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Posted
It was $700Mish in 2020-2021.  Criminal.  Oh yeah, AISD has less than 50% the number of students that HISD has.
?url=http%3A%2F%2Fnpr-brightspot.s3.amazonaws.com%2F2e%2F0e%2F3f4e92404c7ca72c23a7ab35b79e%2Faisd-recapture-study-02-11-22.png

It was a good plan, but hasnt changed because:

1) It goes to a general fund
2) It doesnt impact red areas as much
3) the state has effectively deflected blame to local entities
4) it punishes austin
5) they’ve crushed legal challenges to equity and adequacy, even though the state constitution requires it

A functioning governmental body would adjust the recapture formula at least every decade as part of a broader effort to improve public education for all.
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Posted (edited)
26 minutes ago, texasdago said:

It was $700Mish in 2020-2021.  Criminal.  Oh yeah, AISD has less than 50% the number of students that HISD has.

 

I'm too lazy to look but it is up to $800M+ in '22 or '23. I remember seeing that in '25 the state is now collecting over $5B in recapture money. After paying off the poor ISDs, it sends the excess, which is a significant amount, to the State General fund to use for non-education shit. Give the excess monies back, Abbott, you dipshit.

 

Also for the $800M AISD payment year, the 2nd highest paying ISD was Houston ISD. They only paid a little over $200M. AIDS is getting ROYALLY fucked.

Edited by crash_davis
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Posted (edited)

I was curious about eco-dis population vs TEA score, so I created this for Austin ISD from the TEA data.  The TEA translates the score to A-F grades just like you remember from school, 90-100 is an A, 80-89 is a B, 70-79 is a C, 60-69 is a D, below 60 is an F.  Five F's in a row means the school closes and/or TEA can take over the school district, and a school needs a C to break the chain of F's.

What is TEA really measuring here?  Seems like they are locking low eco-dis schools into an A/B score and locking high eco-dis schools into B-F with a chance of closure.  This would be OK if they were using this data to try to help the bottom dots, but they are using it to close schools, force chaos with school mergers and take over school districts.

image.thumb.png.286e5543bd144126b7058de676859aa8.png

Edited by Texas Jeff
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Posted
1 hour ago, Texas Jeff said:

I was curious about eco-dis population vs TEA score, so I created this for Austin ISD from the TEA data.  The TEA translates the score to A-F grades just like you remember from school, 90-100 is an A, 80-89 is a B, 70-79 is a C, 60-69 is a D, below 60 is an F.  Five F's in a row means the school closes and/or TEA can take over the school district, and a school needs a C to break the chain of F's.

What is TEA really measuring here?  Seems like they are locking low eco-dis schools into an A/B score and locking high eco-dis schools into B-F with a chance of closure.  This would be OK if they were using this data to try to help the bottom dots, but they are using it to close schools, force chaos with school mergers and take over school districts.

image.thumb.png.286e5543bd144126b7058de676859aa8.png

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.

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Posted
2 hours ago, texasdago said:

It was $700Mish in 2020-2021.  Criminal.  Oh yeah, AISD has less than 50% the number of students that HISD has.

Austin ISD paid hundreds of millions more than other districts in Texas' ' recapture' program | KUT Radio, Austin's NPR Station

over a billion this year. austin and westlake property taxes fund this fucking state.

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Posted

I have yet to see a cogent argument for why the 8th largest school district in Texas contributes 3.5X as much money as any other school district in the state.  The counterargument is usually "property values hurr durr durr" which is total prima facie lunacy.  Come on.  We get fucked year after year, and gleefully so.

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Posted
23 hours ago, Texas Jeff said:

If you are lucky, your kid runs into the perfect teacher that they click with and love the subject and your kid is off to the races.  My kids had some great band directors and band kids that gave them a group to hang out with

200.gif

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Posted
23 minutes ago, jimmyjazz said:

I have yet to see a cogent argument for why the 8th largest school district in Texas contributes 3.5X as much money as any other school district in the state.  The counterargument is usually "property values hurr durr durr" which is total prima facie lunacy.  Come on.  We get fucked year after year, and gleefully so.

