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3/11/2010
Austin's city manager says he is prepared to do everything he can to keep Police Chief Art Acevedo from accepting an offer in Dallas. Acevedo confirmed this week that he has applied to become the City of Dallas's next police chief. According to the city manager's office there, Acevedo is one of six candidates being considered for the job. News Radio 590 KLBJ has tried to reach Acevedo via phone and text, however he has not responded while on a European trip today.
Here is the memo Ott sent to Chief Acevedo:memo Ott sent to Chief Acevedo:/WebContent/EMMIS/KLBJAM/Other/acevedo memo.pdf
City Manager Marc Ott has released the following statement:
“Art is an exemplary Police Chief for this community, and has shown the courage to take bold steps to ensure that we remain one of the safest large cities in the country. He’s also shown the character and will to face some of Austin’s long-standing challenges when it comes to APD’s relationship with the community at-large. Art is a trusted leader that has earned the respect of his troops, his peers and this community, and I think we have an obligation to make every effort to keep him right here ...
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3/11/2010
The Austin City Council has approved a plan aimed at moving the city's animal shelter towards becoming a "No Kill" facility. The plan was developed over several months, and is based on years of discussion with city staff, elected officials and local animal groups.
The Animal Services Plan lays out several programs officials say will reduce the number animals coming into the shelter. The programs include free spay & neuter clinics, along with free Parvo vaccines. Also called for are several policy changes and the goal reducing the number of dogs and cats euthanized to only 10 percent of the animals that come into the shelter.
The plan also calls for Town Lake Animal Shelter to outsource an adoption program to Austin Pets Alive and for the City Council to impose an immediate moratorium on killing any animal when there are cages or kennels available. The plan makes a distinction between "euthanizing" and "killing".
To learn more about the plan, click here:
The Austin City Council has also approved a $12 million contract to build a new animal shelter.
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3/11/2010
Math and English instruction in the United States moved a step closer to uniform - and more rigorous - standards Wednesday as draft new national guidelines were released. Supporters of the project led by the National Governors Association and the Council of Chief State School Officers hope the lists of things kids should learn at each grade level will replace a patchwork of systems across the country. The effort is expected to lead to standardization of textbooks and testing and make learning easier for students who move from state to state.
News Radio 590 KLBJ's Ryan Poppe talked to Louis Malfaro from "Educaiton Austin".
(AP) The federal government recently opened bidding for $350 million to work on new national tests that would be given to students in states that adopt the national standards.
People involved in the effort endorsed by 48 states, two territories and the District of Columbia said the new standards will raise expectations of student achievement in some states and be in line with the educational expectations of top-performing states and countries.
Unlike most efforts to revise standards at a state level, this document was not built on consensus, said Chris Minnich, director of standards and assessment ...
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3/11/2010
(AP) An effort to require Texas students to learn about congressional Medal of Honor recipients turned into an emotional debate about race for the State Board of Education.
The board, in the second day of a three-day meeting Thursday, ultimately rejected the effort to list the names of two Hispanic and one black medal recipients in a world history class. But they agreed to revisit the amendment in an American history class. The board is updating social studies curriculum standards that will be in place for Texas students for the next decade.
Board member Mary Helen Berlanga said while race relations in the U.S. have progressed significantly, Hispanics "are still going through discrimination if we can't even put two names as recipeints of the Medal of Honor.''
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3/11/2010
U.S. highway deaths have fallen to their lowest levels since the 1950s. The Transportation Department said Thursday that its projections show traffic deaths declined nearly 9 percent in 2009 to fewer than 34,000. That's the lowest level since 1954.
Safety experts attribute the reductions to increased seat belt use, less drunken driving and more enforcement of traffic laws. Others point to the sluggish economy, which leads fewer
Highway deaths are down nationally and a local state official says the news in Texas is also good. Carol Rawson with the State Transportation Department says the numbers in Texas are even more encouraging. She says highways deaths have dropped 14-percent in Texas. Rawson attributes the decrease to the installation of cable barriers on roadways, widening narrow, rural roads, increased seatbelt use and better enforcement of traffic laws.
