Cover photo by John Anderson
The quiet, coordinated walkout of Texas House Democrats on Sunday night may have lacked the theatricality of Sen. Wendy Davis 13-hour filibuster or the cloak-and-dagger panache of the Killer Bees and Killer D s flights from the Texas Capitol. Nonetheless, it marked a heroic and meaningful thwarting of Gov. Greg Abbott and his Republican toadies efforts to restrict voting access across the state. Why are these Trump acolytes, here and across the nation, going to such extremes to whittle away at voting rights, one of the founding tenets of our democracy? Welp, you don t rig the system if you think you can win fair.
Beginning this fall,
Austin ISD parent-teacher associations will no longer be allowed to fund staff positions at their schools, a decision met with mixed reactions across the broadly diverse urban school district. Some campus communities felt bruised by the district s haphazard communication and speedy timeline for change at their schools, while other stakeholders were incredulous that AISD ever allowed such a practice in the first place.
The decision impacts 31 staff positions at a dozen elementary schools, almost all of which are whiter and wealthier than the district as a whole. A May 3 letter to principals from district leaders outlining the changes, months after AISD put in place new