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Austin ISD will offer face-to-face, on-campus learning to all students whose families choose to take advantage of it starting on Monday, Nov. 2, in compliance with the Texas Education Agency's guidelines.
To prepare, the district has ordered plexiglass dividers and will install them at all campuses next week, AISD Superintendent Dr. Stephanie Elizalde said at a board meeting on Monday. It is also working to access a supply of rapid tests.
Despite these preparations, Elizalde said she does not expect a mass return of students to campus.
"I do not believe that on Nov. 2 we will be anywhere near 100% of students reporting to campus," she said.
As of Thursday, 36% of elementary students, 12% of middle school students and 4% of high school students are attending in-person class. Although in-person attendance among elementary students has nearly doubled since mid-October, attendance among middle and high school students has remained relatively flat.
(Austin ISD)
Funding concerns
This is likely to change, however, because the TEA guidelines also stipulate that middle and high school students must offer face-to-face instruction—"making it necessary for students to transition between class periods," according to the district's website—as of Nov. 2 to receive state funding.
This compounds the district's financial woes.
Chief Business Officer Larry Throm told the board on Sept. 28 that an enrollment drop could lead to a state funding shortfall as great as $51.4 million and require layoffs of as many as 232 teachers, among other cost-cutting measures.
Although enrollment numbers improved slightly from late September to mid-October, it remains around 5,000 students shy of its enrollment of 80,621 students last year.
Elizalde has attributed the drop to virtual learning and emphasized that this trend is not unique to AISD.
Teacher accommodations
Since AISD reopened its campuses on Sept. 8, the district has reported 58 confirmed COVID cases. Of those cases, 34 were among employees, 18 among students and six were not attributed.
At the board meeting, Elizalde also addressed concerns about COVID-era accommodations provided to staff.
As of Monday, AISD has granted accommodations to 1,201 staff members. Of those, 756 are teachers.
Elizalde said earlier this month that AISD has granted accommodations to more teachers than either Dallas ISD or Houston ISD, both of which are significantly larger.
These accommodations expire on Dec. 31, Elizalde said, adding that she will share information about the number of accommodation requests for the spring term on Nov. 9.
Education Austin, a union that represents 3,000 district employees and has encouraged its members to pledge not to attend in-person classes, took credit for this in a tweet on Tuesday.
After public pressure, the district has now committed to keeping all approved accommodations in place through the e… https://t.co/SVOHtbdcKr— Education Austin (@Education Austin) 1603815047.0
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Popular
Former UT tennis coach Michael Center told Sports Illustrated he thinks others were involved in the Varsity Blues scandal at UT.
His name dragged through the mud, Center was fired, arrested by the FBI and sentenced to six months in a Central Texas federal prison after pleading guilty to two charges related to mail fraud. And over a year after his release, Center told Sports Illustrated he doubts he was the only one in burnt orange involved.
When the Varsity Blues scandal broke out to the public in 2019, the investigation was a perfect storm for nationwide attention: Hollywood glamour, blue blood conspiracy and faith in the tried-and-true American education system came to a head as 33 movie stars and other elites were found guilty of paying more than $25 million to pave their children’s way into eight colleges, including the University of Texas.
UT was one of eight schools caught in the college admissions scandal. (Laura Figi/Austonia)
Singer's client, private equity executive Chris Schaepe, was looking for a way to bend UT's tight admissions policies for his son, who was seeking a position oddly as a manager on UT’s basketball team. Through a middleman, Singer contacted Center, who eventually agreed.
Schaepe's son hadn't played tennis since his freshman year of high school. It was a detail that Center says passed through plenty of hands before he was admitted, including "academic support staff, the compliance office, the sports supervisor and, ultimately, the athletic director," SI's Jon Wertheim writes.
No one in the entire athletic department, including seven "risk management and compliant services department" employees, was named, implicated or punished. After an internal investigation, Center was the only one named in the Varsity Blues "subterfuge" in a September 2019 UT news release signed by the university president.
He told Austonia he was never contacted by the university during the investigation, and when the NCAA interviewed him for its investigation, he says it cleared him of any violations.
“I almost fell out of my chair,” Center said. “I literally couldn’t breathe. There’s no college coach in America—much less at a state school, much less a coach of a nonrevenue sport—who can admit an athlete without consulting other people in the athletic department. What they were asking people to believe, it’s just impossible.” SI said Center's assertion was backed by multiple UT coaches and administrators at other schools.
But why would the Forty Acres be complicit?
(Matthew/Adobe)
Center said UT’s then newly named athletic director Steve Patterson made clear that Center suddenly was responsible for more than building a successful tennis program. He was to be a "fundraiser first and coach second" and he would need to find donors to fund a new tennis facility. Patterson admitted to SI that he wanted his coaches to find donors and said the department was "$15 million in the red" when he started in 2013, though he denies any knowledge of the false tennis recruitment.
Center said he knew he would be "considered a team player" if he let in the son of a Silicon Valley magnate. And sure enough, Schaepe immediately began pulling out his wallet, donating $100,000 to UT tennis and a six-figure check to the school's communication program.
"I never entered this as a way to profit. This was a fundraising mission where I made a terrible mistake at the end,"
Center said.
Months after Schaepe's son was admitted, Center agreed to meet Singer at the Austin airport and found himself accepting a backpack filled with $60,000 in cash meant for him, personally. He said he immediately knew he had made a mistake. He told SI “I put the money in my basement and gave most of it away.”
“Why did I do it?” Center told Sports Illustrated. "I go to bed and wake up each day asking myself the same question. I had to convince myself that I somehow deserved the money."
Once in court, Center showed texts with UT's compliance official and mentioned Chris Plonsky, a department executive involved in "overseeing men’s tennis, compliance, academic support (which generates letters of intent) and the Longhorn Foundation," according to SI.
“I knew I had to answer for my guilt,” Center said. “But I was like, 'Man, schools are going to get hammered.'"'
But Center was the only Longhorn to go down for the crimes. “I was no rogue actor,” Center said. “And this wasn’t my word against their word. There were signatures that went along with it. That’s the system... There wasn’t one point in the process where I thought people wanted to learn the whole truth.”
Back at home in Austin, Center watched as actress Felicity Huffman served just eleven days for her part in the scandal. Some served up to five months; others simply paid a fine, and others, like Singer, await sentencing.
And because the prosecution chose to blame individual coaches, framing schools as victims in the case, universities like UT have received less than a slap on the wrist for their possible involvement.
“I was always taught that actions have consequences,” Center said. “What I’ve come to realize is that, yes, for some people actions absolutely do have consequences. Serious, heavy ones. For others, actions can have no consequences at all.”
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