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Texas Jeff

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  1. My crazy idea: Close Northeast HS and move all of the kids to LBJ HS. LBJ would be almost full and demographics show that it would slightly shrink over the next ten years, but it would be lot more full that it is planned to be. LBJ's projected enrollment in 2033 is 537, for a school with a capacity of 1947. Keep the International HS at the Northeast campus and open a new middle school at Northeast. Move the bond money that was to be spent on Dobie to the new MS at Northeast. The combo of the International HS and the new MS would benefit from both the $36 million that was to go to Dobie and the $117 million that is being spent at the Northeast campus. This gives the district room to expand if other middle schools in the area fail, and there are others on the list that could fail in the next few years just like Dobie. Dobie is 3 miles from the Northeast campus versus 6 miles from the Lamar campus. It also gives the east side a strong vertical, since Marshall and the new Northeast MS would feed to LBJ. Put a lot of resources into the new MS to try to get it up to at least a C rating, so that the district is not in the same situation five years from now.
  2. McCallum and all of the AISD high schools are getting a new turf field with lights. Baseball and softball are also getting lights but not turf. Everyone is getting their track brought up to reasonable standards, although not everyone has room for an 8-lane track. Some are six lanes. The trustees are voting this month to approve the vendor. Construction has already started at LBJ and Northeast, and the other schools will follow. It's probably not going to be ready for the next school year but it should be done by the following school year. The fields will have power and water so that the schools can set up fans or hydration stations to help keep the kids cool. I'm not sure if it made the final design, but I know at one point they were considering a sand based product for fill rather than the black rubber tires because it reduces the temps on the field significantly. There is a space at each field for a small press box. And I do mean a small one. They are either going to put that in, or if the budget does now allow, leave space for a small press box in a future bond. McCallum has some serious issues with drainage that constrained what was possible with their field design, but they did shoehorn it in. You can see the designs for the fields in the Turf and Fields CAT folder that I linked.
  3. Not sure how many are in the fine arts program, but here's the list of who attended Lamar from where in the most recent demographics report: Kids who lived in the Lamar district that attended Lamar: 807 Others transferred from: Bedichek: 2 Burnet: 28 Covington: 2 Dobie: 26 Kealing: 54 Martin: 35 Murchison: 48 O. Henry: 35 Out of district: 33 Webb: 26 Total others: 289
  4. McCallum was allocated $66,549,000 in the 2022 bond, for a "phase 1" of a phased modernization. Starting in 2017, Austin ISD has been passing large bond packages, spaced about five years apart. A phased modernization means that the school is rebuilt over multiple bond projects. They are projecting 3-4 phases for McCallum, which means passing bonds in 2022, 2027, 2032 and 2037 for a four-phase project. So McCallum may be modernized between now and 2041 under a four-phase plan. You can see the complete phased vision for rebuilding the campus here, starting around slide 28: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1PkLORj8OH5nCMvL5QNFjl-MhxLAYAhNn/view?usp=sharing The $66 million in phase one is for repairs, adding a turf football field, demoing part of the exiting building, and adding a new science and CTE wing. You can read about what they are doing in phase 1 here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/16D5893oyI7-7riM6Tu6iHEz7Gz_jLxgn/view?usp=sharing All of the 2022 bond projects have all of their presentations here: https://drive.google.com/drive/u/0/folders/12dh6O3TYstztC7Wn9tOn_aE4VkNvIgBN
  5. The board has not yet voted on this. Each month, the board has an "info session" where they talk about issues, and a "voting session" two weeks later where they actually vote on the items they discussed at the info session. Here is the discussion from the "info session":
  6. I think Marshall only has grades 6 and 7 this year. They are opening the school over three years, adding a grade each year. So next year they may be at 600 just because of kids moving up and more 6th graders arriving.
  7. They are required to send these kids to a school that has either an A or B grade on the state scores, and neither Webb nor Burnet score that high.
  8. I am a buyer on the secondary market and I don't get it. Seatgeek tickets tonight below the concourse level are about $100-$140. Tickets above that are $70-$100. Uncovered seats down the line are $50-$80. Ok great, demand is high, should be a packed house... But ... last night I paid for reasonable tickets in the 100's, looking down the line, and there were four empty seats next to me the entire game. I could see groups of 6-8 unoccupied seats all over the place. Who is eating these tickets and why aren't they putting them on the resale market?
