Larry T. Spider

I’m still thinking about Royce vs MJ. I will say that MJ was the second politician I ever donated to and she did really well against Carter. I live in that district and she worked her ass off. It seems like the stage might be too big too fast and she has lost some momentum. She was a great fit for 31 because she understood the demographics so well. This is a different game but I don’t know much about Royce yet. Im also still contemplating Imam vs Mann. Imam is clearly smart and has been extremely visible. When I have heard her speak, it’s been less than inspiring though. I’m willing to forgive that as she’s new to this and has other strengths. Still need to research Mann and would like thoughts y’all have. I think one poster on here knows Imam.

I think that’s a good call. It’s still June and he can get in shape safely on his own.

If I was a senior high school football player, I would be on suicide watch right now. I lived my whole life up until that point for that year.

It’s really hard to say without knowing the family or kid. If I were to generalize, I would say that in person schooling provides a lot of benefits compared to online school. If they really think that there isn’t going to be in person school at all this year, then go for it. But, what if we are back to a full schedule by November? It would suck for that kid to still be at home in April because the parents gambled wrong. Depending on how it’s set up, I guess they could go with the online school until regular classes resume. Not sure if they would be out of a lot of money with that route. There could be gaps because the public school will be presenting new content from day 1 until they are back in person. Last year was more review because it was towards the end of the year. Not an option this time. As I have said many times, every school has done this differently. We aren’t losing kids because we give them a lot of time to see and interact with each other and teacher on zoom. We did zoom lessons and “office hours” via zoom daily. We also provided small group intervention and special education differentiated lessons via zoom as best as we could. It wasn’t required for kids that hated it, but it was there for the 80% that wanted it. TEA is forcing things to go more that direction. So, if the kid is looking for more instruction/interaction it will likely happen with the public school. BUT we are not experts in this at all and most teachers hate the shit out of it.

TEA is requiring a return to more normal grading. Its going to be rough for a lot of kids that don't have much support. If we can get kids in the building at least one day a week in a hybrid model, they will get an entire day of small group instruction. Would help a ton.

What people need to understand is that there is no AISD plan. This is all school by school. If you are pissed at what you got at one school, don’t assume it’s the same at the school down the road.

School districts have had dates they can’t start before or end after in order to protect the travel and tourism group’s summer. They do a lot of successful lobbying. In recent years, districts have been able to apply to be a district of innovation which can give them more flexibility with their calendar, amongst many other things. Then covid happened. This is the most flexibility I have ever seen. I really hope we are able to work it into somewhat of a year round schedule. The “summer slide” hurts low income kids the hardest and there are very few summer school opportunities these days.

Why would there be a flight out of the city due to distance learning when the suburban school districts are doing the same thing? Cool rant though. Edit: teachers hate online teaching more than parents will ever hate having to make their kids do it. Many with enough years to retire are thinking about calling it quits because they hate it so much. I got an email this week from a teacher that said if we go back 100% online she is done. Don’t think they want this.

If schools literally have only one measure that determines their performance, you can’t blame them for emphasizing it. Their jobs rides on those scores. If my school doesn’t perform, I will be replaced with a quickness (by someone who will get scores). I highly recommend getting involved and advocating for change. I’m not anti standardized testing - just that it’s the only measure that is used to judge us. Passing the test is no longer enough. Students must make progress from one year to the next, meaning that you often have the most pressure for your highest kids to do well. AND the school is placed in a group of schools with similar demographics to compete for “distinctions”. That means my aisd school has to beat out the westlake, south lake, and any other fancy lake schools. More pressure for high scores. Another sad reality is that we have learned that staar prep helps scores. Teaching the content and having it understood by students is not enough at the elementary level. They need to see it in the same format that they will see it on a standardized test. It sucks because we are talking about 8 year olds. Poor schools bitched forever about staar but we only saw TEA change anything when rich white parents got involved. They walked back a lot of the end of course testing requirement. If that’s your demographic and you aren’t happy you have an obligation to say something. TEA will listen.

Yes, read the document later and it seems better than I initially thought.

You are certainly not alone in that. We are planning a lot of surveys where parents indicate their plans so that we know how to allocate staff. The "get everybody back to normal" crowd vastly underestimates the number of people who don't want to send their kids back. It creates a ton of impossibilities as far as what to do with staff.

Exactly. The talk has very quickly gone from 2 days in person with the ability to scale that up to full time to all virtual being back in the mix. Almost all of my staff was willing to return as of two weeks ago. Going to have to send out another survey because I have a feeling I would get different answers now.

After my calls today, I will just say to not expect an answer as soon as we hoped. The cases spiking right now are complicating things. Im at my school figuring out temp check locations and potential quarantine rooms. Also, which staff members will be sent to the front to actually do the screenings. Fun.

We are so fucked.

They tried that once and he told people to go to joe 30330.com

If you truly care about Chicago gun violence victims, then I commend you. I care as well. Chicago is my favorite city, I go there often and have many friends in the city. Sadly, I usually hear about Chicago shootings as a way to score cheap political points. It’s not to honor their memory or search for solutions. This was the first mention of Chicago in this thread and it didn’t exactly radiate compassion:

I remember reading about that during the last drought. It was a crazy amount. In some of the other threads I’ve said that traffic/mobility is the critical issue of the next 10 years for Austin. It will make or break us in terms of ever having a functional system. If you are looking 20+ years, water will be the major issue. Austin metro will have over 4 million people so droughts will strain the supply much more than currently.

I will also say that saying wildly mean things about HRC worked because people saw her as corrupt and untrustworthy. When trump tries it with biden it will backfire, other than with his worthless base. Biden is going to pick Kamala and set her loose on Trump. Then joe can be positive and optimistic with feel good stories.

That story has happened 1,000 times in Joe’s life. He has his issues but he’s a good and decent man. How many people can say dotard has gone out of his way to help somebody on a personal level with no cameras or fanfare? No expectation of repayment? Voters will connect with Joe on this level. We are a broken country in many ways and the Republican Party has been masterful at tapping into that hate. Voters didn’t see HRC as a good person so there was no difference to choose from. I still think decency will win out in the end this time. If not, flush this country down the toilet.

Fuck china

He’s got to get the right leaning folks that have left him back on board. War on abortion is the fastest, most direct route.

Would love to see the 2016 version of that map.

Good nomination. He’s on the list.

Great hockey player

Pretty much every list of safest cities in the US has Austin on it somewhere. If you’re scared of Austin, you’re probably going to be scared anywhere.