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Quote of the Day
“Austin ISD has an extremely high number of chronically underperforming campuses… That is a very significant problem, and that is a problem that doesn’t just happen on its own.”
— TEA Commissioner Mike Morath, from Austin ISD gets a ‘C’ in latest school ratings. Here’s how to find your campus’ grade
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Council to weigh new placement, funding rules for public art
From Chad Swiatecki:
Austin City Council will consider changes in September to the Art in Public Places program. The changes could expand where publicly-funded artwork can be located, apply new requirements to some public-private partnership projects and allow more flexibility in using funds for maintenance and relocation.
The Art In Public Places (AIPP) program, created in 1985, allocates up to 2 percent of eligible capital improvement budgets for visual art on city projects. Staff say the revisions are intended to clarify program procedures, broaden participation and address long-term care of artworks.
Austin ISD gets a ‘C’ in latest school ratings. Here’s how to find your campus’ grade
From Nathan Bernier, Olivia Aldridge, KUT News:
Following the release of long-awaited A-F accountability ratings from the Texas Education Agency (TEA), Austin Independent School District Superintendent Matias Segura said modest improvements in scores show the district is making progress.
“There’s obviously a lot of work to get to do with the number of D’s and F’s that we have, but when you look at the trend, it’s trending in the right direction,” Segura said at a Friday press conference.
The TEA’s A-F scores for both the 2023-24 and 2024-25 academic years were released Friday. AISD received a system-wide letter grade of C in 2025. The district saw the number of campuses rated A increase from 16 in 2024 to 22 in 2025. The number of AISD’s F-rated campuses fell from 29 in 2024 to 23 in 2025.
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Does your business (or one you admire) deserve the spotlight? This is your chance to make it happen! 🏆
The Greater Austin Business Awards (GABA) is the largest and most prestigious business event in our region, and nominations for the 2025 ceremony are now open.
Celebrate companies, like yours, across Central Texas who are making a difference whether through leadership, tech innovation, workplace excellence, or community impact.
It costs $0 and less than 30 minutes to apply. Self-nominations are encouraged. And, you don’t need to be an Austin Chamber member to participate!
Submit your nominations here: https://my.reviewr.com/s2/site/GABA_2025
Winners will be recognized at the 2025 GABA event on November 19th at the JW Marriott Austin.
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An update, from the middle of it all
Greetings, again, from the newsroom! We are continuing to work towards building up our team and are on the precipice of hiring a new editor-in-chief. You’ll likely hear more about that, directly from them, in the very near future. We’re also in the process of making a decision about who will oversee our community engagement, so expect to engage more on that topic fairly soon as well.
In the meantime, we are still gathering data about what you’d like to see us doing with all of these new resources. This week, we’ll be holding a roundtable to talk to a handful of readers about what Monitor things they’d like to see stay, leave and expand in the future, and we’ll report back on what we learned. We’ll also be sending out a survey soon, and hope you will all communicate with us through that and by sending any comments, questions or concerns to info@austinmonitor.com where we’d be happy to get right back to you!
A small clarification about road debris
During the Transportation and Public Works presentation on emergency management during the most recent Urban Transportation Commission meeting, commissioner Spence Schumacher asked whether the department was responsible for responding to cases of dangerous road debris (such as that which might fall out of the bed of a pickup truck loaded up with poorly secured building materials), or if it were more the responsibility of first responders like the police and fire departments.
“Whoever’s first on the scene,” said Jim Dale, an interim deputy director with the department. “Yeah, so usually, it’s gonna be the police that are gonna be there and if needed, to move (the debris) out of the way, they’d reach out to (Transportation and Public Works) and we would be the ones to respond, to move that out of the roadway.”
— Miles Wall
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Elsewhere in the News
DA Jose Garza addresses the “soft on crime” allegations with Fox 7 News/
The Chronicle has their take on the upcoming Doggett/Casar faceoff.
The Statesman takes a close look at Travis County’s response to Fourth of July floods.
And, as if there weren’t enough on their plate, AISD is also having enrollment issues now.
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