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Larry T. Spider

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Everything posted by Larry T. Spider

  1. I’ll add that doing this gives the school a two year break from accountability ratings and additional funding to support the turnaround. Other than pride, it should be a no-brainer for Austin ISD to “fix” the campuses that get an F rating every year.
  2. Not really interested in the magnet type schools but would consider having the company I work for take over the F rated schools. Not a huge believer in setting up charters to compete with public schools, but the district would be better served turning over certain campuses. They don’t know how to turn them around.
  3. The average Austinite has no idea if they are even paying for Project Connect, let alone what they will get out of it. They know for sure they are being robbed on the school taxes due to the state. Tough environment to ask for more tax money.
  4. I live in Round Rock so I haven’t been following this as closely as most of you. Project Connect would be my biggest hurdle in voting for this though. I was a vocal supporter and ride the train down from the Lakeline station pretty often. But since the vote passed, all we have seen is ballooning costs, cutting the additional lines down to 1 new one, and it not being online until 2033. Maybe somebody knows the answer, but I keep asking where the tax money being collected is going. Is it in an al gore lock box, being blown on consultants, being mixed with the general budget? Nobody seems to know. I would have serious hesitation voting for more taxes based on the above. Huge mass transit supporter but I feel burned.
  5. Back of the napkin math says 8 mil gets you 26,000 a month at a 4% draw rate. Thats also assuming no other income. Obviously have to factor in taxes, but what am I missing? You would probably die with 15+ million.
  6. Almost hit my goals for the year: Max IRAs for me and the wife. Done. Max my 401k. Will get there with continued contributions. Start a brokerage account and get it to at least 25k. I’m a few thousand short but will get there easily. Save for next rental property. Haven’t done as much on this one but have been prioritizing the accounts above since I feel behind on those. Working in public education for 15 years didn’t allow for much saving outside of TRS and IRAs.
  7. This is more of a broad conversation about measurables in education, but TEA is good at coming in and fixing those. So, they are good at fixing compliance issues, failing schools, the budget, and addressing some student discipline issues. They are bad at just about everything else and are willing to take a sledgehammer approach to achieve the metrics they are looking for. I think this approach is such a culture clash with Austin ISD campus level staff and parents, that it will go poorly. It is in no way collaborative. Don’t like libraries being turned into detention centers? Fuck right off. So, at the end of the day, you may get a district that runs efficiently and has no failing schools but still be unhappy with it because they cut your fine arts programs, pushed out your favorite campus principal, and re-zoned you to another school without a second thought.
  8. People that didn’t work for the district at the time will never be able to understand the damage that Stephanie Elizalde did to AISD in her short time here. She knew it was a stepping stone job and she was only really being judged by a couple of metrics. She fixed those, ignored the rest of the problems, created a laundry list of others, then bolted to Dallas. It was her toxic culture that led to TEA taking over the special education department. She is also the reason we have Segura, who is not prepared for the challenges he’s facing. Nice guy but this was a job very an experienced, savvy superintendent. But to keep staff on board after the Elizalde shit show, they had to make an internal hire of somebody well liked.
  9. I agree that they are going to lose a lot of kids, probably more than they are expecting. Charters will pop up right next to the closed schools on the east side and take a bunch of students. Seems like a damned if you do, damned if you don’t situation because keeping them all open will lead to financial ruin. As far as the BW costs, tell me how option A below is going to save the district money compared to option B. A: keep the school open and spend 6.1 million to renovate the school. Retain more students in the district of the 250ish neighborhood kids that go there. B: close the school and don’t spend the 6.1 million renovation costs. Fold the kids into Casis and Brentwood. No longer pay for principal, assistant principal, counselor, admin assistant, music teacher, art teacher, PE teacher, custodians, etc. Also don’t pay for utilities, groundskeeping, and other building maintenance. Possibly sell the building and property for a pretty penny. You will lose some kids to private school and the funding that goes with them and you may pay slightly higher bussing costs. But from a purely fiscal standpoint, I don’t get the BW parents argument that keeping the school open will save money.
  10. There was a save Bryker Woods rally this morning ahead of the superintendent’s visit. One parent was on the news saying they hired a data analytics firm to show closing the school would cost AISD money. Not sure they have all the relevant data to show that, especially with the 6.1 million in construction costs that are needed. I think the district is in a tough spot with this one. If they continue with the closure plan, the protests will ramp up. I’m guessing there will be lawsuits related to the bond. If they take BW off the list then the perception will be that the rich white people are getting their way while closing minority schools. Glad I don’t have to deal with this on a personal level anymore. Insert popcorn gif.
