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Larry T. Spider

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Everything posted by Larry T. Spider

  1. I’m pretty sure you missed the part of the conversation where we were throwing out scenarios where the lege steps in to fix recapture. Of course all the options are outlandish. I guess the use of “long shots” wasn’t sufficient. 🙄
  2. Houston ISD didn’t even have a recapture payment in 2023-24. Austin ISD paid over $ 11,000 per student. These situations are nowhere near the same.
  3. HISD isn’t in nearly the same situation as far as recapture, especially on a per student basis. The optics of republicans saving AISD is also different.
  4. The difficult issue for AISD is that they have to sell their schools as a good place to send your kids or else they lose enrollment. That makes the recapture situation even worse. However that masks a ton of problems that people should know about. Stuff like basic building repair. At my last school it rained inside when it rained outside and the kids were trained on where to put the trash cans. Not sure if the video will work. IMG_8107.mov
  5. I actually think option 2 has a chance. Of course it involves a bunch of other bad shit happening first and probably would take 5-10 years to actually come to fruition.
  6. There are only two real chances at fixing the recapture issue and both are long shots. One is republican donors fighting for it. There are actually quite a few prominent ones in west Austin and westlake that send their kids to public schools. At least for elementary in AISD. Obviously an uphill battle fighting the “suck it libtards” crowd from the rest of the state. The more likely scenario is the state taking over AISD, placing somebody Republican friendly in charge, then listening to them when they figure out how bad the funding situation is. They then get to look like they saved AISD.
  7. I took a great education statistics class in grad school. You give me the demographics of a school and I can give you the test scores. There are some outliers, but very few. Larger the school, the more the correlation holds true.
  8. That would probably put me in a 2,000 calorie deficit per day. Would definitely work but too aggressive for my taste.
  9. 18,000 steps is crazy work. I’m going to do it one day to see how many calories I supposedly burn. Would be interesting just to know.
  10. Part of getting in shape was making a commitment to get at least 8k steps per day. Read some research saying there is a ton of health benefits when you get to that point. Going beyond that burns more calories, which is great, but the other benefits are already maxed out. So, I got a Fitbit to track steps and it also tracks how many calories I burn in a day. I take this with a grain of salt because I know there is a lot of variation between its calculations and reality, but I was surprised by the difference between my low days and high days. The most I have supposedly burned in a day was 3,600 and 2,200 was the low mark. I was expecting a much tighter range. If that’s even remotely accurate, then it puts a dent in my argument that weight loss is 90% diet. Now, if you’re eating 5,000 calories a day then yeah, it’s all diet. But if you are trying to eat reasonably healthy at 2,000-2,500 calories, movement is going to play a key role in your weight loss. Or the calculations could be pure shit. Who knows.
  11. McCallum has been the best kept secret in Austin ISD for at least a decade. I always laughed at the parents so desperately trying to get their kids switched over from the McCallum track to the Anderson track. Edit: the best part was listening to their thinly veiled racist reasons for wanting to switch before telling them that McCallum has a higher percentage of white students.
  12. Yeah, I have concerns about alcohol companies as well. The younger generation has a significant contingent that drinks less or not at all. The health impacts of even moderate drinking are starting to become more mainstream. California vineyards have been ripping out vines due to decreased demand after years of growth. The cost of going out and drinking certainly plays a part but I think the culture shift is the bigger issue. With that being said, the best stock I own in PM so you never really know.
  13. Dollar cost averaging into index funds in the brokerage account every two weeks. Pulled the trigger today. Fully expecting a stream of Trump tweets to obliterate me as soon as I get a decent amount in there. I get a lot of my commissions mid-summer which typically will max out the 401k or get me close. Thats when I truly expect the hammer to drop.
  14. It’s funny that you accidentally quoted me because I’m a huge cubs fan and just got done watching the game decked out in cubbies gear.
  15. I think Congress voted to give him the authority.
  16. This thread has officially been surlied. Go to hell fats, poors, and ketchup guzzlers!
  17. But they can never admit it. Just like their orange god, there's no place in their worlds to admit they were wrong, made a mistake, were duped, etc. “Biden and the libruls pushed us to this point.” ”It’s the Dems fault for running Harris. Nobody was going to vote for her.”
  18. Very similar to some of the southwestern Native American tribes. In Arizona the obesity rate is 81%. Would be interesting to study their metabolism after generations of surviving on minimal calories.
  19. That’s Anthony Mays. He came with Elizalde and was her right hand man. He was actually competent and personable, but ultimately too associated with the Elizalde brand to get the job permanently.
  20. It’s easy to convince my parents that republicans aren’t great for them. The hard part is undoing what right wing media has brainwashed into them about democrats. They believe the most outlandish things.
  21. If you combined the worst qualities of Charlie’s coaching with Herman’s personality.
  22. It was more of a comment about the boat.
  23. They got served a big fat meal with a poison pill in it.
  24. Wanted to give a some insight about how we ended up with the current superintendent. It’s way too long so TLDR: Elizalde caused this mess. First we need to go back to Paul Cruz, who was a really nice guy and generally good to work for. He did a lot to train and promote from within so we were producing a lot of good campus administrators. I went through the AP prep program and principal prep program through the district. His downside was that he wasn’t strong with systems. Things became increasingly disorganized at a district level and there were redundancies in the admin office. Special ed was a particular weakness and we went through multiple (weak) directors. When he moved on to UT, the school board wanted somebody to clean up the mess, cut unnecessary spending, and get things organized. My input was that they need a leader that understands east AND West Austin to effectively implement changes. Most districts don’t have both demographics in the same place. Then the district did the worst thing possible. The hired Elizalde to be the hammer. She came in at a time when employees were leaving public education in droves due to Covid and she never read the room. She blamed teachers and administrators for all the problems, cut crucial support staff, and ran off the rest. This eventuality led to massive staff shortages and TEA taking over the special education department because they couldn’t provide timely evaluations. Almost 20 evaluators quit under her watch because they were treated like shit. When I left, 17 other elementary principals left the same year. Because we were treated like shit. Teacher turnover was over 50% per year at many campuses. It was the most toxic culture I’ve ever personally witnessed. Additionally, she pissed off west Austin parents by getting rid of PTA funded positions, which left schools scrambling. The district had no plan to replace those services. Poorer schools made it work with title 1 funds but schools that didn’t qualify were screwed. The system needed to change but her communication was a giant middle finger to families willing to donate money to hire extra teachers - even teachers for schools their kids didn’t attend. Enrollment declines continue, which kicks the recapture formula into high gear, which turbo fucks the budget even further. After using AISD as a stepping stone and creating irreparable damage in a short amount of time, she bounces. Now the school board has to put the pieces back together. Special education is falling apart, there are massive teacher shortages, the AP/principal prep programs were cut so no pipeline there, and parents feel burned. They decide they need somebody that understands East AND West Austin and can put a friendly face on the district. Somebody that gets AISD and will put people first. They don’t have many insiders to choose from because Elizalde ran them off, replaced them with her own people, then took her people to Dallas. So they go with Segura, who was a former AISD student, but not even certified to be a superintendent at the time. It’s probably too hard of an undertaking for somebody’s first superintendent job but I understand why they went there. The summer after I left, I had a principal acquaintance call and ask me for a job. She had 20 unfilled positions and it was July. Dozens of schools were looking at starting the year with substitute teachers in 10-20 positions. Segura may have dropped the ball on some of this stuff with middle schools, but it’s important to understand the shit show he inherited from Elizalde. It’s also why he talks about not hurting staff with these changes, although we should always be talking about students first.
  25. West Austin problems.
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