Jump to content

Recommended Posts

Posted
1 minute ago, DalTxHornFan said:

Rip the band aid off.  This is no fun, but it is ridic that the administration and schoolboard have not more aggressively dealt with this. 

Enrollment is way down.  Facilities have not followed.  Right size. 

100%. Do it and do it all at once so that we aren’t in the same place in 5 years.

  • Hook 'Em 1
Posted (edited)
17 minutes ago, Larry T. Spider said:

100%. Do it and do it all at once so that we aren’t in the same place in 5 years.

And I am not endorsing the nuances of the redistricting changes.  Details. 

What is obvious in the big picture is that the AISD needs less desks and less square footage.

And the administration and school board have not had the political will to deal with that reality.

Edited by DalTxHornFan
Posted (edited)
1 hour ago, Larry T. Spider said:

Bryker Woods isn’t the sacrificial lamb their community will make it out to be. It’s a small and declining enrollment school in a dilapidated building needing millions in repairs. Very few neighborhood kids go there and it has only made it this far with transfers. The IB program is new so it’s not like people moved there with the intent of sending their kids through that program. On a cost per student basis, it has to be one of the most expensive to run in AISD.

As somebody who lives not far away, who had a kid there for a few years, and who has been to events there and has a bunch of neighbors who go there, enrollment has been up the past few years, and if you've ever had the misfortune of driving by in the mornings, you'd know a shitload of neighborhood kids walk and bike there, and that many parents live in the area because it's a neighborhood school.

AISD deliberately chose to take portables out of the equation for enrollment to make Bryker Woods and other schools look over-enrolled.

And that area pays a helluva lot more in taxes than other parts of AISD, and AISD could lose a shitload of those kids to private schools rather than parents being fine with them being bused to Brentwood or Mathews downtown.

Edited by atomheartbevo
Posted (edited)

The actions over the past few months all make a lot of sense if you think of the administration deciding the state is going to take over next year, and they are trying to close schools and sell off property to developers - it's not a mistake that some very desirable pieces of real-estate were a part of this.

Those who were predicting that this was a last-ditch effort to reward some of the developers who helped get some people elected are probably much closer to the truth than they realize, from some comments made by some officials. Once the state fully takes over, the current folks running the district won't be able to easily get rid of desirable properties.

And the state is absolutely going to drive a shitload of people to move their kids to private schools or to a neighboring district, not to mention driving teachers to other districts.  We are in the last days of AISD being relevant. Enjoy the next year or two.

Edited by atomheartbevo
  • Rage+1 1
Posted
1 minute ago, Snake Diggity said:

We got rezoned to a lesser rated middle school which is 3 times further away than the middle school we were previously zoned to.  Cool.  And fuck my life.

All by design.

Posted
5 hours ago, BrazilHorn said:

Also I don’t think Boswell does jack shit for our area (just my opinion from interactions with her over years). 

5 hours ago, Cap33 said:

Agree. She's more interested in virtue signaling than taking care of the people she said she would represent.

I got stuck at a birthday party for one of my kids' friends tonight, and there were parents from multiple schools represented by Boswell, including those affected (well I guess almost everybody is affected), and from what they were saying, she told parents from multiple schools a lot of stuff over the past few months that turned out to be false (my few interactions with her over the past year were not impressive at all, just another politician who tries to tell you what she thinks you want to hear and pretends to give a shit about your community).

As one parent put it "she's either the dumbest fucking person to sit on the board and represent a district or she was straight up playing the parents of multiple schools."

From what was said, she's got parents from multiple schools who plan on making sure she's never elected to an office again - any offices she tries for, the bat signal will go out and thousands of people will get emails about her actions over the past few months.

  • Like 1
Posted
1 hour ago, DalTxHornFan said:

Rip the band aid off.  This is no fun, but it is ridic that the administration and schoolboard have not more aggressively dealt with this. 

Enrollment is way down.  Facilities have not followed.  Right size. 

To be fair to the admin and there is a lot we can criticize them for I do think that facilities and other things have been highly impacted by the billions of lost revenue to recapture. Shitty podunk towns get water parks and high end football stadiums while AISD is stuck with the shit end of it.

  • Rage+1 1
Posted (edited)
6 minutes ago, BrazilHorn said:

To be fair to the admin and there is a lot we can criticize them for I do think that facilities and other things have been highly impacted by the billions of lost revenue to recapture. Shitty podunk towns get water parks and high end football stadiums while AISD is stuck with the shit end of it.

