
Texas Jeff
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Everything posted by Texas Jeff
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Austin ISD has a very open transfer policy. Austin LBJ has about 800 students in a building designed for 2000. AISD has 20,000 students at the high school level. There are still over 3900 kids at Eastside, LBJ, Northeast and Navarro, even though the district has shrunk. LBJ has a Black population of 33%. I think Northeast (the old Reagan) is in second place at 13%. If you are a Black family in AISD and you want your kid to be on a team with more than a few other Black students, you need to transfer to LBJ. If I had a kid with some athletic talent that was slated to attend one of the other schools in the area, I'd move them to LBJ. The LBJ staff deserves credit for building good athletic programs that are now attracting families to play there.
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AISD's (and other districts) Plans for Schools Starting August 18
Texas Jeff replied to atomheartbevo's topic in Daily Texan
The next 20 years are going to interesting for AISD. Austin gentrification is causing the district to be smaller, but wealthier. Just in my time with the district, the percentage of economically disadvantaged kids has dropped from 55% down to 48%. The district is going to continue to get smaller and wealthier. They have started to replace obsolete buildings all over the district. They need to figure out how to pay teachers enough to live in Austin, how to get as many kids in new buildings as soon as possible., and how to catch up to the amenities the suburban schools now have. -
AISD's (and other districts) Plans for Schools Starting August 18
Texas Jeff replied to atomheartbevo's topic in Daily Texan
We had a good experience at O. Henry with two kids, but that was four years ago. It's kind of a self-fulfilling thing. If lots of folks think it's a good school and want to send their kids there, get involved and donate a bit, it's a good school. If the reputation goes the other way, maybe not so great. I would suggest touring the school and asking friends ahead of you about the state of the school before you commit. O. Henry could greatly benefit from a new building. They were slated to get a rebuild in a 7 year window starting with the 2017 bond, but the current long range plan is in doubt after the school board turned over. The Casis crowd might be light right now because of the PTA funding issues, construction and COVID, but all that should eventually resolve. I think the state leg overruled the AISD policy preventing PTA donations to schools. Wherever you go for middle school, try to get your kids in an activity that they can do all the way through high school. I'm a big fan of the band program at O. Henry and Austin High. Have them try band and maybe a sport in middle school and they'll probably pick one of those in the 8th or 9th grade to focus on. Once they get to Austin High, the band program has it's own building and it becomes a home for the band kids. Athletics got a big boost from the 2017 bond ... they're no threat to Westlake or LT but it's still nice to see something new at the school. Many of the "great" programs, at whatever middle or high school you want to talk about, are great because one teacher has put a ton of effort into making it great. Chemistry, physics, government, band, theatre, whatever you hear is "great" about a school is probably due to the incredible efforts of an underpaid teacher. Right now, a lot of those teachers are pretty stressed out and some of them are leaving ... taking the "great" program with them. AISD could make life easier on teachers and focus on trying to get them max compensation, but I don't think they are doing that. I will say that today's kids, from what I have seen at Austin High, tend to support each other and tolerate differences in people much, much more than when I was in high school. -
AISD's (and other districts) Plans for Schools Starting August 18
Texas Jeff replied to atomheartbevo's topic in Daily Texan
The completely unsubstaintiated rumor I heard is that they are floating the idea of having teachers teach 6 of 7 periods instead of 6 of 8 periods. This cuts costs because the teachers are still teaching 6 periods but the kids can only schedule 7 classes. You don't need a teacher for that 8th period since it's gone. Kids would take 49 years of classes in middle and high school (7x7) instead of the current 56 (8x7). You lose seven school years of something from 6th through 12th, double-blocked classes or more electives. -
Cool photo of DKR on Thanksgiving Day in 1940
Texas Jeff replied to Horn Under a Bad Sign's topic in Football
All those little houses around campus look cool. It's amazing that in the 45 years between that photo and when I got to campus in the mid-80's, ALL of those houses were wiped away and replaced with state office buildings and more and more campus. -
Yeah, LBJ and LASA got along so well that they have now physically separated the campuses. AISD built a new home for Eastside Memorial at the original LC Anderson campus, moved LASA to the old Johnson campus, and kept LBJ at LBJ. The district is shrinking but it's politically impossible to combine or close schools, so many schools are seeing lower enrollments. In Austin ISD, you can transfer anywhere there is space available, and there is space available at all of the high schools except Bowie and Akins. You can also transfer into the district. I don't think AISD intended to create an unofficial athletics magnet at LBJ but I think they have. For this realignment cycle, AISD opted-up four schools to 5A-D2. Do they want to get killed? No, I think they want to create their own 5A district within the school district. So LBJ will be crushing Eastside, LASA, Travis and Northeast rather than traveling to play 4A schools elsewhere.