Come on, you know why.

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Posted
3 hours ago, crash_davis said:

I'm too lazy to look but it is up to $800M+ in '22 or '23. I remember seeing that in '25 the state is now collecting over $5B in recapture money. After paying off the poor ISDs, it sends the excess, which is a significant amount, to the State General fund to use for non-education shit. Give the excess monies back, Abbott, you dipshit.

 

Also for the $800M AISD payment year, the 2nd highest paying ISD was Houston ISD. They only paid a little over $200M. AIDS is getting ROYALLY fucked.

This fucking infuriates me every damned time my brain is forced to confront it. And there seems to be no movement whatsoever to force the lege to use the money for the purpose it was constitutionally designed. Ought to be a crime. 

Or, just raise the per-student funding a lot after so many years of neglect and underfunding, and we could keep a lot of our damned money in our own community for EDUCATION as it was meant.  I know, might as well scream into the void because they don't have to do it to keep getting reelected until the end of time in this godforsaken state.

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Posted

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.

Posted
1 minute ago, Larry T. Spider said:

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.

So....no chance.  You coulda just said "no chance" and been done with it.

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Posted
2 minutes ago, Brisketexan said:

So....no chance.  You coulda just said "no chance" and been done with it.

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. 

Posted

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.

Posted
15 minutes ago, Larry T. Spider said:

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.

Option 2 hasn’t happened for HISD so you can mark that one off the list.

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Posted
8 minutes ago, royiv said:

Option 2 hasn’t happened for HISD so you can mark that one off the list.

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.

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Posted

I must be aggy level of stupid to not understand this with AISD and sending this much more than anyone else to the state.  You would think DISD and HISD have more property value overall than AISD given the commercial values of their downtown areas.  What am I missing?

Posted
46 minutes ago, Larry T. Spider said:

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.

I mean this in the nicest possible way because your posts on this topic are normally spot on, but are you currently on drugs and, if so, may I have some?

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Posted
23 minutes ago, royiv said:

I mean this in the nicest possible way because your posts on this topic are normally spot on, but are you currently on drugs and, if so, may I have some?

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.

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Posted
1 hour ago, Larry T. Spider said:

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

At least they learned a skill.

Posted
31 minutes ago, royiv said:

I mean this in the nicest possible way because your posts on this topic are normally spot on, but are you currently on drugs and, if so, may I have some?

TEA isn’t fixing AISD or fixing recapture. You’re delusional.

Posted (edited)
5 minutes ago, royiv said:

TEA isn’t fixing AISD or fixing recapture. You’re delusional.

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. 🙄

Edited by Larry T. Spider
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Posted
1 hour ago, Nothing To Add said:

I must be aggy level of stupid to not understand this with AISD and sending this much more than anyone else to the state.  You would think DISD and HISD have more property value overall than AISD given the commercial values of their downtown areas.  What am I missing?

as a resident of west lake hills and an eanes property tax payor (25% property value increase yoy this year holla!), i suspect the one of the contributing factors is that dallas and houston have some much more extreme poor ass areas that austin just does not have. austin has extremely high property value areas but with the gentrification of the east side and even dove springs, north east austin is the only truly ghetto ass area left in austin from a property tax perspective. Houston, Dallas, San Antonio, and El Paso all have some extremely nice areas but the extreme on the other end for them is far more extreme than austin. austin has somewhat insulated itself from those extremes. hisd doesn't just serve the areas west of 45, the also serve the areas east of 45. so they probably even out a bit more.

the other thing is places like frisco fucking gaming the system and resetting their the tax % regularly to ensure they are not in a net payor position. that is the shit that needs to be revised.

but the thing about it that pisses me off by far the most about it all is not the concept of recapture as a principle. i grew up in poor ass east texas and we would have probably had school in a creek bed if it weren't for it...but it is that it is not being utilized for education necessarily but instead is absconded with by the general fund and held hostage by politically motivated pieces of shit who are hell bent on pushing through voucher bullshit so their p.e. buddies with their boiler room charter schools can make a fortune. and that money very well may go to putting up razor balls for performative bullshit on the rio grande as opposed to actually funding schools in economically challenged communities. fucking makes me irate and i with nothing but pain and misery on every fucking cocksucking piece of shit involved in texas politics that allows this horseshit to go on.

