Texas Jeff

The completely unsubstaintiated rumor I heard is that they are floating the idea of having teachers teach 6 of 7 periods instead of 6 of 8 periods. This cuts costs because the teachers are still teaching 6 periods but the kids can only schedule 7 classes. You don't need a teacher for that 8th period since it's gone. Kids would take 49 years of classes in middle and high school (7x7) instead of the current 56 (8x7). You lose seven school years of something from 6th through 12th, double-blocked classes or more electives.

All those little houses around campus look cool. It's amazing that in the 45 years between that photo and when I got to campus in the mid-80's, ALL of those houses were wiped away and replaced with state office buildings and more and more campus.

Yeah, LBJ and LASA got along so well that they have now physically separated the campuses. AISD built a new home for Eastside Memorial at the original LC Anderson campus, moved LASA to the old Johnson campus, and kept LBJ at LBJ. The district is shrinking but it's politically impossible to combine or close schools, so many schools are seeing lower enrollments. In Austin ISD, you can transfer anywhere there is space available, and there is space available at all of the high schools except Bowie and Akins. You can also transfer into the district. I don't think AISD intended to create an unofficial athletics magnet at LBJ but I think they have. For this realignment cycle, AISD opted-up four schools to 5A-D2. Do they want to get killed? No, I think they want to create their own 5A district within the school district. So LBJ will be crushing Eastside, LASA, Travis and Northeast rather than traveling to play 4A schools elsewhere.

You may want to hurry if she wants to apply to UT ... the deadline is Dec 1st. It's tough to get in from out of state. About 75% of the class comes from the auto-admit in-state pool. Another 15% is in-state non-auto-admit. The last 10% is out-of-state and international. I don't think UT has a cybersecurity degree, although I may be wrong. They have a cybersecurity specialization within computer science, which means you take a few upper division courses as part of a CS degree. UT San Antonio does have a cybersecurity degree. The DoD is offering some nice scholarships and stipends for cybersecurity and other STEM programs. The catch is you have to work one year for the DoD for every year of your scholarship. Check out the DoD's SMART program if your kid is interested in something like that.

Man, last week I was hopeful that Delta was the end of the road and that idea didn't last two days... I found this website that lets you compare variants: https://covariants.org/shared-mutations Looking at that site, Omicron looks like a bunch of variants were in a genetic car crash and this was the result. Omicron has bits of a lot of them plus a large number of new mutations. The speed of discovery and analysis of these new variants is just amazing.

The CDC's data shows that the Delta variant now represents 99.9% of all new cases in the US. The WHO has Delta at over 99% of worldwide cases. Perhaps COVID is starting to reach the "optimal design" stage. If so, I guess that's a good thing, however I'm not an expert. It gives the vaccine people a single target to shoot at and it gives the anti-vax crowd one thing to become immune to, if they survive their first round of exposure. Obviously it's bad for countries that have little access to vaccines.

All gas no brakes...

If the city does not plan to densify the land around the Green Line, then what is the point of the Green Line? That street is a short distance from the intersection of the proposed Green Line and MLK/969, which is one of the largest rail and major street intersections in the area.

Short history interruption... If you are close to DC, you can lay a flower at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier today and tomorrow only. https://www.nbcwashington.com/news/local/tomb-of-the-unknown-soldier-allows-public-arlington-national-cemetery/2875543/ It's the first time in 96 years that they have let the public get this close. They are unlikely to do this again in our lifetimes.

Pretty sure it’s free at Tarrytown Pharmacy. The do have $100 rapid COVID tests...

This is a city that owns a non-profit that owns a hotel. The non-profit doesn't run the hotel, just kinda oversees the folks running the hotel. The non-profit has exactly one employee, who is paid about $150,000 to spend no more than 20 hrs per week running the non-profit. This involves maintaining a website and running a once a month meeting. And that one employee is an ex-city council member with no background in hotel management. Find your grift folks and you will be OK.

Zero tax on $500k of household capital gain tempts folks to buy all the house they can afford. Low interest rates means they can afford a lot of house. Why be the sucker that buys the $250k house? If it doubles you've only made $250k tax free. Better to buy the $500k house. When the market doubles, you can say you live in a million dollar house, plus you've made another $250k tax free. This all works great until rates rise and values dip. If that happens, we'll have people that can afford to pay the mortgage on their million dollar purchase at a 2% interest rate, but can't afford to move and buy a $500k home at 6% interest and eat the $500k capital loss.

Maybe they do. With today's school finance system, we'll never know. The money to pay teachers and the money to build buildings come out of two different budgets. Most school districts are taxing at the maximum amount they can for the teacher budget, and in places like Austin ISD it does not matter because Robin Hood takes all the extra money for teachers and gives it to the state. Most districts are maxed out. The bond packages you do vote on pay for buildings, and you do see people voting for those. Low borrowing costs have driven down the cost of building that stuff so a district can build a football stadium at historically low borrowing costs. Or repair buildings, or buy other capital stuff. But they can't give more money to teachers. They could do something like drop all athletics and spend more on science teachers, but I'm sure that will never happen. To pay teachers more we really need to allow districts to raise their O&M tax rates (the teacher part). Changing the Robin Hood formula would allow Austin teachers to earn enough to live within driving distance of their school.

