BG Reads // December 19, 2025

Author

A.J. Bingham
December 19, 2025

faustin a

Presented By

www.binghamgp.com

December 19, 2025

✅ Today's BG Reads include:

🟪 Austin ISD prepares to reassign nearly 4,000 students ahead of 10 school closures (Community Impact)

🟪 Austin disannexes Lake Austin properties, cutting more than $290 million from tax base (Austin American-Statesman)

🟪 Austin-tonio’? New book looks at growing Austin-San Antonio megaregion (Texas Standard)

🟪 Austin company to launch drone program to counter school shootings (KVUE)

🟪 More Texas students complete journey through college, but low-income students still left behind (Texas Tribune)

 🟪 Texas AG Ken Paxton and Sen. Angela Paxton agree to unseal divorce records (Texas Tribune)

🟪 Trump announces ‘Patriot Games,’ with 2 high school athletes from each state (The Hill)

🟪 Measles outbreaks won't end in 2025 as cases mount in Utah, Arizona and South Carolina (NBC News)

READ ON!

[FIRM NEWS]

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[CITY OF AUSTIN]

🏛️ City Manager Executives and Advisors Staff Visual Chart

CMO Executives and Advisors_July 2025.pdf519.20 KB • PDF File

[AUSTIN METRO NEWS]

✅ Austin ISD prepares to reassign nearly 4,000 students ahead of 10 school closures (Community Impact)

Austin ISD will soon begin reassigning thousands of students and staff to different campuses next school year.

At a Dec. 18 board meeting, AISD officials shared the district’s transition plan for 10 campuses that are slated to close this summer. In January, the district will begin surveying families and staff about which schools they would like to attend or work at next fall.

On Nov. 20, the AISD board of trustees voted to close 10 campuses next school year—seven of which have consecutive failed state ratings and three of which have schoolwide dual-language programs that will relocate. The closures come as AISD works to intervene at low-performing schools, lower a mounting budget shortfall and address an ongoing decline in enrollment.

In total, 3,796 students will be reassigned, and 6,319 vacant seats will be eliminated. The plan is expected to save around $21.75 million in costs for the district… 🟪 (READ MORE)

✅ Austin disannexes Lake Austin properties, cutting more than $290 million from tax base (Austin American-Statesman)

Multiple properties along Lake Austin have been officially removed from the city of Austin after the City Council approved the disannexations last week, stripping more than $290 million in taxable value from the city. 

The move follows years of controversy dating back to the 1800s, when the Texas Legislature added thin strips of land along the Colorado River to Austin’s city limits. In 1986, the council declared the properties “limited-purpose jurisdiction," meaning the city could not tax the shoreline properties and the properties would not receive full municipal services such as water, wastewater service and fire hydrants.

In 2019, the City Council voted to add the properties to the city’s tax rolls through an ordinance declaring that the properties had been within the city’s jurisdiction “at all times since the 1891 Act of Incorporation.” 

More than 300 landowners sued the city, arguing the action retroactively changed property interests without notice or hearing.

“Our clients were singled out for the worst of both worlds: denied the full City services others receive, yet still paying full City taxes and subject to full City regulation,” said Chris Johns, the attorney representing the Lake Austin landowners, in a statement. “This was an illegal annexation to enable an illegal money grab.”

State lawmakers this spring passed a bill allowing property owners to disannex from a city if they do not receive the same municipal services provided elsewhere in the city. About 143 landowners represented by Johns petitioned for and won release from the city Thursday. Johns said more petitions are expected… 🟪 (READ MORE)

✅ ‘Austin-tonio’? New book looks at growing Austin-San Antonio megaregion (Texas Standard)

Commuters going between Austin and San Antonio may have the experience of not being able to tell the difference between one city ending and another beginning.

Now, depending on where you live in Texas, this is nothing new, but it is increasingly the case along I-35 in Central Texas, especially between Austin and San Antonio, which has long been home to some of the fastest-growing cities in the U.S.

These two big cities in Texas are becoming what the authors of a new book are calling a “megaregion.” It’s written by former San Antonio Mayor Henry Cisneros, who also served as the secretary of housing and urban development during the Clinton administration, and by longtime journalists Robert Rivard and David Hendricks… 🟪 (READ MORE)

✅ Austin company to launch drone program to counter school shootings (KVUE)

An Austin-based company is set to launch a pilot program aimed at stopping school shootings with special technology. 

Campus Guardian Angel set up its command center, which will have racing drone pilots set up with an operation system to navigate the drones at schools across the nation. 

According to Everytown for Gun Safety, 2025 has seen at least 159 gunfire incidents at U.S. schools, which has sparked a polarized debate about school safety and gun laws. 

Co-Founder and Chief Technical Officer Bill King said the system will have the school's layout and information, and will be placed in a secure area until they are turned on by a potential threat.

Texas and Florida are the first states to adopt the program, which is expected to start next year.

King explained the process of how a pilot will assess the situation from the command center.

"We start to look at the cameras [and] once we find the shooter, and I know where [the shooter] is, then I pick the nearest box and fly the route," said King. "I want to make that decision in five seconds and I want to be able to reach the shooter in 15 seconds after I launch."

The drone operators will be assigned in rotations in order to match time zones in the schools the program is currently in… 🟪 (READ MORE)

[TEXAS/US NEWS]

✅ More Texas students complete journey through college, but low-income students still left behind (Texas Tribune)

Texas has long failed to get most of its students the higher education credentials the workforce increasingly demands. But recent laws that reward schools for helping students succeed later in life could help the state make up lost ground, experts say.

The Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board regularly tracks if students enrolled in eighth grade eventually receive a degree or certificate at a two- or four- year institution within the state.

The proportion of students who have received a degree has climbed over the last 15 years, according to data the board released in December 2025.

Still, the state appears to be far short of meeting workforce demand. Nearly three-quarters of U.S. jobs will require education or training after high school by 2031, according to Georgetown University’s Center on Education and the Workforce. In Texas, 25% of students obtained such education or training within the state. (The coordinating board didn’t track students who went out of state for college every year.)… 🟪 (READ MORE)

✅ Texas AG Ken Paxton and Sen. Angela Paxton agree to unseal divorce records (Texas Tribune)

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton and state Sen. Angela Paxton agreed to unseal records in their divorce after several media organizations, including the Texas Tribune, sued to make the records available to the public.

Angela Paxton, R-McKinney, filed for divorce in July on “biblical grounds,” alleging her husband had committed adultery, according to the divorce filing. A Collin County judge subsequently sealed all records related to the divorce proceedings. Several news and watchdog organizations, including ProPublica, The Texas Newsroom and Campaign for Accountability, then filed a plea in September for the records to be unsealed.  

The order, signed by the Paxtons’ lawyers, will “restore full public access to the case file,” according to the filing. A judge still needs to sign the order, and a hearing on whether the records would be unsealed is scheduled for Friday… 🟪 (READ MORE)

✅ Texas Secretary of State office's tech woes muddle candidate lists (San Antonio Report)

Weeks after an untimely technology upgrade at the Secretary of State’s office sent counties into a panic over backlogged voter registrations, local party leaders and elections officials say the same update has muddled the state’s candidate-tracking portal as well, leaving them with incomplete lists as they start to assemble the March 3 primary ballot.

Republicans and Democrats run their own primaries in Texas, but lean on the Secretary of State’s office as a centralized source of candidate information. Thanks to a series of hangups this year, including a drawn-out legal fight over the congressional maps and a new reporting system at the Secretary of State’s office, local party officials say the state’s candidate portal has been experiencing delays, and complete candidate lists still aren’t finalized.

A Secretary of State spokeswoman said Monday candidates for the primary file with the parties, whose officials enter their information directly to the portal. Between the state and local parties, she said, they should have complete lists to work with for their party primary elections in March. County-level candidates file at their county party office, meaning local party chairs have those full records in-house. But candidates for multi-county districts or statewide races file with the state parties, which saw a rush of last-minute filings and shuffles between races as the Supreme Court ruled on the congressional districts just days before the deadline.

On Monday, Bexar County Democratic Party Chair Michelle Lowe Solis and Republican Party of Bexar County Chair Kris Coons met with the Bexar County Elections Department to review a sample ballot based on records from the Secretary of State’s candidate portal. But many candidates believed to have filed for office, particularly congressional candidates on the Republican side, were still missing from the list… 🟪 (READ MORE)

✅ Trump announces ‘Patriot Games,’ with 2 high school athletes from each state (The Hill)

President Trump on Thursday announced plans for a “Patriot Games” next year that will pit top high school athletes from across the country against one another as part of a series of events to mark 250 years since the nation’s founding.

Trump announced the launch of Freedom 250, an organization that will lead the administration’s efforts to celebrate the country’s 250th birthday in 2026. 

One of the events that will be featured as part of the festivities will be what Trump called the “first-ever Patriot Games, an unprecedented four-day athletic event featuring the greatest high school athletes — one young man and one young woman from each state and territory.” The event is slated for next fall.

“But I promise there will be no men playing in women’s sports,” Trump added in a video posted to social media, a nod to his administration’s efforts to prohibit transgender athletes from participating in women’s sports.

Other events planned for 2026 include a “Great American State Fair” that will feature exhibits from all 50 states on the National Mall from June 25-July 10; an Independence Day celebration that will include fireworks and a military flyover; and an Ultimate Fighting Championship event that will take place at the White House on June 14… 🟪 (READ MORE)

✅ Measles outbreaks won't end in 2025 as cases mount in Utah, Arizona and South Carolina (NBC News)

As measles continues to spread in the United States, it’s likely that the outbreaks that broke records in 2025 will continue into the new year. In South Carolina, 168 people, mostly schoolchildren, are in quarantine.

Most of the state's 138 cases confirmed since September, nearly all in unvaccinated people, have been centered in Spartanburg County in the northwestern part of the state. “As we identify new cases, and if those cases have susceptible contacts, that’s a new 21-day quarantine period,” Dr. Linda Bell, state epidemiologist for the state Department of Public Health, said Wednesday at what has become a weekly news briefing.

That is, anyone who is unvaccinated and therefore vulnerable to measles exposures occurring now will be in quarantine through the holidays. According to NBC News data, the K-12 vaccination rate for measles-mumps-rubella (MMR) in Spartanburg County was 90% for the 2024-25 school year, below the 95% level doctors say is needed to protect against an outbreak. Bell said the vaccination rate has been falling for several years, similar to other areas in the United States. Based on NBC News' investigation, The Vaccine Divide, in the states collecting data for the MMR vaccine, 67% of counties and jurisdictions have immunization rates below 95%.

Bell said at the briefing that there was no indication the South Carolina outbreak was spreading yet to nearby states, such as North Carolina. Since the latest surge in cases, which began in late summer in the bordering areas of southwestern Utah and Arizona and, more recently, in South Carolina, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has taken a low profile, with nearly all public outreach about the nationwide outbreaks coming from local and state health departments… 🟪 (READ MORE)

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