  11. About 15 years ago I was working for Pflugerville ISD and the district was in a weird conundrum of being fast growing and needing to cut budget. It was in the fallout of the financial crisis and state leadership refused to release rainy day funding despite it clearly being a rainy day. We ended up having to RIF a bunch of teachers but the district did everything possible to find ways to raise additional money. We sold ads on buses, started a paid pre-k program for kids that didn’t qualify, etc. Districts are usually in conservation mode but could do better in finding creative ways to raise a little money.
  12. The district is going to release an updated plan on Friday. The changes seem to be more geared towards program offerings and rezoning more than which schools will actually close.
  13. I don’t see SS being eliminated in any of our lifetimes. Even means testing seems like a stretch. If anything, I would guess that payment increases might not keep up with inflation and the retirement age may get bumped up a little. Some of the issues are going to get solved as the boomers pass away though.
  14. AISD did extensive studies on the decline. Largest factor was cost of living and larger families moving to the burbs. For a while they had a team trying to find families affordable housing within AISD boundaries. Charters are the next biggest issue. This doesn’t include all of them. As far as the AISD vs HISD level of hysteria, only time will tell. I’ll still take Austin libs over just about anybody not on the east or west coast. Let’s just say I would not want to be the appointed superintendent.
  15. The general population isn’t aware of almost any political news, so that’s not surprising. I think a TEA takeover of Austin would be much more newsworthy because of the political activism of the district, proximity to the Capitol, and the political/connected nature of the parents. Houston ISD doesn’t have a west Austin contingent that largely despises TEA and Abbott. They are 80% low income and the other 20% are fine as long as their magnet programs don’t get cut. I think AISD could keep the takeover in the media enough to create some pressure that the state actually deliver some results. Just to reiterate, I rate my idea that a state takeover leads to recapture being fixed at a 1% possibility. But I rate the legislature doing it because it’s the right thing at 0%.
  16. And who exactly is looking out for AISD’s interests at the state level to make that happen? I almost got laughed off the board last spring, but this is my pipe dream scenario where it gets fixed. The state takes over and wants to look like the heroes solving all of AISD’s problems. They will be under a microscope even more than with Houston for all the political reasons. They get the formula tweaked or some type of carve out that benefits AISD. Then they fix a lot of the financial problems that the district could have solved on their own, claim victory, and eventually move on to their next target with increased political capital. Is that likely? Of course not. But can you give me a more plausible scenario of recapture getting fixed in the next decade?
  17. It’s nice when people show you that it’s pointless before you waste a bunch of keystrokes.
  18. Let’s say you are low income and get awarded the 10k voucher for your child. Where are you going to go with that? St Andrews costs 23k per year so you have to come up with 13k, which you don’t have. The voucher is worthless to you. Now let’s say you are upper middle class and get the same 10k voucher. You have been opting for public school because 23k is a big expense. Now your costs are 13k and that’s more manageable. Only about 1k per month so you go. That low income kid from the first scenario is actually worse off now because the funding for your upper middle class kid is pulled from the system. There is an economy of scale to this and each kid that leaves hurts the ones left behind. Which brings us back to my original comment about all of this being a feature not a bug.
  19. That’s definitely the goal. Some states have conjured up voucher systems that (unsuccessfully) prioritize those kids. Pretty telling that ours is the opposite.
  20. The post I quoted said “during school hours” not “the locker room” and it was referring to all teachers, not just coaches.
  21. Imagine telling degreed professionals when they can or can’t look at their phones. There’s already a massive shortage due to lack of pay and lack of respect.
  22. McCallum should be fine through all of this. It’s been the most underrated HS in the district for years and always cracks me up when certain uppity demographics turn their nose up at it.
  23. Long Island prosecutors have used DNA to arrest a suspect of a murder that happed there in the 80s. I’m bringing it up here because three other people had previously been convicted of this murder. They were eventually exonerated after having their names drug through the mud and years of their lives wasted. New use of DNA seems to be shedding some light on how bad prosecutors and detectives were at actually convicting the right people. The problem is we are only going back and using it on cases where the original conviction was overturned so it is still technically unsolved. How many thousands are wrongly sitting in jail and nobody is looking at the case because it’s “solved”.
  24. I’m here for it!
  25. Ok, who is going to watch this and report back? I have to sit though a lot of school board meetings to give a 5 min presentation and refuse to do it off the clock 😀
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