Recapture sucks and is absolutely a massive part of the problem for AISD, and the state has been fucking with budgets to help setup the largest districts to have problems/be ripe for takeover.

But the district leadership has known for a long time that the state could take over if they didn't improve things, and they saw what happened in Houston, and they were unwilling over the past few years to really do what needed to be done. After the first F a school got (and even really before - they knew where the problems were), the district should have busted ass to fix it, rather than waiting for them to accumulate more and then doing something drastic (or not enough).  

Offering high-performance teachers a bounty to switch to a lower-performing school was never going to work when the threat of closing the school was still looming over those teachers. The notion of "leave your job at the stable school where you are high-performing for a little more money at a low-performing school, and if we close that school, you can reapply to the district and maybe get a similar position back" was never going to work.

Edit: Sorry for ranting, the birthday party I was at was nothing but an airing of grievances, and today's news confirmed what I had heard a few weeks back from a parent at Austin High (about which schools would be on the final list, with the exception of some minor changes on zoning). I'm just fucking sick that my kids are not even through middle school yet and we are going to face a state takeover.

Edited by atomheartbevo
  • Rage+1 1
Posted
3 minutes ago, BrazilHorn said:

To be fair to the admin and there is a lot we can criticize them for I do think that facilities and other things have been highly impacted by the billions of lost revenue to recapture. Shitty podunk towns get water parks and high end football stadiums while AISD is stuck with the shit end of it.

No disagreement.  But I still think that they have not had the political will to deal with the icebergs ahead of them.  None of this should be a surprise.  Probably going on at least 10 years or more.

Posted

I am an AISD and UT product.  (Anderson Trojan hollah!) But we decided to home school and private school our kids. 

We paid the taxes, but didn't partake in their offerings.  I very much hope that AISD can get it together.

Posted
15 minutes ago, atomheartbevo said:

As somebody who lives not far away, who had a kid there for a few years, and who has been to events there and has a bunch of neighbors who go there, enrollment has been up the past few years, and if you've ever had the misfortune of driving by in the mornings, you'd know a shitload of neighborhood kids walk and bike there, and that many parents live in the area because it's a neighborhood school.

AISD deliberately chose to take portables out of the equation for enrollment to make Bryker Woods and other schools look over-enrolled.

And that area pays a helluva lot more in taxes than other parts of AISD, and AISD could lose a shitload of those kids to private schools rather than parents being fine with them being bused to Brentwood or Mathews downtown.

I’ll try to say what I can without doxing myself. I know the building well and what it would take to get it up to a functional standard. We are talking many millions of dollars that the district doesn’t have. Hell, even some of the portables they aren’t counting are falling apart. When you look at schools with an enrollment of 350 or less, the overhead costs are insane. You are still paying a principal, AP, counselor, librarian, nurse, registrar, admin assistant, etc but not spreading the costs across 700+ students.

The size causes a laundry list of other complications for the district. One very quick example: due to its small size, it has limited ability to serve special education students and any student that can’t be served in an inclusion setting has to go to another campus.

The school has a lot of transfers that would likely go to another AISD school. So at the end of the day you are talking about keeping a crumbling school built in 1939 open at an extreme per student cost to serve about 200 neighborhood kids. And that number is with a lot of former Pease zoned kids, who I do feel for in this whole shit show.

This district desperately needs efficiency and nothing about BW is efficient.

  • Hook 'Em 1
  • Like 1
Posted

Another general comment related to what I said about efficiency above. Note that it’s a lot of smaller elementaries on the list. Ridgetop, maplewood, sunset valley, Bryker woods…..all at about 450 or lower. 

  • Hook 'Em 2
Posted (edited)
43 minutes ago, Larry T. Spider said:

The size causes a laundry list of other complications for the district. One very quick example: due to its small size, it has limited ability to serve special education students and any student that can’t be served in an inclusion setting has to go to another campus.

When my kid was there, they were in the SPED program, so I'm very familiar with the SPED program there, and my wife has known one of them for almost 20 years, but that's beside the point.  And Bryker has had around 500 kids when my kid was there  - they got fucked by the Bull Creek/Grove stuff when the city promised there would be more young families there.

Our neighbors had their kid in the first pre-k class at Bryker Woods, and they were told by the people at the district when they were getting them enrolled that Bryker Woods was under-enrolled and the pre-K was going to help boost attendance. A year or so later, it's claimed they are over-enrolled.