They should offer those folks a +1 or +2 deal where you can bring friend or kids or grandkids, with some arrangement that the plus people have to actually sit in the seats while the big money people enjoy the club.

Sidewalks. Those little sticks you see on roads around town. Hotels for the homeless. Billion dollar tunnels and trains to go in them. Mostly empty electric buses to replace mostly empty non-electric buses. And a lot of Robin Hood.

My theory: People who are more cautious were both more likely to follow pre-vaccine precautions and more likely to get the vaccine. They are also more likely to get tested now if they feel sick. So more cautious folks didn't get as much disease pre-vaccine but they got out of the bunker post-vaccine and they're now getting breakthrough cases. And they are more likely to go get a test if that happens. The less cautious group had more natural immunity pre-vaccine from catching COVID and they are less likely to go get a test now, because that would admit that they were morons not to get the vaccine. But eventually those that need hospitalization show up in the data.

Yes. I volunteer in the parking lot every year and see the same thing, at least what happens on the east side lot. Drop-off is easy but pick up in the dark sucks. People leave the festival and wander across the Mopac pedestrian bridge, then try to find *their* Uber somewhere on the road between Austin High and the lake. Lots of Ubers are parked looking for their customer. Lots of people walking around with their phone lights on. The road turns into gunk for 30 minutes. You can park in our east side lot and reach your car, exit the school in about a minute, turn right to go downtown or left to get to Mopac. I haven't seen what goes on on the west side but you are kinda past much of the gunk. You have to drive under Mopac and out to Lake Austin Blvd, and from there you can go left on LAB or take two rights to get on southbound Mopac.

For a $40 donation, the Austin High Band is offering parking at Austin High on Saturday October 2nd. Your donation will help our student musicians. You can purchase in advance here and guarantee a spot: http://www.ahsmaroonband.org/acl We will also be offering onsite sales on the day of the festival, until the two lots are full. We have a smaller west side lot with an entrance near the rowing dock and a larger east side lot near the Mopac exit. Other Austin High groups are offering parking on other Fridays and Saturdays during the festival. There is no parking on Sundays.

At Texas it’s not the tuition it’s the housing that can add up. West campus isn’t going to pay for itself. Even if your kid has roommates and is away from campus, Austin still costs a lot more than College Station.

What about a Beyoncé?

From the Woodward "Peril" boot, this was the Trump playbook to get Trump re-elected via Pence: http://cdn.cnn.com/cnn/2021/images/09/20/eastman.memo.pdf Had Pence gone along with this .... hard to imagine. History will write that Mike Pence, after consulting with Dan Quail and perhaps an unpublished episode of "Schoolhouse Rock", saved an election and our democracy. And then history will throw up.

SEZ empty seat solution:

I’ve been an Austin GreenChoice subscriber since 2005 or so. I pay more on my electric bill and in theory the extra money helps Austin purchase wind power. Does Austin Energy actually do that with my extra bucks? Who knows. I own a 2200 sq ft house. I could have gone for 3500 sq ft farther out, but I thought our family of four could make it in a smaller house and after the kids leave it will be more than enough for two. So I have not had to air condition 1300 extra sq ft for all of that time. It was tough not having extra room for the kid’s stuff but I have accumulated a lot less than I would have in a bigger house. I’ve planted oak trees and tried to plan for eventual large tree coverage of my property. The extra coolness will make the city just a little less warm, which will mean a tiny bit less A/C needed. It’s a tiny effect but planting trees now for coverage later is better than not doing that. I drive cars until they fall apart, and try to take care of them. It takes a lot of energy and materials to make a new one. On the other hand, I have an Amazon habit that is costing the planet way too much cardboard.

At this point, I think the situation is best summed up by the 1978 introduction to ABC's "Wild World of Sports": We thought we were done at the race car guy, but we've moved on to somewhere between the ski jump guy and the motorcycle guy, and if enough people will get the shot, we can get to the weightlifting guy.

Zilker has enough transit. You can take the 801 rapid from lots of areas of town to downtown, then take the 30 over to Zilker. Or park at the mall and take the 30. Few do that because it's easier and faster to just drive downtown and park somewhere. Also you can put lots of stuff in your car and it's a pain the ass to take lots of stuff on the bus. Zilker is one of the most accessible places in Austin for bikes. Some do that but most take a car because it's easier. The LAB right across the lake is mostly empty. The best part of the park is closed for almost three months of the year for ACL + Christmas lights prep. During the best weather of the year. Bring back the Zephyr, keep the playground clean and provide a decent food stand near the pool and I think we're done.