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Posted
8 minutes ago, Lamar said:

Wait, AISD is consolidating schools out in Midland and Alpine? I had no idea of their reach.
 

There are many options in Austin for education and the voucher program will make that more accessible for more people. St Andrews is just 1 school.

Don’t be dense on his first point. And if past history from other states that have adopted voucher programs have proven, your second point is unlikely as well. 

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Posted
10 minutes ago, YChang said:

Don’t be dense on his first point. And if past history from other states that have adopted voucher programs have proven, your second point is unlikely as well. 

That’s fine. This thread, and my comments, are regarding Austin ISD School Consolidation. You want to talk about vouchers for Brownfield, go start a thread.

Other states? Austin is a city. Austin has Montessori, charter, magnet, public, private, home, all-girl, etc….school options. Pick your preference. 

Posted
27 minutes ago, Lamar said:

That’s fine. This thread, and my comments, are regarding Austin ISD School Consolidation. You want to talk about vouchers for Brownfield, go start a thread.

Other states? Austin is a city. Austin has Montessori, charter, magnet, public, private, home, all-girl, etc….school options. Pick your preference. 

You can’t be serious.  Have you done ANY reading whatsoever on this topic?  What evidence can you cite that shows vouchers improve outcomes for students in the lowest 50% of household incomes?

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Posted
11 minutes ago, Snake Diggity said:

You can’t be serious.  Have you done ANY reading whatsoever on this topic?  What evidence can you cite that shows vouchers improve outcomes for students in the lowest 50% of household incomes?

He's done his own research!!!

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Posted
1 hour ago, Lamar said:

Austin has Montessori, charter, magnet, public, private, home, all-girl, etc….school options. Pick your preference. 

If you have the means to pick.  Including the means to make up the shortfall that the voucher partial payment represents.

And people question the existence and meaning of white privilege.

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Posted (edited)
1 hour ago, TwiceHorn said:

If you have the means to pick.  Including the means to make up the shortfall that the voucher partial payment represents.

And people question the existence and meaning of white privilege.

Brentwood, St Austin, St Louis, etc…. For K-8 grade is around $11k. They give away hundreds a of thousands in scholarships (which gets a lot easier when $10k is already covered). You really should go check it out.

Adding… they won’t give scholarship money to the rich white kids, so you can rest easy.

 

Edited by Lamar
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Posted

Some friends moved to Colorado last summer so their kids enrolled in 4th and 7th grade there this fall. They went to Gullett and Lamar, so AISD “A” schools. Both were great students. Their new Colorado schools tested them to see where they were at academically. They don’t trust scores from Texas. Both were significantly behind for their grade level. Luckily, they both got back on grade level at the end of the first 9 weeks. Their parents were definitely shocked since the older kid never made a grade below 98 and was in all advanced classes and the younger one never struggled for one minute in school. The younger kid was so far behind, the school tested her for learning disabilities just to be safe.

Now, Mrs. Brown is freaking out that we’re ruining our kid by leaving her at Lamar and not just taking her out of state.

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Posted
On 10/18/2025 at 12:02 PM, Lamar said:

 

Adding… they won’t give scholarship money to the rich white kids, so you can rest easy.

 

If it takes a nickel from the underclass, it's fucked up spending with regard to education.

Invest where the improvement for society can really take place. As a taxpayer, those rich kids are already gonna be fine.  How are we making things better for the lower income student?  By moving funding from their schools?

 

LOLz.  Fuck that.

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Posted
11 hours ago, Iceman said:

If it takes a nickel from the underclass, it's fucked up spending with regard to education.

Invest where the improvement for society can really take place. As a taxpayer, those rich kids are already gonna be fine.  How are we making things better for the lower income student?  By moving funding from their schools?

 

LOLz.  Fuck that.

Well let's fix recapture. Even a small portion of that staying with Austin ISD fixes budget shortfalls. If 1,000 kids opt for private school and take the $10K with then that's just a tiny portion of what recapture does to our school system.

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Posted
5 hours ago, ZB'Tejas said:

Well let's fix recapture. Even a small portion of that staying with Austin ISD fixes budget shortfalls. If 1,000 kids opt for private school and take the $10K with then that's just a tiny portion of what recapture does to our school system.

You're not wrong.

Remember Prop A from last year?  Austin voters voted to voluntarily raise their own school property taxes to cover "copper" pennies.  If those "copper" pennies were simply changed to be "golden" pennies, meaning no recapture, the budget would balance with room to spare.

It would mean $130 million in new funding for the district per year, and it would not affect the "original" recapture payment at all.  That would still go to the state.

Such an easy fix and yet here we are ...

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Posted

Another note on the recapture issue: If AISD pulls the trigger on this consolidation plan as-is causing more and more families to pull out of AISD, then the recapture obligations rise. Put another way, if you have the same property taxes, but fewer students, that means the wealth-per-student metric ticks up, causing more money to be sent elsewhere.

As noted, this is a feature, not a bug. AISD is doing all of this to fend off a state takeover while TEA and the Lege keep moving the goalposts. They not just playing on different levels, they're playing different games.

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Posted
13 hours ago, ZB'Tejas said:

Well let's fix recapture. Even a small portion of that staying with Austin ISD fixes budget shortfalls. If 1,000 kids opt for private school and take the $10K with then that's just a tiny portion of what recapture does to our school system.