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You may want to hurry if she wants to apply to UT ... the deadline is Dec 1st. It's tough to get in from out of state. About 75% of the class comes from the auto-admit in-state pool. Another 15% is in-state non-auto-admit. The last 10% is out-of-state and international. I don't think UT has a cybersecurity degree, although I may be wrong. They have a cybersecurity specialization within computer science, which means you take a few upper division courses as part of a CS degree. UT San Antonio does have a cybersecurity degree. The DoD is offering some nice scholarships and stipends for cybersecurity and other STEM programs. The catch is you have to work one year for the DoD for every year of your scholarship. Check out the DoD's SMART program if your kid is interested in something like that.
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COVID-19 2nd wave - Texas only - Stats and such
Texas Jeff replied to justhookit's topic in Daily Texan
Man, last week I was hopeful that Delta was the end of the road and that idea didn't last two days... I found this website that lets you compare variants: https://covariants.org/shared-mutations Looking at that site, Omicron looks like a bunch of variants were in a genetic car crash and this was the result. Omicron has bits of a lot of them plus a large number of new mutations. The speed of discovery and analysis of these new variants is just amazing. -
COVID-19 2nd wave - Texas only - Stats and such
Texas Jeff replied to justhookit's topic in Daily Texan
The CDC's data shows that the Delta variant now represents 99.9% of all new cases in the US. The WHO has Delta at over 99% of worldwide cases. Perhaps COVID is starting to reach the "optimal design" stage. If so, I guess that's a good thing, however I'm not an expert. It gives the vaccine people a single target to shoot at and it gives the anti-vax crowd one thing to become immune to, if they survive their first round of exposure. Obviously it's bad for countries that have little access to vaccines. -
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If the city does not plan to densify the land around the Green Line, then what is the point of the Green Line? That street is a short distance from the intersection of the proposed Green Line and MLK/969, which is one of the largest rail and major street intersections in the area.
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Short history interruption... If you are close to DC, you can lay a flower at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier today and tomorrow only. https://www.nbcwashington.com/news/local/tomb-of-the-unknown-soldier-allows-public-arlington-national-cemetery/2875543/ It's the first time in 96 years that they have let the public get this close. They are unlikely to do this again in our lifetimes.
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Pretty sure it’s free at Tarrytown Pharmacy. The do have $100 rapid COVID tests...
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This is a city that owns a non-profit that owns a hotel. The non-profit doesn't run the hotel, just kinda oversees the folks running the hotel. The non-profit has exactly one employee, who is paid about $150,000 to spend no more than 20 hrs per week running the non-profit. This involves maintaining a website and running a once a month meeting. And that one employee is an ex-city council member with no background in hotel management. Find your grift folks and you will be OK.
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Hey real estate moguls - what’s going on in the housing market?
