End of Silence

The Austin School Board met last night to determine the fate of Becker Elementary. The result? A tie. The board voted on one of several plans last night. The tie vote was on the plan to close Becker and keep Oak Springs open. I’m not sure how they decided on which plan to vote for in the end. I’d check the meeting minutes, but they appear to be about three months behind on posting them.

The tie vote gives the Becker parents and the Bouldin Creek Neighborhood Association more time to plead their case to keep Becker open. According to the Statesman, there’ll be another vote, but it’s not clear when that will occur. Apparently, turning Becker into an in-district charter school has also been suggested.

We currently live in the neighborhood of an underperforming, overcrowded AISD elementary school and have spent the last few years trying out charter schools as an alternative with mixed results. We were in the process of examining several schools in AISD as transfer options, including Becker, when the announcement of the possible closings removed it from our short list of candidates for next year. My wife was very impressed with the principal. We think we’ve settled on a viable alternative, but it shouldn’t be this hard. We should be able to just send our kid to the local school and not have to worry about whether or not that school is substandard. How can we expect people to move into the center of the city if we’re not going to offer them an attractive option for educating their kids?

My parents sent me to private schools for elementary, middle and high school in Dallas and my wife is used to a much higher standard coming from Virginia public schools around the Washington DC area. Not paying any attention to all the school finance reform talk in the legislature? Well, maybe you should. This isn’t just an issue for those who currently have kids either. All you UT students who think Austin is a great place to live and might consider settling here? I’m you in 10 years. If you get started now, maybe it won’t suck so bad when your kid is ready to attend school.

Here’s a roundup of articles from the Chronicle, including the cover story from February:

• Family Flight cover story from 02.03.06 Chronicle
• Overenrolled and underenrolled – a survey of the enrollments in AISD schools which accompaied the cover story
• Chronicle pieces on the future of Porter Middle School and a look at why it was killed with another bit on AISD attendance zones.

Here’s an earlier posting from M.J.L Kellogg on the school shuffle.

I was making the usual rounds on my feeds today and a local software company started popping up over and over again.

I checked out their web site and, lo and behold, we’re neighbors! I strolled by during lunch and took a shot of their sign. They’ve got better deck chairs on their balcony than we do. Now I guess I know why.

Update: TPM comes up with a list of investors.

Saturday consisted of trying to meet some friends at Japanese Night at Elysium. You’d think I would’ve learned my lesson after seeing Dir En Grey the night before, but I guess I’m a glutton for punishment. This time, though, I was pleasantly surprised even though I never did find the people I was trying to meet.

I walked in on PE’Z, a japanese jazz band who call themselves “samurai jazz”. They were really good. Their style was in a hard bop vein and they were very tight. The band is a quintet with trumpet, sax, upright bass, drums and keyboard. The keyboard player was the most interesting member of the bunch. He was dressed in a tracksuit and hat that made him look like a small and thin LL Cool J. On the more frenetic pieces, he’d hunch low over the keyboard and go nuts with his fingers. He stood the entire set and would straighten up on the slower parts. They were great and I’m regretting not picking up one of their CDs while I was there. They were the discovery of the weekend from all that I saw over SXSW. An article I found on the japanese bands at SXSW says many of the bands from Japan Night are touring other parts of the country for the rest of the month. I definitely recommend checking out PE’Z although I’m still not sure how to pronounce their name.

I headed over to Emo’s after that to see Hellacopters. Since I wasn’t sure how difficult it would be to get in, I went pretty early. I had to wait roughly ten minutes before I was admitted, even with a badge. I got in just in time to see the Riverboat Gamblers do their last two songs. Good stuff. Lots of stage-diving and energy. No big deal missing that performance as you can see them pretty easily here in Austin. The place cleared out considerably once they finished, so I could’ve waited ten minutes somewhere else and just waltzed in. Riverboat Gamblers were followed by Nebula, who apparently have one of the ex-members of Fu Manchu in their ranks. They were ok, but I wasn’t all that impressed. Hellacopters were up after them. I noticed David Fricke from Rolling Stone come in with Raoul Hernandez from the Chronicle a little before the Hellacopters. Hellacopters were pretty good. They didn’t blow me away or anything. One song, “Better Than You”, stood out from the set that I heard. It had an amazing dual guitar solo. I left a few songs before they finished.

I surrender. I couldn’t get the day 3 lineup posted before I had to head downtown myself. I tried to go see The Editors at Ritz (As wae pointed out, it’s still the damn Ritz. There’s a huge sign that says Ritz. That makes it the Ritz.), but it was insanity out front of that place and I couldn’t deal. I stopped briefly at Casino El Camino on the way to Redrum Annex (ie the parking lot behind the Gas Pipe ). E., the door man at Casino, ended up working when he thought he’d be off. I’m sure he’s sorry that he took it out on all you unsuspecting revelers.
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