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Posted
13 minutes ago, Larry T. Spider said:

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. 🙄

I got it. I’m just not as optimistic as you are that there’s even a long shot. When was the last time the lege did something to make the lives of people in Austin or Texas better?

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Posted
On 4/25/2025 at 2:36 PM, jimmyjazz said:

I have yet to see a cogent argument for why the 8th largest school district in Texas contributes 3.5X as much money as any other school district in the state.  The counterargument is usually "property values hurr durr durr" which is total prima facie lunacy.  Come on.  We get fucked year after year, and gleefully so.

https://www.austinisd.org/propa

You forget, AISD sees shortcomings, and thinks they'll just raise taxes to fix it.  They raise taxes 90MM, only to realize a fraction of that in the AISD coffers, while the state takes their cut.  AISD props are blindly approved by the typical Austin voter; wash, rinse, repeat.  Keep adding those numbers onto the recapture amounts, and you can begin to see where the major disparities come from.  I feel like at least some of the other school districts get more creative with their bonds to apply the funds to areas that are non-recapture eligible, like facilities or capital investments.  That said, I'm clearly no expert by any means in school finance laws, but know there's ways to circumvent the Robinhood crap.

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Posted
On 4/25/2025 at 3:00 PM, Brisketexan said:

So....no chance.  You coulda just said "no chance" and been done with it.

I mean, there's a third scenario that is actually somehow more likely than Republicans in charge, who broke it, fixing the issue themselves.  Which means it's slightly less than 0%

Posted
2 hours ago, PvilleStang said:

They raise taxes 90MM, only to realize a fraction of that in the AISD coffers, while the state takes their cut. 

I’m somewhere between a grimace and a laugh about that one (since I’m paying into it), but the fact that Austin voters approved that particular bond was insane.   Let’s raise taxes by $171 million so we can keep $41 million of it.  
 

I guarantee you if we could deploy $171 million for the 2026 election we’d run this state, update the recapture formula, and maybe have a more permanent solution.  

Posted
1 hour ago, LCHorn said:

I’m somewhere between a grimace and a laugh about that one (since I’m paying into it), but the fact that Austin voters approved that particular bond was insane.   Let’s raise taxes by $171 million so we can keep $41 million of it.  
 

I guarantee you if we could deploy $171 million for the 2026 election we’d run this state, update the recapture formula, and maybe have a more permanent solution.  

Huh? Are you suggesting a bond election to raise $171 million across all Austin tax payers and then use it to fund Democratic campaigns?

Posted

Before the non-Austin people ask, the A school in the east side of I-35 is LASA, which is a magnet school. It's also the academically best school in Austin.

I-35 is the proverbial train track. Predominantly, one side has the wealth, the other does not. 

Posted
47 minutes ago, SquishMitten said:

Huh? Are you suggesting a bond election to raise $171 million across all Austin tax payers and then use it to fund Democratic campaigns?

Not with a bond election, that would be silly.  
 

My point is that Austin voters don’t seem to realize that $130 million of it is a tax on their (our) unwillingness to adapt to the current electoral environment.  And it would be far cheaper to spend that on elections outside of Austin but willing to make transactional decisions for financial support and willing to play ball on state education funding.  

Posted (edited)
47 minutes ago, Larry T. Spider said:

Haven’t verified the accuracy of this, but it underscores the problems in trying to run two different districts at the same time. 

IMG_4455.jpeg

It is both accurate and IMHO a bit misleading.

It is accurate in that it shows the A and F rated schools in Austin, and it clearly states that in the label on the bottom.  And, we know that TEA's rating system is biased so that wealthy areas are  likely to get an A or a B and poorer areas are  likely to get a D or an F.  The division the picture shows probably extends beyond the ISD boundaries and probably exists in every city in Texas.  Rich areas get the A's.  Poor areas get the F's.