News Radio 590 KLBJ's Perry Watson reports
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3/10/2010
Mayor Lee Leffingwell has announced he is pulling his support for a November bond election on a proposed urban rail line for Austin. Leffingwell says over the past few weeks, it has become clear to him that, "critical questions about the City’s urban rail proposal – questions that voters need and deserve to have the answers to – will in fact remain unanswered until after November."
One of those questions is who or what agency would operate the city rail line. Mayor Pro Tem and Chair of the Board of Capital Metro Mike Martinez says he would like to see Capital Metro run it. However, Martinez and Leffingwell both recognize that the public view of the transit agency is not altogether a positive one at the moment, due to the delays and financial difficulties Capital Metro's soon-to-open Red Line has been experiencing.
Both Martinez and Leffingwell are hopeful that the new commuter rail, set to open March 22nd, will be a success and that voters will begin to view rail systems in a different light over the next year and elect to support funding a new one in November of 2011.
KLBJ's Emily Trube reports:
Below is a portion of ...
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3/11/2010
The City of Austin could move toward become a "No Kill" citiy with a vote today to reduce animal euthanasia.
Hiring an animal behaviorist, adding a veterinarian and vet tech, building an animal shelter in East Austin and having a 90-percent live outcome are some goals the council will consider.
The Austin Animal Advisory Commission recommended last week that Austin become a "No Kill" city and advised a freeze on the killing of animals unless it's for humane reasons. Animal supporters say the plan will keep healthy pets from being euthanized. More than six-thousand shelter animals were killed last year.
News Radio 590 KLBJ's Sarah Hudiburg reports
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3/11/2010
Austin parents and community members are being invited to weigh-in on the Austin School district's nearly one billion dollar budget. Tonight is the first of three community conversations involving the superintendent and school board trustees. AISD's Roxanne Evans says, "The district CFO will give a a budget overview and there will be an opportunity for people to ask questions". More than seven million dollars is needed to close a budget gap. Tonight's meeting will get underwaY at 6:30 pm at Anderson High School.
News Radio 590 KLBJ's Diann Hodges reports
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3/11/2010
The Social Studies debate is just about at the halfway point. The State Board of Education has heard from the public saying things like “the proposed curriculum is lagging very far behind the very inclusive treatment our textbooks are offering our youth at our universities” and “every five or ten years we let a very liberal, socialists leaning mindset slip in and change history.”
Now the fine tuning of the Social Studies curriculum will continue today and tomorrow after the board started work on high school grades last night, debating individual sections of the proposed standards. This is the second meeting in a row they have gone over the curriculum with a fine tooth comb and they’ll do it again in May before completing the process.
While this debate isn’t directly about textbooks the curriculum standards are used when writing future Social Studies and History textbooks. Because Texas is such a large textbook market what is used here is often used in other states too, although that decision is up to the other states.
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3/10/2010
Letters from the feds are due to arrive in mailboxes all over Central Texas this month. Those letters, which are more questions; ten, to be exact, are designed to gauge the needs of the region for the next ten years, as Washington sees them.
"In the past, I know that the census has been kind of onerous. They ask a lot of questions like how many cars you have, how many TVs, how many toilets and so forth. This is only a ten-question census," Austin Mayor Lee Leffingwell said.
But local leaders are pleading with neighbors across the area to take the time and fill out the questionnaire and mail it back.
"The problems you may have with the criminal justice system, with immigration, others: that's none of our business, we don't care about that. We only care about counting you," Travis County Judge Sam Biscoe said.
Leffingwell and Biscoe were among several other leaders at a census summit at Austin City Hall Wednesday evening. They are hoping to prevent a repeat of one decade ago, the last time the census was taken. That's when they assert that the Austin area lost a combined $230-million or more.
"Two or three ...
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