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Texas Jeff

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  1. Honestly, I would contact UT admissions about this, or the Plan II office. The link I posted is not "official" info, it's just a guy who used to work in admissions that now offers consulting services. https://admissions.utexas.edu We took a campus tour with both of our kids. The first time, the guy's tour was pretty much non-stop advice about how to fill out the application. The second time we talked a lot about freshman research and the canoe sculpture. If you find the right person they will talk you to death.
  2. College admissions sucks. Best of luck. This guy's site has some of the only info out there that I have seen specific to UT admissions: https://texadmissions.com/blog/2019/2/25/recommended-ut-austin-majors-rank-and-test-score-minimums Auto admits are 75% of admissions, out-of-state is 10%, so that leaves 15% for everyone else in Texas outside of auto-admits.
  3. Austin passed a $2.4B bond last year on top of a $1 billion plus bond in 2017. The district is just in really bad shape. They are rebuilding schools and spending some on athletics, but they are digging out of a big hole.
  4. I think they lost the election and said "Hey, maybe we can win if we add even more stuff in". It's kinda crazy that you can just vote for stuff year after year until one side wins. Meanwhile, tonight across town, Austin ISD's board of trustees approved their tax rate. Under Texas's Robin Hood plan, Austin ISD will get to keep 45% of the tax raised and 55% will go to the state. I'm not bashing LT for building stuff -- mostly poking fun, but it is absurd that a school district can build crazy athletic facilities if they wish, but can't raise and keep funds for teachers and staff.
  5. Last year, Lake Travis ISD had a bond proposal to build $93.8 million in athletic facilities. They are opening a new school and want to revamp their old stadium at the original high school, plus build a new stadium for the new school. They lost the vote with about 63% against. At the same election, they did approve $609 million for schools, just not for stadiums. So hey, now it's 2023. And Lake Travis ISD has a bond proposal to build the same stuff, but a year later it's $143 million. Inflation is rough... Also they are sick of losing to Westlake. Lake Travis is about 1/5th the size of Austin ISD, and in about 10 years they will be between 1/5th and 1/4th the size. If you scale up the LT proposal to Austin ISD, this would be like Austin ISD proposing a $600-$750 million bond just for athletics facilities, mostly for high schools.
  6. Speaking of the Cotton Bowl, how about a video of Longhorn Band marching out of a half-empty stadium?
  7. All that planning and noise and crap and we were up 10-7 at halftime against ... Wyoming. Wow what an impact... Right before the halftime, a guy in a yellow shirt with STAFF written on it and carrying a radio appeared in our section. He said "OK everyone we are going to do the wave! 1,2,3 .... go" and a few people tried to start the wave. I think I yelled "Pathetic!" but it may have been something stronger. He tried to start it two more times and got frustrated with the crowd. The reason he could not start the wave was that he was being overrun by mostly drunk people leaving the stands in search of more beer. The drunks were not organized but they were goal oriented. He left after about four attempts. Someone somewhere in the athletic department had probably decided that the stadium would do the wave at exactly the end of the 2nd quarter. And they penciled it in to the game script. And that's how some idiot ended up in our section trying to start the wave while being run over by drunks. I don't think Bob Cole isn't trying to be annoying, I think he's being held hostage. Someone somewhere in the athletic department has decided what he's going to say and exactly when he's going to say it. Everything is pre-planned. I knew it would be loud and I brought earplugs to try to knock it down. Still too much. My phone measured 94-98 dB from the PA between plays. I left after halftime and was pretty happy to be out of the stadium and away from the PA system. But hey, the stadium was packed. It's hard to say if people were there because of all of the extra crap or in spite of all of the extra crap. I thought the visuals on the Jumbotron were well done, but the constant barrage of noise was more than I could take.
