, but BW is actually a few hundred students below their historical highs (even 5-6 years ago pre-COVID), but AISD decided that portables don't count, which was done to fuck over Bryker Woods and a few other schools. And you're right, they are high performing, and the only IB Credentialed elementary in town. Shipping them to Matthews is going to piss off a lot of people if they close BW. And BW parents have a lot of money and will probably send their kids to private schools/St. Andrews just across the creek so AISD will be losing students (and funding). We've been hearing they really want to shut down Lee and Ridgetop (and if the state comes in, Ridgetop's dual-lingual stuff is gone) as well.
  14. People wonder when they will drop the Kerch bridge, and my guess is when they've made sure that fuel supplies to Crimea and the bordering areas are extremely constrained (not just civilian but military) and when they've done enough damage to trains/railway that Russia wouldn't be able to reliably resupply it by land. Oh, and they'll probably wait for Russian forces in Crimea to burn through any fuel reserves they have.
  15. My 12 year-old (he was 11 at the time) loved Hitchhiker's, which really surprised me, and he's read them a couple of times. Discworld - Pratchett actually wrote 5-6 Discworld books, the Tiffany Aching books, about a young witch (obviously Tiffany) that was clearly meant for young audiences (and arguably girls). If she likes these, she will absolutely jump into the Discworld books (and start her off with Colour of Magic after the Tiffany Aching books). And the Tiffany Aching books starts out when she's 9 years old - definitely let your daughter know that. Tiffany Aching - Wikipedia And there's even a guide book that came out a few years ago to celebrate 20 years of the character: Book:Tiffany Aching’s Guide to Being a Witch - Discworld & Terry Pratchett Wiki Discworld for Young Adults (6 books)
  16. So one of my older relatives, who has parroted Fox News/Russian talking points in the past, sent me a video this morning that "I need to see" about what's happening in Ukraine and Russia and that it will "catch me up on what's really happening" and that I need to subscribe to this guy and I'm all like And the name of the youtuber was "Jake Broe" so I immediately did think "oh fuck, here we go" because I figured it was some young dude that might be parroting Russian talking points, but nope. We've had arguments discussions before, and ironically the guy literally drove M113s in Vietnam - it was only a couple of years out of his life back in the 1960s, but in his den he has several 8x10s of him and his buddies in the Army in Vietnam and with his M113, and he's got a large painting/print of an M113 in the jungle on his wall. He has admitted he's pleased that the M113s have a second lease on life, and I've gotten through to him on that. Anyways, surprisingly, the video was not terrible. I can't stand the cadence/pacing/whatever, but this video is only about 12 hours old and has 300,000+ views, and that's good. I don't know that I would listen to him again because I did not learn anything new, but I'm pleased my relative was following the guy, and I would recommend it to more boomer uncles (and dads).
  17. https://www.kxan.com/news/texas-politics/ut-austin-could-receive-funding-advantages-if-it-meets-white-house-demands/
  18. Russia going to seize Western assets...which I thought they already did. Russia Drafts Plan to Seize Assets If EU Acts on Funds
  19. The answer is always Discworld or Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.
  20. Russians sure do like to forget Lend-Lease
  21. I remember having to turn a Bart Simpson shirt inside out at school.
  22. Most of the movies with stepsisters I watch have beautiful stepsisters getting stuck in cabinets, under sinks, inside of dishwashers, in clothes dryers, under beds, etc. Not sure if I want to check out one called "Ugly Stepsister".
  23. Dumbass is wanting shows canceled in 2025 that *checks notes* were canceled years ago.
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