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Larry T. Spider

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Larry T. Spider last won the day on December 26 2019

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  1. AISD did extensive studies on the decline. Largest factor was cost of living and larger families moving to the burbs. For a while they had a team trying to find families affordable housing within AISD boundaries. Charters are the next biggest issue. This doesn’t include all of them. As far as the AISD vs HISD level of hysteria, only time will tell. I’ll still take Austin libs over just about anybody not on the east or west coast. Let’s just say I would not want to be the appointed superintendent.
  2. The general population isn’t aware of almost any political news, so that’s not surprising. I think a TEA takeover of Austin would be much more newsworthy because of the political activism of the district, proximity to the Capitol, and the political/connected nature of the parents. Houston ISD doesn’t have a west Austin contingent that largely despises TEA and Abbott. They are 80% low income and the other 20% are fine as long as their magnet programs don’t get cut. I think AISD could keep the takeover in the media enough to create some pressure that the state actually deliver some results. Just to reiterate, I rate my idea that a state takeover leads to recapture being fixed at a 1% possibility. But I rate the legislature doing it because it’s the right thing at 0%.
  3. And who exactly is looking out for AISD’s interests at the state level to make that happen? I almost got laughed off the board last spring, but this is my pipe dream scenario where it gets fixed. The state takes over and wants to look like the heroes solving all of AISD’s problems. They will be under a microscope even more than with Houston for all the political reasons. They get the formula tweaked or some type of carve out that benefits AISD. Then they fix a lot of the financial problems that the district could have solved on their own, claim victory, and eventually move on to their next target with increased political capital. Is that likely? Of course not. But can you give me a more plausible scenario of recapture getting fixed in the next decade?
  4. It’s nice when people show you that it’s pointless before you waste a bunch of keystrokes.
  5. Let’s say you are low income and get awarded the 10k voucher for your child. Where are you going to go with that? St Andrews costs 23k per year so you have to come up with 13k, which you don’t have. The voucher is worthless to you. Now let’s say you are upper middle class and get the same 10k voucher. You have been opting for public school because 23k is a big expense. Now your costs are 13k and that’s more manageable. Only about 1k per month so you go. That low income kid from the first scenario is actually worse off now because the funding for your upper middle class kid is pulled from the system. There is an economy of scale to this and each kid that leaves hurts the ones left behind. Which brings us back to my original comment about all of this being a feature not a bug.
  6. That’s definitely the goal. Some states have conjured up voucher systems that (unsuccessfully) prioritize those kids. Pretty telling that ours is the opposite.
  7. The post I quoted said “during school hours” not “the locker room” and it was referring to all teachers, not just coaches.
  8. Imagine telling degreed professionals when they can or can’t look at their phones. There’s already a massive shortage due to lack of pay and lack of respect.
  9. McCallum should be fine through all of this. It’s been the most underrated HS in the district for years and always cracks me up when certain uppity demographics turn their nose up at it.
  10. Long Island prosecutors have used DNA to arrest a suspect of a murder that happed there in the 80s. I’m bringing it up here because three other people had previously been convicted of this murder. They were eventually exonerated after having their names drug through the mud and years of their lives wasted. New use of DNA seems to be shedding some light on how bad prosecutors and detectives were at actually convicting the right people. The problem is we are only going back and using it on cases where the original conviction was overturned so it is still technically unsolved. How many thousands are wrongly sitting in jail and nobody is looking at the case because it’s “solved”.
  11. I’m here for it!
  12. Ok, who is going to watch this and report back? I have to sit though a lot of school board meetings to give a 5 min presentation and refuse to do it off the clock 😀
  13. I’m sure that Boswell did cut a deal for Pemberton parents to stay there. It’s very on brand for her and has nothing to do with my point. And yes, I know the BW and Casis parents are very connected, they basically share a neighborhood. But I stand by my statement about most BW parents wanting to be a part of a smaller, more relaxed school than Casis. I have had dozens, if not hundreds of direct conversations with BW families about this exact topic when I was an AISD employee very close to this situation. Not going to say anymore about BW on here because I’ll dox myself and don’t really have any interest in doing so.
  14. It’s more of a cultural thing. BW parents tend to like a smaller, laid back school without the hyper intense parent culture. I think they would get more pushback if Casis was the plan.
  15. I understand the portable games are frustrating and there is a potential bait and switch on the bond. None of that is fair to BW. Especially to former Pease parents that have stuck with the district. The thing that it doesn’t change is that BW is a small school serving 200 neighborhood kids at an inefficient per student cost AND the building needs 6.2 million in work. Even if you do the work, it doesn’t have the size to absorb students from other schools. I don’t know what type of work Matthews needs, but I know it can absorb BW kids while the reverse isn’t true. The district has to move to larger, financially efficient schools. It’s the complete opposite of what I believe in as an educator. Small, high quality neighborhood schools with tailored offerings are the best of public education. I always chose to work at schools like that. The state turbo fucked that reality for AISD.
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