  8. Well, in this one case, I dug in to it a bit expecting to be outranged it's hard to tell exactly what happened. There is an email from a nutrition director saying that kids can no longer charge to their accounts directly from the cafeteria. But, they do have a free and reduced meal program like everyone else: https://www.davidson.k12.nc.us/apps/pages/index.jsp?uREC_ID=800358&type=d&pREC_ID=1189912 They also have a school cash online program, which is what we used to pre-pay for meals for our kids when they were in school. For non-free-lunch kids, the parents put money into the accounts via cash deposit or a credit card and the kid has so much money in their account. When the money is depleted, the account adds some via a credit card or the parent/kid can go add some via cash or check. It's possible that this was a change in policy to not allow a kid to charge to an account at the cash register if their account would go into a negative balance. If you were not on free lunch and you could do this, then there would be no incentive to fund the account at all. Just keep running up a tab and never pay it. If everyone did this, the cafeteria might not have money to fund operations, free, reduced, whatever. It's possible that someone posted this email out of context and folks interpreted it to be something different than what it was. Personally, I think we should just have free food for all kids in the public schools, just to make everyone equal and not have anyone stigmatized. On the flip side of that, kids waste a ton of food at school and we should try to cut down on food waste where we can.
  9. Texas 49 Wyoming 17 333 yards LEDs will be activated...
  10. Looks like the East Mall Fountain to me, back when it was a fountain. They were headed towards the Alumni Center.
  11. CM Leslie Poole has passed a resolution to direct the city to create code amendments that will allow RV's on single family lots as housing. Austin, Texas ... where the shitter is about to be full.
  12. I told my kids during COVID vaccinations that when the university decides to do something, they drop the hammer. Just watch. The city of Austin will be talking forever about who gets in line first and where we can equitably and sustainably have COVID shots. The website will suck. And UT will have eight lines moving swiftly with phone apps, good signage, and cheerful folks helping out. I was right. CoA eventually figured it out, but UT was a vaccination machine. If UT wants to water a field, watered it will be. Having said that, the previous grass sucked by the end of the season. We probably needed 2-3 more Aggies to tell us what was wrong. But I’m confident that if Texas decides to do it, it will eventually be done well.
  13. It’s going to be a party and at times folks may forget that Wyoming is there too. The team deserves a celebration. 45-17 Texas once the team remembers that a game is in progress. It’s going to be a party and at times folks may forget that Wyoming is there too. The team deserves a celebration. 45-17 Texas once the team remembers that a game is in progress.
  14. AISD schools are used to it. Some of them have Westlake and LT in back to back weeks. It is not fun to watch and I'm sure it's not fun for the players. You root for the clock to run and kids to get out without injury. Dripping Springs joined the district as the third school to pound away on AISD. It's harder to get kids to participate when they know they are signing up for at least three public ass kickings per year and have little chance of making the playoffs. It would be nice, at least from the Austin ISD perspective, to have some kind of regional relegation process instead of drawing leagues based on number of kids. Even within the school district, LBJ would be better off playing Anderson, Akins and Austin High than playing Eastside, Northeast and Navarro. Last year, LBJ was winning games by margins approaching 90 points at halftime. AISD brought some of this on themselves by not updating facilities. I marched at Burger Center in the early 1980s in state marching prelims and I was impressed by what it was at the time. Other than adding turf and maybe a power wash, it's the same stadium today. AISD is finally adding a turf field to all high schools, after Westlake already has four fields and a swim center. But hey, Westlake, LT, Drip, Hays ... y'all invested in your programs with nice results. Enjoy it ... but it would be nice for our teams to play competitive games.
  15. Today I learned that Texas has a private high school named Smoking for Jesus and they have a football team.
  16. Nuke that CVC. It's a relic of the 80's. What view is being protected: 1. The view of the capitol seen by new arrivals at the Robert Mueller airport that vanished 20+ years ago, or: 2. The view of the capitol seen from inside a car on the IH-35 upper deck that will soon no longer exist. Even if they keep the CVC from Mueller, I think it goes over the parking garage by the baseball field, so you have at least that amount of height to work with. Further south near downtown, there are a lot of CVCs that were originally intended to provide a view from IH-35, and IH-35 will no longer be there. Time to revisit and revise...
  17. IMHO they go where the bus lines go, and/or where they can camp out of the view of most folks. There is little bus service in Tarrytown. Used to be a nice loop route to downtown and campus, but no more... Some stuff for students but that's mostly from married student housing and those apartments on Enfield to/from campus. There are some homeless camped out under the highway, in the woods around 5th/6th and Mopac. Easy to hide along the creek. I tried hiking Shoal Creek a few years ago and ran into several camps along the creek. The trail running under the street smelled so bad of urine and other fluids that I gave up and walked street side. The parking lot by House Park is a mess. Folks are car camping there overnight, which doesn't bother me, but there is a ton of broken glass and other trash all over the lot. If you have bus service, some fast food or convenience stores, and greenbelt with shade, you're going to attract a homeless camp.