Look, I saw a list almost a month ago, from a Pease parent who went through the Pease closure and who apparently made it their purpose in life to be in the know with this stuff, and they were  basically saying "these are the schools they are going to close, and they know which schools they are going to close already and so the various options they ultimately release are just smoke and mirrors - they have decided on their final plan a while back and it will be rubber-stamped with the final vote. A few of the schools on that list are a priority to be closed off and sold off to developers ASAP and we've known about this final list for several months. Parents and the communities were never going to have a say - decisions were already being made long before parents really knew and before any specific public discussions were really happening. It doesn't matter when the final vote happens, it's a foregone conclusion that these schools are closing." There were a few (2) schools on the list that ended up not being closed, but that most likely came down to re-zoning from closing schools and potential pushback/overcrowding at other schools.

And in hindsight, while the Pease folks who started following this closely and figuring this stuff out (or having it told to them)  may have had specifics, the clues were there if we had all been paying attention.  The district botching the Dobie/Webb/Lamar stuff should have been an indicator that things were not what they seemed. The people in upper management didn't seem to give a shit that the state would end up taking over.

I didn't say anything here in case the list was wrong or pure projection, but it was dead on with the exception of 2, and based on the accuracy of the list I saw and the comments made, those two will most likely be on the chopping block in the next few years if AISD hemorrhages kids from these closings and the state takeover, because they. had plans for the kids from those schools.

And there are a lot of recordings of Boswell out there talking about this stuff, and it's being passed around.  Everybody is done with her. I hope she enjoys the last few years left in her term because I don't see elections going her way in the future. I could run into her on Monday and ask her if my kid's elementary is fine next year and if she says it is, I will assume it will be closed the following year.

Regardless, it all won't mean shit when the state takes over. They are going to fuck this district even harder than HISD. There's going to be a lot of families moving out of the city.

Edited by atomheartbevo
Posted

eh, Larry T Spider has the right of it. I think some of us are parents (and hell, property owners) who are kinda unable to see the big picture. Old small schools were always going to be the ones closed first. They sort of have to in any rational world. The conspiracy theories about backroom deals to sell the campuses? I highly doubt it. 

Posted
Just now, CleverNickname said:

The conspiracy theories about backroom deals to sell the campuses? I highly doubt it. 

It's Austin.  Developers spend a shitload of money on campaign donations and wheeling and dealing with politicians.  I wish YGIFs were here to expand on that, but Austin politicians love their developers.

Just this last March, the board told the Superintendent to go and sell off Rosedale, and he did. I will not be surprised if they try and do the same thing on the way out the door when the state takes over.

I'm willing to give the conspiracy theories the benefit of the doubt as they correctly predicted all of the schools that would be closing.

Posted
2 minutes ago, atomheartbevo said:

It's Austin.  Developers spend a shitload of money on campaign donations and wheeling and dealing with politicians.  I wish YGIFs were here to expand on that, but Austin politicians love their developers.

Just this last March, the board told the Superintendent to go and sell off Rosedale, and he did. I will not be surprised if they try and do the same thing on the way out the door when the state takes over.

I'm willing to give the conspiracy theories the benefit of the doubt as they correctly predicted all of the schools that would be closing.

It won’t tell the whole story, but I assume they will eventually have to vote on this closure plan. Will be interesting to see how the votes stack up.

The people I know that are still with the district are concerned the board will try to keep too many schools open and continue the financial decline.

  • Hook 'Em 1
Posted
2 minutes ago, Larry T. Spider said:

The people I know that are still with the district are concerned the board will try to keep too many schools open and continue the financial decline.

The state will be making decisions soon enough.

Posted
3 minutes ago, Larry T. Spider said:

It won’t tell the whole story, but I assume they will eventually have to vote on this closure plan. Will be interesting to see how the votes stack up.

The people I know that are still with the district are concerned the board will try to keep too many schools open and continue the financial decline.

Same.  I have been giving one person on the inside shit about this for a decade. They say that I just don't understand the politics.  OK, but I do understand the numbers.  Something needs to change.

Posted (edited)
27 minutes ago, DalTxHornFan said:

Something needs to change.

It's probably too late at this point. When the state takes over, everything changes for the worse, and a shitload of teachers and parents are going to bail (which will mean more school closings).  Some will be going to private schools (but not the kinds of schools that could be covered by a $7,500 voucher) but many will head to the numerous districts around us.