It is misleading in that it omits schools that made a B-D score, so that it looks like Austin only has A and F schools.

In Austin ISD:

  * 30 schools got an F
  * 19 schools got a D (and I will let you guess where most of them are)
  * 12 schools got a C (a group that includes Travis, Crockett and Akins, southside HS's are doing pretty well for their demographic)
  * 28 schools got a B (and I will let you guess where most of them are, but also point out Mendez MS as a southeast in-district charter with horrible demographics got a B)
  * 24 schools got an A

So 54 dots are shown on the map, but 59 are not.  The picture makes it look like the district is perfectly split between A and F.  It's true that there is a split in Austin, but that same split likely occurs in other cities because of the way demographics factors into TEA scores, and the picture does not show any schools with moderate grades, which represents over half of the schools in the district.

 

Edited by Texas Jeff
Posted
34 minutes ago, crash_davis said:

Before the non-Austin people ask, the A school in the east side of I-35 is LASA, which is a magnet school. It's also the academically best school in Austin.

I-35 is the proverbial train track. Predominantly, one side has the wealth, the other does not. 

Wait, you mean gentrification didn't fix my schools?  But my modern farmhouse duplex is pricey!

East side is where it's at in many ways... but also decidedly NOT where it's at.

Posted (edited)

About school finance, you always have to remember that there are two buckets of money.  One bucket, maintenance and operations or M&O, is subject to recapture and goes towards daily expenses like school supplies and paying teachers.  The other one, interest and sinking or I&S, goes towards paying off debt created by bonds.  Bonds are issued to build stuff like school buildings and football stadiums and I&S money pays them off, like a mortgage.

So any time you talk about a vote or a tax rate change, you need to understand which bucket you are talking about to understand recapture.

Last year, Austin ISD held a tax rate election so that they could add "copper pennies" to the tax rate.  This was for the M&O bucket.  This was NOT a bond.  Nothing will be built using the money.  Since it was subject to recapture, 75% of the copper penny money was going to go to the state.  This was not a surprise to anyone.  The district taxed you $170 million per year so that they could raise $40 million per year, but that gave them $40 million to spend per year.  They spent about half on teacher raises and about half on other stuff.  $130 million per year went to recapture, which went to the state, which went to the general fund, which is not required to be spent on education.

Austin ISD is maxed out on their M&O tax rate, their "golden pennies" (money they get to keep without recapture) and their "copper pennies" (money they get to keep after recapture).  They have a $110 million budget deficit and they are going to run out of money in about 15 months if they do not reduce spending.

In 2017 and 2022, Austin ISD held a bond election so that they could renovate and replace buildings throughout the district. These WERE bond elections.  The money was not subject to recapture.  About 13 cents of your tax rate goes towards paying off these projects.  The bulk of the 2022 projects are in the 'eastern crescent' of Austin, which includes many of the schools that now have an "F" rating ... and could be closed in the next few years.

Edited by Texas Jeff
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Posted
28 minutes ago, Texas Jeff said:

About school finance, you always have to remember that there are two buckets of money.  One bucket, maintenance and operations or M&O, is subject to recapture and goes towards daily expenses like school supplies and paying teachers.  The other one, interest and sinking or I&S, goes towards paying off debt created by bonds.  Bonds are issued to build stuff like school buildings and football stadiums and I&S money pays them off, like a mortgage.

So any time you talk about a vote or a tax rate change, you need to understand which bucket you are talking about to understand recapture.

Last year, Austin ISD held a tax rate election so that they could add "copper pennies" to the tax rate.  This was for the M&O bucket.  This was NOT a bond.  Nothing will be built using the money.  Since it was subject to recapture, 75% of the copper penny money was going to go to the state.  This was not a surprise to anyone.  The district taxed you $170 million per year so that they could raise $40 million per year, but that gave them $40 million to spend per year.  They spent about half on teacher raises and about half on other stuff.  $130 million per year went to recapture, which went to the state, which went to the general fund, which is not required to be spent on education.