  18. As others have said, this would not be tax avoidance, just tax deferral. And at 8% I would pay the taxes rather than defer. I'm not sure you have to pay off the mortgage to do this, but I'm not an expert. You may be able to keep the mortgage and just tell the county you are deferring taxes. Since the taxes are frozen, they are being eaten away by inflation now so they'll be cheaper every year. I think the deferral is until death or until you sell the property, which ever comes first, but again I am not an expert. There are other things to think about. If she keeps the property until death, whoever gets it will probably get a step up in basis on the value of the house at the time of death. It's potentially a big capital gains savings. But, do you think she will own the home until death? The last years of life can be expensive and difficult, particularly if you don't have a younger spouse as a caregiver. And as an aside: We are NOT prepared for what is coming in eldercare. Today we are caring for folks born in the depression and early war years. The first of the baby boom is just now getting to the point where things are really going wrong. The first boomers are maybe five years away from the wheels coming off. It will be rough for the middle and late boomers, because we don't have the facilities to take care of them.
  19. We do not. All we need is a guy who occasionally says "Quarter". Maybe tells you who made the play. I was in the band in the 1980s. During one of my first times on the field, we had some hold for some random recognitions. They were delayed and we were just standing out there and it was pretty quiet. And suddenly you could hear some students trying to get stadium yell going behind us. At first not much and then the other side started up and it got stronger. And it was way out of sync for a few seconds. Then it got going and it got LOUD. It was so cool to hear it on the field in this wacky not quite synced up stereo effect. No one said "Hey everyone we are going to yell Texas Fight now so let's get it started!"
  20. Texas 59 Rice 6 over/under on people carted out with heatstroke: 80 People remaining on the east side at the end of the game: Longhorn Band + 50
  21. How much are cities surrounding Austin helping with the homeless problem? I think the answer is ... not much ... but I could be wrong. Travis County kicked in a little but there are wealthy towns around Austin that are pretty quiet on the issue. Austin seems to be trying to go it alone with solutions. I think that's why the homeless population is rising, and it may be dropping outside of Austin. Honestly just a guess but it seems that way. We need regional and statewide solutions but I'm not holding my breath waiting on that to happen. The "regional" solution seems to be let Austin handle the problem.
  22. You've got it correct, at least from my time in west Austin schools. PTAs raise money for affluent schools ... and the school district gives more money to schools without strong PTAs. PTAs, aka parents, donate a ton of time at "strong PTA" schools, things like reading programs and cafeteria and playground monitors. The "weak PTA" schools have "parent support specialists", which are paid positions that help kids and supplement teachers. The PSS positions are funded by the city of Austin and the school district. In 2021, AISD told the PTAs that they could no longer fund positions at schools. They did this at the end of the school year. PTAs raise money during the year for the *next* school year, so they already had the money raised and ready to go. Now they were not allowed to hire people. I'm not sure who got cut, but during my time at Casis, the PTA funded the Spanish and keyboarding (computer) teacher, plus some lunchroom monitors. Those people likely got cut. AISD did not go after foundations like the one at the Ann Richards school, just after PTA money. AISD did not balance money to make up for the PTA cuts, they just blocked the PTA funding. The district was deliberately cutting funds from schools with donations because other schools did not have donations, even though those other schools were receiving higher funding. Well, the lege was in session while that was going on, and they saw yet another chance to dunk on Austin. They passed a law requiring schools to accept donations from PTAs. So, what AISD had done was now illegal. The superintendent said that since this had happened after the budget was passed, it was OK to not accept donations for that school year but they would for the next school year. So, after all of that, nothing changed except some PTA supported teachers at West Austin schools were probably fired. My neighbors with kids in elementary were royally pissed off at the district. The superintendent left, then the new superintendent left, then everyone kinda dropped the whole idea. That's how it turned out.
  23. They do, to some degree. The Austin Ed Fund is a district-wide non-profit. The Ann Richards school has a foundation just to benefit their school. They are spending more that a million dollars a year. Other schools have other funds and groups, but most of the donors are parents or businesses owned by parents. But nothing approaching the impact of giving 800 million to the state in recapture payments.
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