Larry T. Spider

There is no way for our current city council or any one that would be elected in the future to come up with a reasonable position on homelessness. We love electing loons even if it will clearly worsen our quality of life. Remember the whole Uber thing? Guess who is still running this city... The best hope is for an outside organization to come up with a reasonable plan, gain public support for that plan, then have the city adopt and fund it. Quality ideas are never going to be generated by the city.

Used to play it a lot as a kid in the 90s. Plenty of bum camping near the train tracks even back then.

I read that as “put me down for 5 for Bernie”.

I read it but I’m too dumb to get it.

Lighten up Francis. It was a joke about people being scared of the east side back in the day. I worked in East Austin schools for years where I was the only white male in the building most of the time. It was a running joke about how white people were scared to come over there. Austin has never had a ghetto in the time I have lived here since 1991.

I think the east side about half a mile from dt would be great. All these people bitch about that part of town becoming gentrified. We could fix that problem in a hurry. I’m hungry for the nostalgia of running for my life on the east side.

Michael Bennet (D) Joe Biden (D) 1 Bill de Blasio (D) Cory Booker (D) 2 Steve Bullock (D) Pete Buttigieg (D) 3 + 2 Julián Castro (D) John Delaney (D) Tulsi Gabbard (D) Kirsten Gillibrand (D) Mike Gravel (D) Kamala Harris (D) 2 John Hickenlooper (D) Jay Inslee (D) 2 Amy Klobuchar (D) 2 Wayne Messam (D)  Seth Moulton (D) Beto O'Rourke (D) 5 Tim Ryan (D) Bernie Sanders (D) Eric Swalwell (D) Elizabeth Warren (D) 2 + 4 Marianne Williamson (D) Andrew Yang (D)

From the article: "Everything is focused on redistricting," state Sen. Kelly Hancock, R-North Richland Hills, said at a recent Tea Party meeting as he fielded questions about the demise of some controversial legislation this session. "There is nothing more important — not only to Texas, but literally the nation — than to make sure that we maintain the Texas House ... going into redistricting because if you look at the nation — we lose Texas, we lose the nation. And there's no other place to go." I read that as: we are going to cheat like hell to maintain or worsen our gerrymandered districts to our benefit.

This is the most ludicrous thing I’ve seen in a while. I’m beyond pissed. Who the hell thinks it’s ok to refer to a 4 year old as a toddler?

It’s not quite that simple because in the old formula certain students were allotted more money. The new formula is roughly a 20% increase for all students but takes away some of the extra funding attached to certain students. Still a big overall win for districts. Austin came out with 7% for experienced teachers and 6% for everybody else. I would guess that nearby districts will do something similar but haven’t heard any announcements yet. AISD jumped first because of the struggle to retain teachers with our huge recapture payments (still over 500 million), the high cost of living, and the traffic from the burbs, which is where teachers can afford to live. They also increased the stipend for bilingual teachers, which is our biggest shortage. Its certainly not life changing money but it’s really nice to end a legislative session like this. First time in my career.

Was in London and Paris a couple of summers ago. I met some really cool people from China that were friendly and engaging. The ones in tour groups were the scourge of the earth though. All the annoying behaviors already mentioned. They moved like they had a list of 1000 items to check off before the end of the day or they would die. It didn’t seem like an enjoyable experience at all.

Ran across this on CNN: Local newspaper Het Nieuwsblad reports that Bruges will no longer advertise or promote day trips to the city, and measures will be taken to cut back the number of cruise ships able to dock at Zeebrugge port. Currently, the port has room for five cruise ships at a time, but the number will be capped at two per day. Cruise companies will also be asked to dock during the week instead of on weekends, which will help spread the crowds out among more days.

I was on the plaintiffs side until I read that they have a kid named Cashlyn.

I’ve actually done a fair amount of research on consequences and better ways to change behavior through my work as a school administrator. Consequences such as detention are the kid version of jail time. There is the same underlying philosophy that people want to avoid this so they won’t do whatever behavior we are trying to get them to stop. The good news is that this approach works well for 95% of people. The bad news is that those were likely the people that were going to follow the rules regardless of the consequences because they have the skill set to do so. It doesn’t do a damn bit of good for the people that lack problem solving skills, frustration tolerance, social skills/awareness, etc. We often mistake a persons failures to follow the rules as a lack of willingness. This means our philosophy on how do deal with it is rooted in tools related to motivation - rewards and consequences. You could often offer these people a million dollars to do certain things and they would not be able to. It’s not a motivation issue, it’s a skills issue and that’s why our jails are largely a failure with high recidivism rates. I actually look at the people in the college cheating scandal and think they are generally in the 95% that can have their behavior influenced by rewards and consequences. I think jail time would be effective for deterring this type of behavior. I also think 1 month would do just as much good as 18.

At the rate they are moving here, we should remove the word free from the thread title.

Brat still remembers and continues the search for the servant girl annihilator.

All of this.