That's what really concerns me.  It's going to be a fucking shitshow.

It's absolutely fitting that UT is about to destroy its reputation as well.

Edited by atomheartbevo
Posted (edited)
4 minutes ago, atomheartbevo said:

It's probably too late at this point. When the state takes over, everything changes for the worse, and a shitload of teachers and parents are going to bail (which will mean more school closings).  Some will be going to private schools (but not the kinds of schools that could be covered by a $7,500 voucher) but many will head to the numerous districts around us.

That's what really concerns me.  It's going to be a fucking shitshow.

But this problem has been staring in their face for at least a decade and they chose the political path of least resistance.

Edited by DalTxHornFan
Posted
2 minutes ago, DalTxHornFan said:

But this problem has been staring in their face for at least a decade and they chose the political path of least resistance.

The real issue is recapture and everything else is rearranging deck chairs on the titanic. 

  • Hook 'Em 2
  • Like 2
Posted
The real issue is recapture and everything else is rearranging deck chairs on the titanic. 

Someone told me that part of the recapture formula is based on utilization so if we get all schools to the 85-95% goal, that helps keep money in the district. Dunno if that’s true or not.
Posted
Just now, CooterBrown said:

Someone told me that part of the recapture formula is based on utilization so if we get all schools to the 85-95% goal, that helps keep money in the district. Dunno if that’s true or not.

The state will just change the formula.  We help keep way too many smaller districts afloat, and none of those fuckers ever stand up for us.

Posted (edited)
13 minutes ago, DalTxHornFan said:

But this problem has been staring in their face for at least a decade and they chose the political path of least resistance.

You'll get no argument from me there, and it's not helped that we send $750 million fucking dollars to other school districts.  We could do amazing shit with that much money. But AISD administration at times has seemed like past UT football coaching staffs.

Regardless, the current administration will get to basically oversee the end of the district as we know it.  

And other area districts are suffering - Eanes has been having to deal with their own recapture bullshit fucking them over - https://www.eanesisd.net/dept/bs/budget#recap

But damn, it's going to hurt AISD next year.

Edited by atomheartbevo
Posted
7 hours ago, Pato del Muerto said:

Is this another prong to get people to stuff the private schools using their new vouchers?

I’m as much of a proponent of public schools as the next lib, but if I had any kids still in middle school or below, I’d be strongly considering the private schools/voucher route.  

  • Hook 'Em 1
  • Rage+1 1
Posted
1 minute ago, South Austin said:

I’m as much of a proponent of public schools as the next lib, but if I had any kids still in middle school or below, I’d be strongly considering the private schools/voucher route.  

That’s the most disheartening part of all this.  The powerless feeling that my only option is let the fuckers win by pulling my kids out of AISD and putting them into private schools. I REALLY do not want my kids going to a religious school and really don’t want to close them off from experiencing diversity, but I’m also not going to let them get a shitty education.  It’s all fucked.  Fuck the state govt all up their ass with a hot iron poker.

  • Hook 'Em 1
Posted

And it’s not just the feeling of letting the right wing “Christian” voucher scheming nutbags win, but it’s leaving behind the have-nots who can’t afford private schools even with voucher support or won’t have any chance of admission.

  • Hook 'Em 2
  • Like 2
Posted

Per AISD's Student Forecast Report for 2024-25, the percentage of students enrolled who live within the school boundaries:

Bryker Woods: 67%

Casis: 62%

Mathews: 44%

So sure, there are many transfers at Bryker Woods, but not at the clip represented above. But here's the game AISD played: For purposes of school closures, they calculated capacity without the portables. So that penalizes a school with a healthy enrollment. If portables are such a bad thing, then remove them and close the school to transfers. The rubric was clearly designed to justify a predetermined outcome.

Oh, but the building is falling apart. Okay, then why earmark $6.2M from the 2022 bond package for capital improvements to the school? They still have the billboard planted in front of the school outlining what the money is for. Was it to bait the neighborhood to support it -- which it did by over 84%? AISD just eroded all support for future bond packages from a high voter turnout neighborhood. Great strategy.

And adding insult to injury, the Bryker Woods kids are getting shipped through Pemberton down to Mathews because Lynn Boswell cut a deal with the Pemberton moms who successfully lobbied to stay zoned to Casis. 