Austin ISD is maxed out on their M&O tax rate, their "golden pennies" (money they get to keep without recapture) and their "copper pennies" (money they get to keep after recapture).  They have a $110 million budget deficit and they are going to run out of money in about 15 months if they do not reduce spending.

In 2017 and 2022, Austin ISD held a bond election so that they could renovate and replace buildings throughout the district. These WERE bond elections.  The money was not subject to recapture.  About 13 cents of your tax rate goes towards paying off these projects.  The bulk of the 2022 projects are in the 'eastern crescent' of Austin, which includes many of the schools that now have an "F" rating ... and could be closed in the next few years.

I used to know this but can't remember anymore.  Is there a limit to the amount you can raise via bonds? Are you limited by the amount of money in I&S? 

Posted

With the looming budget shortfall, my partial solution has always been to close campuses, consolidate, and sell the real estate. It causes problems in various communities, transportation, and a host of other issues. It can also lead to further enrollment decline, which turbofucks the recapture calculations.

However, you can get a one time cash infusion, reduce overhead, and stop maintaining some of the expensive old buildings. You also get kids into the bigger schools with more specialized services. Every time you close a school, you save the cost of principal, AP, music teacher, art teacher, PE teacher, cafeteria workers, custodians, librarian, and office staff. You don’t have to lay these people off, there are so many openings each year that can absorb them.

Posted
2 hours ago, SquishMitten said:

Huh? Are you suggesting a bond election to raise $171 million across all Austin tax payers and then use it to fund Democratic campaigns?

Obnviously, he was being facetious, but is that so different from the current setup where more than half of it is used to fund suburban districts' basic needs so they can afford 8M football stadiums, and thereby secure the republican votes in those communities, or even more on point for republican pork projects that have nothing to do with education at all?   

Posted
10 minutes ago, gsoda3 said:

I used to know this but can't remember anymore.  Is there a limit to the amount you can raise via bonds? Are you limited by the amount of money in I&S? 

I believe a district is limited to 50 cents of tax rate towards I&S.  That does not tell you how much in bonds that will finance, because interest rates vary.

So, a district can take its tax base, and each year raise up to 50 cents for each $100 in the tax base.  They can use that money to pay the interest and principal on bonds.

Austin ISD is currently around 12-13 cents in I&S, so they have a lot of room to raise more if they wished.

Posted
1 hour ago, Texas Jeff said:

It is both accurate and IMHO a bit misleading.

It is accurate in that it shows the A and F rated schools in Austin, and it clearly states that in the label on the bottom.  And, we know that TEA's rating system is biased so that wealthy areas are  likely to get an A or a B and poorer areas are  likely to get a D or an F.  The division the picture shows probably extends beyond the ISD boundaries and probably exists in every city in Texas.  Rich areas get the A's.  Poor areas get the F's.

It is misleading in that it omits schools that made a B-D score, so that it looks like Austin only has A and F schools.

In Austin ISD:

  * 30 schools got an F
  * 19 schools got a D (and I will let you guess where most of them are)
  * 12 schools got a C (a group that includes Travis, Crockett and Akins, southside HS's are doing pretty well for their demographic)
  * 28 schools got a B (and I will let you guess where most of them are, but also point out Mendez MS as a southeast in-district charter with horrible demographics got a B)
  * 24 schools got an A

So 54 dots are shown on the map, but 59 are not.  The picture makes it look like the district is perfectly split between A and F.  It's true that there is a split in Austin, but that same split likely occurs in other cities because of the way demographics factors into TEA scores, and the picture does not show any schools with moderate grades, which represents over half of the schools in the district.

 

Just wanted to add that the Mendez B you referenced was achieved after they were taken over by a charter school, the same one that could take over Dobie, Burnet, and Webb and turn them around, but instead AISD is going to force those kids to spend two ours a day on a bus and cram them into A/B schools, thereby bringing down the quality of education at those places.  We're not racing to the bottom.  We're there already.   What we're experiencing now are the final swirls before this district is completely flushed.

