Texas Jeff

You've got it correct, at least from my time in west Austin schools. PTAs raise money for affluent schools ... and the school district gives more money to schools without strong PTAs. PTAs, aka parents, donate a ton of time at "strong PTA" schools, things like reading programs and cafeteria and playground monitors. The "weak PTA" schools have "parent support specialists", which are paid positions that help kids and supplement teachers. The PSS positions are funded by the city of Austin and the school district. In 2021, AISD told the PTAs that they could no longer fund positions at schools. They did this at the end of the school year. PTAs raise money during the year for the *next* school year, so they already had the money raised and ready to go. Now they were not allowed to hire people. I'm not sure who got cut, but during my time at Casis, the PTA funded the Spanish and keyboarding (computer) teacher, plus some lunchroom monitors. Those people likely got cut. AISD did not go after foundations like the one at the Ann Richards school, just after PTA money. AISD did not balance money to make up for the PTA cuts, they just blocked the PTA funding. The district was deliberately cutting funds from schools with donations because other schools did not have donations, even though those other schools were receiving higher funding. Well, the lege was in session while that was going on, and they saw yet another chance to dunk on Austin. They passed a law requiring schools to accept donations from PTAs. So, what AISD had done was now illegal. The superintendent said that since this had happened after the budget was passed, it was OK to not accept donations for that school year but they would for the next school year. So, after all of that, nothing changed except some PTA supported teachers at West Austin schools were probably fired. My neighbors with kids in elementary were royally pissed off at the district. The superintendent left, then the new superintendent left, then everyone kinda dropped the whole idea. That's how it turned out.

They do, to some degree. The Austin Ed Fund is a district-wide non-profit. The Ann Richards school has a foundation just to benefit their school. They are spending more that a million dollars a year. Other schools have other funds and groups, but most of the donors are parents or businesses owned by parents. But nothing approaching the impact of giving 800 million to the state in recapture payments.

Yes, that's generally what happens. AISD closed four schools in the last round and the trustees that did that are all no longer trustees. In the case of some of the elementary schools, they consolidated two old schools into one brand new school. I am thinking of Norman-Sims and the new Sanchez on the east side. The east side rightly is still upset about the closing of Anderson High fifty years ago during desegregation, which devastated their community, so they see any school closing as a repeat of that event. It's not as big of a deal in elementary, but the result for middle and high school is that the parents succeed in keeping their school open, but the kids that go there have less opportunity than kids at a school between 1800-2000. In some cases there is more opportunity, like a better chance to start on the varsity basketball team. But they also lose a lot. The orchestra dwindles down to five people, the band is tiny, booster clubs don't form, the schools have less equipment. AP classes don't make so some kid that might have been good at math, or science or whatever has no advanced path to get there. Kids that want an advanced path transfer to a magnet, or a big school, and the small school gets smaller. The bigger schools also end up with less, because to add something they have to buy one for every school in town. So instead of maintaining 9 football fields, they maintain 13, when the district could get by with 9.

There is some very blocky art on the top of the parking garage at the airport. The first time I saw it I thought “hey, looks like they are staging supplies to build something.” Then I realized … oops … it’s art. There are occasional yellow metal things on the Lance Armstrong Bikeway. They looked like bike racks to me until I realized … oops … it’s art. Fortunately I didn’t embarrass myself by trying to lock a bike to the artwork.

Really? I thought the re-vote to authorize bonds got nuked, but perhaps there is another...

Why does Rice play Texas? So that we can inspire people to go to the Moon, duh… It’s our moral duty to this nation.

Deleted ... 'cause it's that hot....

Camp Mabry just dropped from 106 to 82 in one hour, a 24 degree change. The all time record one hour drop is 28 degrees, set on Aug 31, 1954.

I caught the end of this one on YouTube -- very nice of AISD to stream games online. The game was 21-21 in the 2nd quarter and both teams just stopped scoring. Guys on both sides were cramping up every other play. Stony Point got a late FG to take the lead. Austin High had the ball and was driving, but ran out of time around the 30 yd line to end the game.

If your kid is admitted, they have an admitted students' day that is on a Saturday at the peak of cherry blossom season. If you can, go a day early so that you can see the campus (and the cherry blossoms) without 20,000 other people trying to do the same thing on the same day. We didn't realize you had to preregister for this event, so we showed up on Saturday with everyone else and registered late. We were always a step behind the horde of people. If you go to an out-of-state state school, most everyone else will be from that state. That makes sense, but I had to experience it to realize that almost everyone else we talked to was from some town in Washington, and we weren't. It's a beautiful campus but my daughter ended up choosing Texas over Washington. If we lived in Washington and were picking, I bet she would have picked Washington over Texas. The schools are similar, but your "home state" school will always be cheaper. Cost of living in both Seattle and Austin is high, but in-state kids get that great tuition break. Out of state kids pay high tuition and high housing costs. Both of my kids started out looking nationally and both had stats similar to your kid, so they had UT and A&M in their pocket if they got into their major. And both eventually decided to go to an in-state school. Washington does have nice train system already in place .... a "west campus" stop and a "stadium" stop, both underground, with underground stops through downtown and connections to the airport. I thought it was funny that Seattle is building an underground train system with the cool weather they have, and Austin is forging ahead with a surface system that will bake in 110 degree weather, that does not connect to the airport. The train system also gets you to NFL or MLB games. I was annoyed that Austin seems incapable of attracting professional teams, building stadiums for them, or planning train service to the venues we have. Seattle seems to be 30 years ahead of us and has spent some time thinking about how the parts of a city work together. But I digress...

Nueces is the road that will "replace" Guadalupe when Project Connect closes Guadalupe to vehicular traffic. Imagine everyone moving in while the traffic previously on the Drag tries to go up and down that street.