Texas Jeff replied to tbone_'s topic in Daily Texan
Zero tax on $500k of household capital gain tempts folks to buy all the house they can afford. Low interest rates means they can afford a lot of house. Why be the sucker that buys the $250k house? If it doubles you've only made $250k tax free. Better to buy the $500k house. When the market doubles, you can say you live in a million dollar house, plus you've made another $250k tax free. This all works great until rates rise and values dip. If that happens, we'll have people that can afford to pay the mortgage on their million dollar purchase at a 2% interest rate, but can't afford to move and buy a $500k home at 6% interest and eat the $500k capital loss. -
Markets still falling like whoa
Texas Jeff replied to Llano Estacado's topic in Business and Markets
Maybe they do. With today's school finance system, we'll never know. The money to pay teachers and the money to build buildings come out of two different budgets. Most school districts are taxing at the maximum amount they can for the teacher budget, and in places like Austin ISD it does not matter because Robin Hood takes all the extra money for teachers and gives it to the state. Most districts are maxed out. The bond packages you do vote on pay for buildings, and you do see people voting for those. Low borrowing costs have driven down the cost of building that stuff so a district can build a football stadium at historically low borrowing costs. Or repair buildings, or buy other capital stuff. But they can't give more money to teachers. They could do something like drop all athletics and spend more on science teachers, but I'm sure that will never happen. To pay teachers more we really need to allow districts to raise their O&M tax rates (the teacher part). Changing the Robin Hood formula would allow Austin teachers to earn enough to live within driving distance of their school. -
They should offer those folks a +1 or +2 deal where you can bring friend or kids or grandkids, with some arrangement that the plus people have to actually sit in the seats while the big money people enjoy the club.
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Sidewalks. Those little sticks you see on roads around town. Hotels for the homeless. Billion dollar tunnels and trains to go in them. Mostly empty electric buses to replace mostly empty non-electric buses. And a lot of Robin Hood.
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My theory: People who are more cautious were both more likely to follow pre-vaccine precautions and more likely to get the vaccine. They are also more likely to get tested now if they feel sick. So more cautious folks didn't get as much disease pre-vaccine but they got out of the bunker post-vaccine and they're now getting breakthrough cases. And they are more likely to go get a test if that happens. The less cautious group had more natural immunity pre-vaccine from catching COVID and they are less likely to go get a test now, because that would admit that they were morons not to get the vaccine. But eventually those that need hospitalization show up in the data.
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Yes. I volunteer in the parking lot every year and see the same thing, at least what happens on the east side lot. Drop-off is easy but pick up in the dark sucks. People leave the festival and wander across the Mopac pedestrian bridge, then try to find *their* Uber somewhere on the road between Austin High and the lake. Lots of Ubers are parked looking for their customer. Lots of people walking around with their phone lights on. The road turns into gunk for 30 minutes. You can park in our east side lot and reach your car, exit the school in about a minute, turn right to go downtown or left to get to Mopac. I haven't seen what goes on on the west side but you are kinda past much of the gunk. You have to drive under Mopac and out to Lake Austin Blvd, and from there you can go left on LAB or take two rights to get on southbound Mopac.
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For a $40 donation, the Austin High Band is offering parking at Austin High on Saturday October 2nd. Your donation will help our student musicians. You can purchase in advance here and guarantee a spot: http://www.ahsmaroonband.org/acl We will also be offering onsite sales on the day of the festival, until the two lots are full. We have a smaller west side lot with an entrance near the rowing dock and a larger east side lot near the Mopac exit. Other Austin High groups are offering parking on other Fridays and Saturdays during the festival. There is no parking on Sundays.
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At Texas it’s not the tuition it’s the housing that can add up. West campus isn’t going to pay for itself. Even if your kid has roommates and is away from campus, Austin still costs a lot more than College Station.
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A story about a pathetic man's downfall [34 Felony Convictions]
Texas Jeff replied to Francisco 2.0's topic in Cloak Room
From the Woodward "Peril" boot, this was the Trump playbook to get Trump re-elected via Pence: http://cdn.cnn.com/cnn/2021/images/09/20/eastman.memo.pdf Had Pence gone along with this .... hard to imagine. History will write that Mike Pence, after consulting with Dan Quail and perhaps an unpublished episode of "Schoolhouse Rock", saved an election and our democracy. And then history will throw up. -
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