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Posted (edited)

A few years ago I pitched a couple of school board members that AISD could solve several problems at once by redeveloping AISD properties and even school campuses to offer  housing to teachers, staff, city and county employees, and families with  children enrolled in AISD schools.
 

The families would get slightly* below market rate rental housing in 3 and 4 bedroom apartment, row home and courtyard bungalow units. The district would get an infusion of young families with kids AND a recruiting and retention tool, and by offering it to other parts of the public sector AISD would strengthen interagency cooperation and open up other potential sources for financing and land. It also makes transportation more efficient, Austin would get some missing middle housing, etc. 
 

Because, you see, AISD’s biggest problem is a mismatch between the places where the schools are (Austin) and the places where young families and teachers can afford to live (suburbs).
 

Anyway, one nonsensically said it seemed like “a cash grab for developers.” The other said “the neighborhood groups will burn me at the stake if I suggested something like this.”
 

 

 

*not subsidized or offered through rental assistance, just priced a little cheaper.

Edited by Bozo_Casanova
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Posted

What year was this? It was being discussed by leadership in 2021 when we were so desperate for teachers. Most of their potential candidates would have to drive by 20 schools on their commute to an AISD school. Combine that with most suburban kids being easier to teach and the funding being better - it was a tough sell to come to AISD.

Posted

 

9 minutes ago, Bozo_Casanova said:

A few years ago I pitched a couple of school board members that AISD could solve several problems at once by redeveloping AISD properties and even school campuses to offer  housing to teachers, staff, city and county employees, and families with  children enrolled in AISD schools.

The families would get slightly* below market rate rental housing in 3 and 4 bedroom apartment, row home and courtyard bungalow units. The district would get an infusion of young families with kids AND a recruiting and retention tool, and by offering it to other parts of the public sector AISD would strengthen interagency cooperation and open up other potential sources for financing and land. It also makes transportation more efficient, Austin would get some missing middle housing, etc. 

Because, you see, AISD’s biggest problem is a mismatch between the places where the schools are (Austin) and the places where young families and teachers can afford to live (suburbs).

Anyway, one nonsensically said it seemed like “a cash grab for developers.” The other said “the neighborhood groups will burn me at the stake if I suggested something like this.”

Well they are selling the old Rosedale campus and the closed Brooke Elementary site to the highest bidder, to raise cash that they can then immediately burn through on their way to zero.  No district benefits to be had.  They are doing something like what you describe at the old Anita Coy facility.

I wasn't in favor of the change in zoning, but I will say it has advantages that Austin ISD could use it in their favor.  They could buy properties close to their schools and redevelop them as 2-3 houses per lot.  Then be the landlord to their teachers and staff.  I *think* that would remove the properties from the tax base, so they wouldn't pay taxes on the property, which might make it even cheaper.  The district could build a bunch of similar properties close to many schools and provide some teachers with a walkable commute and cheaper housing.  They could give them a little less in pay because of this benefit, and spread out the savings to others.

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Posted

This type of forward thinking you two are bringing to the table is exactly what will never happen in a system controlled by people desperate to just hang onto their overpaid jobs long enough to land the next one.  I love the ideas, though.

Posted (edited)
32 minutes ago, Texas Jeff said:

I wasn't in favor of the change in zoning, but I will say it has advantages that Austin ISD could use it in their favor.  They could buy properties close to their schools and redevelop them as 2-3 houses per lot.  Then be the landlord to their teachers and staff.  I *think* that would remove the properties from the tax base, so they wouldn't pay taxes on the property, which might make it even cheaper.  The district could build a bunch of similar properties close to many schools and provide some teachers with a walkable commute and cheaper housing.  They could give them a little less in pay because of this benefit, and spread out the savings to others.

Exactly, although it’s worth mentioning that zoning is less relevant since for many reasons PUDs are the best solution for using AISD property for housing development. 
oh, and that was another thing they were gun-shy about, because at that time the ANC was on a jihad against PUDs for reasons that were the opposite of the truth. 

Edited by Bozo_Casanova

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