Mike Pence did the right thing on Jan 6th, but I'm still not sure he's three dimensional. Every time I see him I think "man, it's like Flat Stanley was vice president." Chris Christie is definitely three dimensional.

Yes ... and no ... and yes again, I would say: Yes it does! The district gets X dollars per student and raises Y dollars from property tax. Recapture is just Y - X. Y and X are not correlated. It's a little more complicated than that, because I'm not telling you that part of the Y dollars goes for bond payments and part goes for teachers and gets recaptured. So when the number of students goes down, recapture goes up even if the number of property tax dollars collected remains the same. No ... because they still get X dollars per student. They get fewer dollars but they have fewer students to educate. Their buildings are in bad shape, but their large property tax base allows them to raise big bucks for improvements, for a declining student population. AISD took about 30 years off from doing basic improvements, and they will be playing catch up for the next 25 years. And yes again, it does hurt because AISD is closing only a few schools as their population declines. So maybe last year they had a school with one principal, one football coach, one nurse, one college advisor and so on ... now they have a smaller school with the same one principal, one football coach, and so on. They are still maintaining the same number of buildings and these one-per-school positions, but across a smaller population base per school. That leaves less for classroom teachers. AISD could help themselves by closing some campuses and figuring out what size of student population is most efficient, but they will not. Also: The X dollars per students does not include consideration for cost of living. It costs more to live in Austin than it does in Temple. The teachers receive nothing extra in AISD for cost of living. Also, AISD is one of a few districts that pays into Social Security. So teachers receive less now and in theory, get more later when they have a pension and social security coming in. But right NOW, when they need to afford basic rent or a starter home, they start off with less pay because they pay into social security while most districts around them do not.

I was checking out the Austin IH-35 site. Who exactly is in charge of green lighting funding for caps for this thing? TxDOT says "funding provided by others" ... I'm ready to vote for it right now... Here's MLK/IH35 without caps: Here's MLK/IH35 with caps: And here's the old East Avenue, before IH35 existed: Seems obvious to me to include the caps and restore some green space to that area.

It would be nice for the Colorado for the storm to spin to the east a bit. Whatever falls in these boundaries will help: (Darn it, I was not the first to post this!)

McCallum is getting $66,549,000 for "Phase 1" of a 3 or 4 phase effort to completely renovate the school. At max speed, 4 phases will take 20 years -- one phase for every bond package, about one bond package every five years. https://bond.austinschools.org/bond-projects/mccallum-high-school "Phase 1" is supposed to be "open" in Jan 2027, which means any new construction will be available then. Some improvements will roll out earlier, like maybe replace the HVAC and keep raccoons from raining down upon the students. Austin High got "Phase 2" of a projected 5 phases, so about 2040 to finish renovations starting from 2017, but phase 2 was less money than planned so really they are either going to have to spend more later or stretch out renovations longer.

At least one AISD high school had their AC fail yesterday, on the first day of school. It’s working today. Two years ago they had month long failures in parts of the same building. Bond money will be paying for a complete upgrade of the HVAC, but they haven’t had time yet to replace it. Thank you to everyone who voted for the last two AISD bonds!

It would be cool if they built a big ass pedestrian/bike bridge across IH-35 when they redo the highway. Connect Moody to the Disch-Falk parking garage area, either south of Moody or north, in between the soccer stadium and the new arena.

Texas takes an early road loss to Alabama, and avoids a late road loss to TCU or Iowa St, but it's close. Texas over OU in the Big XII title game. Some announcer makes a mistake when calculating how many teams will be in the Big XII next year. Big XII rumor mill has them going after UTSA to secure the San Antonio market and maybe adding Rice to keep it an even number. Texas plays Michigan in the Rose Bowl in the 1st round of the CFP. I hope they win but it will be another Rose Bowl shootout.

Som numbers: Austin ISD has 13 high schools, and this year they are projected to drop below 20,000 high school students. About half of them attend four schools. By 2032, they are projected to drop under 18,000 students. At an average enrollment of 2000, they need 10 schools now and 9 later. The school district tried to consolidate schools a few years ago but got pushback, so little happened. Austin High, a few years ago, sent 300-400 kids to LASA and took in 700-800 kids from other schools. My numbers are a little old, but kids are already transferring all over the district. They could manage some schools under the 6A limit. The district, though bond packages, is trying to beef up the quality of the under enrolled schools, but still there are fewer students for the same number of schools.

Austin High, Anderson and Akins should really be 5A schools playing other Austin ISD 5A schools. Other than Bowie pulling out the occasional win, there is no reason that AISD schools should be in the same league as Westlake/LT/Dripping Springs or even Hays Johnson.

Congress: I will need an aide to hold my Heineken

In today's college football, the home team doesn't give the visitors enough tickets to merit bringing a full band, especially for out of state non-conference big games. The visiting tickets go to high dollar alumni. I'm impressed that LHB is getting enough tickets for TCU, Baylor, and UH on the road. It's like a final year SWC tour. Texas usually takes a small pep band to far away games, but at least they get to fly. In the 1980s, the entire Longhorn Band bused to Auburn. The trip there was two days, but the trip back was one long bus ride. The A/C on my bus gave out somewhere around Mobile and never returned. The giant drum (Big Bertha) was replaced last year with a larger, less radioactive version, but I doubt it will travel to Alabama. Speaking of the MOB, their answer to Big Bertha was to create the world's longest tuba, which was pretty funny to see.

Prepare for parents driving insanely large SUVs and minivans who: Kinda suck at driving Have no idea where their kid's apartment is or where they can park Have never been to West Campus before Have packed 3x what the kid needs to make it through the year