  • Hook 'Em 2
Posted (edited)
19 hours ago, Samson's Wig said:

You know with this cand-ass Friday after-hours info drop that it's going to be good.  I'm just ready to see what version of busing rezoning they come up with, so parents can start making plans for next year.  I don't think there is anything they can do that won't result in a 25% or more reduction in enrollment.  It's all putting lipstick on a pig at this point, as anything short of school finance reform won't materially change a damn thing.   

Oh it's gonna get reformed...

Just not in the way you or I likely want.

Edited by Iceman
Posted

One option for them what can afford it is to either go straight home school/independent study or have a group of neighbors use their money to fund a teacher for a community home school experience.  Not sure how the numbers would work out but 5-10 kids with pooled resources to pay a certified teacher. With sports being more and more dominated by travel ball, there’s always that avenue for continued athletic participation. Rigor can be determined by the parents. 
 

it’s an additional option, if some don’t like their public or private school options. 

Posted
10 hours ago, atomheartbevo said:

It's Austin.  Developers spend a shitload of money on campaign donations and wheeling and dealing with politicians.  I wish YGIFs were here to expand on that, but Austin politicians love their developers.

Just this last March, the board told the Superintendent to go and sell off Rosedale, and he did. I will not be surprised if they try and do the same thing on the way out the door when the state takes over.

I'm willing to give the conspiracy theories the benefit of the doubt as they correctly predicted all of the schools that would be closing.

Have these conspiracy theories checked the publicly available campaign finance records to see if these fully volunteer school board members received campaign donations from developers that would benefit from these closures? I’m guessing not

Posted
15 minutes ago, Cap33 said:

Per AISD's Student Forecast Report for 2024-25, the percentage of students enrolled who live within the school boundaries:

Bryker Woods: 67%

Casis: 62%

Mathews: 44%

So sure, there are many transfers at Bryker Woods, but not at the clip represented above. But here's the game AISD played: For purposes of school closures, they calculated capacity without the portables. So that penalizes a school with a healthy enrollment. If portables are such a bad thing, then remove them and close the school to transfers. The rubric was clearly designed to justify a predetermined outcome.

Oh, but the building is falling apart. Okay, then why earmark $6.2M from the 2022 bond package for capital improvements to the school? They still have the billboard planted in front of the school outlining what the money is for. Was it to bait the neighborhood to support it -- which it did by over 84%? AISD just eroded all support for future bond packages from a high voter turnout neighborhood. Great strategy.

And adding insult to injury, the Bryker Woods kids are getting shipped through Pemberton down to Mathews because Lynn Boswell cut a deal with the Pemberton moms who successfully lobbied to stay zoned to Casis. 

Turns out our state leadership has decided that districts like AISD shouldn’t be funded to the level that enables them to keep schools like Bryker Woods open. You should take it up with them.

Posted
38 minutes ago, elguapo said:

Turns out our state leadership has decided that districts like AISD shouldn’t be funded to the level that enables them to keep schools like Bryker Woods open. You should take it up with them.

No disagreement here. I'd just appreciate a little more honesty about the decision instead of reverse engineering a cover story.

  • Like 1
Posted
2 hours ago, South Austin said:

And it’s not just the feeling of letting the right wing “Christian” voucher scheming nutbags win, but it’s leaving behind the have-nots who can’t afford private schools even with voucher support or won’t have any chance of admission.

Not like the state of Texas has a constitutional duty to provide an education for her peoples, or anything. I wonder when Article 7, Section 1 will be honored by hotwheels

  • Hook 'Em 1
  • Rage+1 1
Posted

AISD has a webpage covering recapture.

Some "highlights":


In FY2024-25, Austin ISD's estimated recapture payment is $821 million. This reflects a nearly a 400 percent increase in recapture when compared to payment made in FY2014-15.
image.png.21de49038b03f1ae549db8a81aeae68c.png
In FY2022-23, Austin ISD paid $624.5 million more in Recapture Payments than the second highest Texas School District. Austin ISD continues to be the largest payer into the state finance system.

image.png.8db5813f90b62f29c6d9bbcdaff26f0f.png
In FY2022-23, Austin ISD paid $323.2 million more in recapture than the top 10 recapture paying Region 13 Districts combined.
image.png.d5ed7bce3484dacf09c4f6a259000f42.png

  • Hook 'Em 1
  • Rage+1 1

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.



×
×
  • Create New...