  9. Public school funding is based on WADA ... or Weighted Average Daily Attendance. They get money based on a student butt in a seat on a given day. The basic allotment is based on the kid's butt being in the seat 100% of the days the school is open. Or ... on a school field trip or whatever. Being counted present for the day. So, if a kid lives in the Del Valle ISD but transfers to Austin ISD, Austin ISD gets the $6500 for that kid. If a kid lives in Austin ISD but is enrolled in Regents, a private school, Austin ISD gets $0 for that kid. The public school does not "keep" the allotment because the allotment was never made, because the private school kid is not enrolled in the district. If a kid lives in Austin ISD and attends Austin ISD, but the parents decide to pull the kid out of school for a week for a ski trip, the school gets $0 basic allotment funding for that kid for the days missed. The school still has expenses, lights, A/C, pay the teacher, pay the bus driver, provide the bus, they just don't have basic allotment funding for that kid for those days. If the Regents kid get a new school voucher, they have $10,000 they can spend at Regents. It does not affect Austin ISD's funding. Regents charges $21,000 per year in tuition. Regents can choose to discount tuition for that kid because they are bringing a $10,000 voucher to the school, or they can keep tuition right where it is and suddenly Regents has an additional $10,000. I have not heard of a WADA component for the vouchers, so it's possible that this is $10,000 per year, even if the kid misses school for a week.
  10. I showed this to my extended family at Christmas and laughed all the way through. And I was the only one. Turns out only I had seen the movie:
  11. Cap Metro spent $917,000 per electric bus in 2021 prices ... vs a diesel powered bus at $535,000. Now, some of the electric buses they got for that price had problems and are now in storage, but that's another story...
  12. Travis Co preliminary values now up for 2025 and in the mail... https://travis.prodigycad.com/property-search
  13. By October we are going to be waist-deep in soybeans.
  14. Trump took the time today to sign an EO entitled: "MAINTAINING ACCEPTABLE WATER PRESSURE IN SHOWERHEADS" which is all about reforming the definition of the word "showerhead". The man never stops working for America...
  15. What the hell is that butt-ugly yellow wildflower and how do we get rid of it?
  16. And another thing, right now everyone else is rooting for China to kick our ass. The Canadians, the Mexicans, the British, the sportos, the motorheads, geeks, sluts, bloods, wastoids, dweebies, dickheads, Greenland, the penguins on that tiny island ... they all want to see China stand up to us.
  17. All China has to do is ... do nothing. When your competition is tossing pick sixes and fumbling pitches into their own end zone, just take the points and kick another touchback and wait. Trump is a bully and he's doing bully things that have worked his entire life because so far everyone he's come up against has caved.
  18. The orange man has no plan...
  19. The nationwide protests are building, but they really need to be outside Mar-a-Lago and his golf courses on Saturdays and Sundays. Trump is pretty isolated from the world. He's in the White House most of Mon-Fri, then flys to Florida for weekend golf every Sat-Sun. His world is what he sees out of the Oval Office, the view from a helicopter, a Big Mac and Filet-o-Fish served onboard a 747, a limo ride, the patio at Mar-a-Lago, and weekends behind a golf cart. That's it. He's surrounded by yes-men and young blondes who love every suggestion he has. He needs to see the protests for them to be effective.
  20. What if "It's fun to stay at the Y.M.C.A." was simply foreshadowing?
  21. "I'm sorry Cory, the camera wasn't rolling ... could you go back and take it from the top? .... April Fools! .... ha ha ha we totally got you ... look at his face!"
  22. You are correct. If I were on the other side of the negotiating table I would do absolutely nothing. Accept the tariff and plan to sell a few fewer cars in the US. Watch Trump sweat as prices rise and people complain. Don't be the first to blink. Eventually Trump would cave to the domestic pressure to get rid of the tariffs. Americans like cheap stuff, new stuff, and stuff you can drive around. We're not taking the bus.
  23. *Only* female mayor. I think Austin has elected one Hispanic (Gus Garcia) and zero Black mayors. Austin, always a town for everybody.
  24. My theory: Waltz invited random cabinet members to the chat that he thought needed to be there. Some folks invite twenty people to a meeting when four would do. He thought, ok, this might be trade related so why not invite Jamieson Greer, who is the US Trade Representative in Trump's cabinet. So he invited "JG" to the chat, who was not JG the cabinet member but JG the editor of The Atlantic. Whoops.
  25. Bonds do not have a recapture component, unless there is some weird effect I've not heard about. Districts plan for bond packages, decide what they want to fund and how much they can afford to borrow, and if the voters approve then they start borrowing and building. The money stays in the district. There are two components of school property taxes: * Maintenance and Operation (M&O) -- this is the money that pays people and it is subject to recapture * Interest and Sinking (I&S) -- this is the money collected to pay off bonds issued by the district and it is not subject to recapture. I think the I&S portion is limited to 50 cents of property tax. Austin ISD is at 12.3 cents. Keller is at 33 cents. The M&O portion consists of a "regular" tax portion, plus optional golden pennies, plus optional copper pennies. The regular portion and the copper pennies are subject to recapture. The golden pennies are not. The maximum number of golden and copper pennies is set by the state.
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