Off work for the summer and was hoping to work on my game at one of the poker clubs. Would prefer online after all the stuff that’s been happening and I can get a ton of hands in. A couple questions for my favorite degenerates: What is the best site these days? I play mostly tourneys. Don’t care much about cash games. What is the easiest site to get your money on and out of for people in Texas? Anything else I should be thinking about?

Republicans fall in line and democrats fall in love. That process was somewhat avoided last time because Hillary was always the presumed nominee. I think they are looking to fall in love with somebody out of this huge field and haven’t found them yet. Somebody will take off and fly past joe is my prediction.

I’m mostly just a lurker on this thread but got damn that sucks. Not sure why people have such an obsession with hammering AK pre flop. You’re a flip against any pocket pair and fucked against AA or KK (unless it’s sooner). You going to risk your whole stack hoping somebody was willing to go all with KQ or worse? Good luck with that.

There is a formula but good luck figuring it out. It goes on for pages like this. Main point is that if you have a ton of propety value and relatively few students, the state is going to redistribute a lot of it, which is fine. The formula just really screws AISD. Until this session, I know the formula was never adjusted since it’s inception. At the time, rich suburban districts paid in the most. But the rapid rise of the big cities has wreaked havoc on the formula, especially for Austin isd. Declining student enrollment + property value is going up = bad news. https://tea.texas.gov/Finance_and_Grants/State_Funding/Chapter_41_Wealth_Equalization/Chapter_41_Wealth_Equalization/ Sec. 41.002. EQUALIZED WEALTH LEVEL. (a) A school district may not have a wealth per student that exceeds: (1) the wealth per student that generates the amount of maintenance and operations tax revenue per weighted student available to a district with maintenance and operations tax revenue per cent of tax effort equal to the maximum amount provided per cent under Section 42.101(a) or (b), for the district's maintenance and operations tax effort equal to or less than the rate equal to the sum of the product of the state compression percentage, as determined under Section 42.2516, multiplied by the maintenance and operations tax rate adopted by the district for the 2005 tax year and any additional tax effort included in calculating the district's compressed tax rate under Section 42.101(a-1); (2) the wealth per student that generates the amount of maintenance and operations tax revenue per weighted student available to the Austin Independent School District, as determined by the commissioner in cooperation with the Legislative Budget Board, for the first six cents by which the district's maintenance and operations tax rate exceeds the rate equal to the sum of the product of the state compression percentage, as determined under Section 42.2516, multiplied by the maintenance and operations tax rate adopted by the district for the 2005 tax year and any additional tax effort included in calculating the district's compressed tax rate under Section 42.101(a-1), subject to Section 41.093(b-1); or (3) $319,500, for the district's maintenance and operations tax effort that exceeds the amount of tax effort described by Subdivision (2). (b) For purposes of this chapter, the commissioner shall adjust, in accordance with Section 42.2521, the taxable values of a school district that, due to factors beyond the control of the board of trustees, experiences a rapid decline in the tax base used in calculating taxable values.

His last just finished at my school. So bummed. Such a great family. His wife will probably be at Lamar more next year.

Yes, it is the main reason teachers are not paid more. AISD is desperate to pay more but we were in the process of cutting 30 million this year to keep up with recapture payments. We cut all lunch monitors, a bunch of services, and each campus has their budget from the district reduced across the board. You can’t take 46% of a districts budget and expect anything but drastic cuts. Most aisd schools need significant work due to age. We passed a billion dollar bond that will help with a lot of things but it never should have happened. We could have paid for it without the bond if we were keeping more of our own money. You are correct that HISD and area schools are doing better. They pay 2x less into recapture despite being 5x bigger as far as enrollment and the funding that goes with it. Edit: under the new bill HISD will go from paying over 300 million in recapture to 0. AISD will go from over 700 million to 550ish.

I’m assuming this was directed at me. I’m suggesting doing almost exactly what the lege did in this session. They got it almost exactly right, which means I should be buying lotto tickets. 1. Increase the average daily attendance funding attached to students. 2. Ensure that a good portion goes to raises for teachers but allow districts some flexibility on how the rest is spent. 3. Have the state kick in some money to reduce the burden of recapture on districts paying a ton into the system. 4. Shore up TRS a little more - was already in ok shape. Bonnen deserves a lot of credit for getting this done and getting people to work together. In my 12 years in education, this is the first session where I feel like we are leaving better off than we started.

The problem isn’t that aisd is sharing money. The problem is that 46% of Austin’s money goes elsewhere. That amount is equal to all salaries paid by the district from bus driver to superintendent. As a result, you can teach for 10 years and have a masters degree in Austin and not hit 50k. Many other districts are able to start first year teachers at more than that which puts us at a huge competitive disadvantage. We have had to close schools because they are crumbling while a district in south Texas built a water park. This forces the district into passing bonds they shouldn’t have to because bond money can’t be touched by recapture- but asks even more of our taxpayers. Under this plan, the schools in south Texas will continue to get the same money. Roughly half will come from the state and half from wealthy districts. AISD will continue to send over 500 million to other districts.