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?

Posted
9 hours ago, Larry T. Spider said:

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?

Considering what's happened in Houston, don't consider your scenario to be too unlikely. 

Posted (edited)
10 hours ago, Larry T. Spider said:

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?

Most of the state isn't even aware that TEA has taken over HISD. Most of those that are aware, don't give a shit.  TEA could shutter AISD, imprison the teachers, and sell the kids into slavery and it would make the news for a week before no one gives a shit about that either.

Recapture is never getting fixed. 

Edited by CooterBrown
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Posted

Agreed with the lack of awareness of TEA takeover of HISD.  I have family with kids in Spring Branch ISD.  They are not aware or even following the HISD takeover.  I have raised the topic with them multiple times and they are just totally unaware of it happening.

Posted

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%.

Posted

Is the decline in AISD enrollment primarily due to enrollment in private and charter schools? Here in DFW we're seeing a bunch of school closures and consolidation despite some of these areas being the fastest growing in the nation. Lots of people fleeing to the burbs but those people either don't have kids or they're not enrolling them in public school. It's a very strange phenomenon. 

Posted
43 minutes ago, HRSchenker said:

Is the decline in AISD enrollment primarily due to enrollment in private and charter schools? 

I can only assume so.  Maybe I'm not aware of how many private and charter school options there are in Austin these days, but it didn't seem to me that the private/charter source would have been a significant cause of declining enrollment in so many AISD schools given Austin's population explosion over the past two decades.  

Posted
2 hours ago, Larry T. Spider said:

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%.

I live in Houston, and this is pretty inaccurate on a couple levels. The first one is that Houston ISD doesn't have a "west Austin contingent." I live in the Heights and Timbergrove/Oak Forest section of Houston, which is Central Houston, HISD, and homes that go from 500k to 1.5 million, at least these days. These are a lot of well-to-do families, votes blue, and widely despises Abbot and and TEA. There was no shortage of F Mike Miles yard signs anywhere around me. And by "no shortage" i mean every third house. HISD also encompasses River Oaks, West U/Rice Village, I believe Bellaire, which areas home prices blow Heights/Timbergrove out of the water. Now, do a lot of those kids go to private school? Yes. Are the expensive areas still somewhat protected even though they're within HISD? Yes. But you're talking about literally the richest areas in Houston that are within HISD. Lets not pretend these people are completely unaware of what's going on.

I think a takeover in Austin won't make any more or prolonged media attention than the fourth largest city in the United States did...because people are powerless to do anything about it. 

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Posted
1 hour ago, HRSchenker said:

Is the decline in AISD enrollment primarily due to enrollment in private and charter schools? Here in DFW we're seeing a bunch of school closures and consolidation despite some of these areas being the fastest growing in the nation. Lots of people fleeing to the burbs but those people either don't have kids or they're not enrolling them in public school. It's a very strange phenomenon. 

I would guess a big part of it is that there is a large population of high income singles and DINKs or, if they have a kid, it's only one.  The US has a declining birthrate and that's going to be led by your urban cities since high income, educated people are more likely to skip kids altogether.   

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Posted
3 minutes ago, CooterBrown said:

I would guess a big part of it is that there is a large population of high income singles and DINKs or, if they have a kid, it's only one.  The US has a declining birthrate and that's going to be led by your urban cities since high income, educated people are more likely to skip kids altogether.   

This.  Within AISD boundaries, housing costs have skyrocketed, which (1) prices out many families with kids, (2) particularly lower and middle income families that are likely to have more than one kid, leaving behind either DINKS or higher income folks who stop at one kid.

Bitsy and Chadsworth have no kid or one kid.

Jimmy and Sally Suburb have 2-3 kids.

Suburban districts are growing (see Liberty Hill, Round Rock, etc.).  Urban ones are....not.

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Posted
10 minutes ago, Brisketexan said:

Bitsy and Chadsworth

Am I supposed to have no idea who the husband and who the wife is in this situation? 

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Posted
53 minutes ago, CooterBrown said:

I would guess a big part of it is that there is a large population of high income singles and DINKs 

I'm pretty sure this is racist.  It sounds like it could be racist.

Posted
6 minutes ago, South Austin said:

I'm pretty sure this is racist.  It sounds like it could be racist.

When you use "DINK" for "Dutch In Need of Killing," like I do, then it sure as shit is.

Posted

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.image.thumb.jpeg.b39d2b92d9d38e9c42d43e8e39c8a78b.jpeg

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.

Posted
2 hours ago, HRSchenker said:

Is the decline in AISD enrollment primarily due to enrollment in private and charter schools? Here in DFW we're seeing a bunch of school closures and consolidation despite some of these areas being the fastest growing in the nation. Lots of people fleeing to the burbs but those people either don't have kids or they're not enrolling them in public school. It's a very strange phenomenon. 

Demographic shifts and flight to suburbs.  Lots of childless people moving into Austin and lots of families moving out to Dripping Springs, Lake Travis, Cedar Park, Leander, Round Rock, etc.

Posted

It doesn't really matter if your kids are in AISD or a palace in the suburbs.  If they're in a Texas public school, they're not getting much of an education.   This isn't anything new; it's just getting worse.  

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