🟪 Austin ISD turns to school sales as budget pressures continue (Austin American-Statesman)

🟪 Austin Community College continues free tuition program and staff raises despite lower revenue (KUT)

🟪 Temporary power outage to affect downtown Austin residents July 12 (Community Impact)

🟪 James Talarico raises over $30 million in second quarter, campaign says, more than triple Ken Paxton’s sum (Texas Tribune)

🟪 Ken Paxton tops $9 million in a personal best fundraising quarter, campaign says (Texas Tribune)

READ ON!

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✅ Austin ISD turns to school sales as budget pressures continue (Austin American-Statesman)

Austin Independent School District officials will sell Dawson and Sunset Valley elementary schools, two of the 10 campuses that closed this summer.

The proposed sales are the district’s latest bid to infuse new cash into its depleted savings after painful budget cuts that required Austin ISD to slash a $181 million deficit.

The district is already counting on the sale of the old Rosedale School to inject new revenue into next school year’s budget — although that sale hasn’t closed yet. Austin ISD expects to collect $60 million by selling off multiple properties, a necessary move to avoid a ballooning budget deficit. The successful sale of the closed schools would represent a one-time infusion of cash.

Since the district decided in November to close the 10 schools, Austin ISD leaders have assessed potential uses for the now-shuttered campuses. District officials have said closing the schools will save about $21 million, although much of that funding will go back into improving student learning at other campuses. 

The Austin ISD school board approved the plan to sell Dawson and Sunset Valley elementaries during a meeting in June. The district plans to begin searching for a buyer within the next three months, spokeswoman Dacia Garcia said… 🟪 (READ MORE)

✅ Austin Community College continues free tuition program and staff raises despite lower revenue (KUT)

The Austin Community College board of trustees approved a balanced budget of $583 million for the 2027 fiscal year. It includes a 2% raise for all employees. That’s despite growing budgeting concerns for the college due to shrinking state funding and lower property taxes, which constitute two of the school's three primary revenue streams.

ACC Chancellor Russell Lowery-Hart said the college lost $6 million in state revenue due to new dynamic funding formulas. This was also the first time in 17 years that property tax revenue was down for the college, and the first time since 2014 that employee salaries, which amount to over 74% of the budget, exceeded the revenue from property taxes.

“For us to propose any kind of raise when other schools in the state are proposing cuts, speaks to our commitment to our employees in this college and this community,” Lowery-Hart said during a meeting this week. “And while it’s not what we wish it were, I’m proud that in this moment we’re able to offer something, when the budget could dictate that we don’t offer anything.”… 🟪 (READ MORE)

✅ Temporary power outage to affect downtown Austin residents July 12 (Community Impact)

Some residents living in downtown Austin and near West Campus may experience a temporary power outage July 12 starting at 11 p.m. The planned outage will last for six hours.

Austin Energy crews will be upgrading electric equipment downtown. This work is part of its Repowering Downtown initiative to replace old infrastructure and build up power capacity, as previously reported by Community Impact.

Due to “complex” infrastructure in the area where crews are working, the work will affect two separate areas across the downtown Austin area. One property might have an outage while another across the street does not, according to Austin Energy officials… 🟪 (READ MORE)

✅ Austin riders turn to Lime, Bird scooters after CapMetro Bikeshare suspension (Austin American-Statesman)

In the six weeks since a warehouse fire abruptly eliminated Austin’s bike rental service, the city’s other micromobility providers have been benefiting from a sudden surge in popularity.

Lime and Bird, the two providers of dockless, rentable e-scooters in Austin, have had significant ridership increases since May 23, when a fire wiped out the charging infrastructure that powers the Capital Metro Bikeshare service. The blaze forced the public transit agency to pull more than 400 e-bikes from 84 docking stations across Central and East Austin as it investigates the fire and plans to get its bikes back on the streets.

CapMetro has not provided a timeline for restoring the service, which is a joint venture with the city of Austin.

In the meantime, representatives from Bird and Lime said their companies are deploying more scooters near Bikeshare stations across the city in an effort to serve users left without bikes.

“Since the unfortunate fires and hiatus with CapMetro Bikeshare service, we’ve prioritized deployments near docked Bikeshare stations while also automatically discounting ride starts,” said Kylee Floodman, director of government and university partnerships at Bird… 🟪 (READ MORE)

✅ James Talarico raises over $30 million in second quarter, campaign says, more than triple Ken Paxton’s sum (Texas Tribune)

State Rep. James Talarico, the Democratic U.S. Senate nominee, raised a staggering $30 million from April through June, his campaign announced Wednesday — more than triple the amount brought in by his Republican opponent, Attorney General Ken Paxton.

The haul is a record total for a U.S. Senate candidate in the second quarter of an election year, Talarico’s campaign said, noting he has now raised more than $70 million from over 1.5 million donations, including 780,000 individual contributors, since launching his bid in September.

“I’m honored to stand alongside more than 780,000 neighbors who are tired of being divided into teams — red versus blue, left versus right, rural versus urban,” Talarico, D-Austin, said in a statement. “We are uniting Texans onto one team to change this broken, corrupt political system and bring down costs for working families.”… 🟪 (READ MORE)

✅ Ken Paxton tops $9 million in a personal best fundraising quarter, campaign says (Texas Tribune)

ttorney General Ken Paxton raised over $9 million in the second quarter of 2026, according to his campaign, easily outpacing his prior fundraising hauls in a sign the GOP donor class is lining up behind their U.S. Senate nominee in Texas.

The majority of the $9 million, which was raised from April through June, came in after Paxton won the nomination in a May 26 runoff against U.S. Sen. John Cornyn, his campaign said. The three-month total eclipsed the roughly $7.7 million Paxton had collectively raised up to that point in his campaign, a yearlong span dating back to his April 2025 launch.

Paxton lagged Cornyn in fundraising throughout the primary — a trend Cornyn and his allies in Washington framed as evidence that Paxton would need help from national GOP coffers to fund a general election campaign. Senate Republican leaders initially preferred Cornyn because they believed he could finance his own bid, though they have pivoted to supporting Paxton since his landslide win in May… 🟪 (READ MORE)

✅ Under a new federal rule, colleges must leave grads better off or lose financial aid (NPR)

This month, the U.S. Department of Education began rolling out a new accountability test that most colleges and universities will soon have to pass.

The test itself is simple: If an undergraduate program's graduates don't earn more than workers who never went to college, that program could be cut off from federal student loans. The same goes for any graduate program whose graduates earn less than someone with only a bachelor's degree.

"If a program cannot show that it leaves its graduates financially better off than if they had never enrolled, it should not be underwritten by federal taxpayers," said Under Secretary of Education Nicholas Kent in a recent statement.

But this new test, known as "do no harm," raises some thorny questions about the purpose of college. Like: Is it just about making more money?

Some advocates for postsecondary arts education think not.

"Earnings is only a small piece of that puzzle," said Lee Ann Scotto Adams, executive director of the Strategic National Arts Alumni Project (SNAAP), a nonprofit that studies the careers of arts graduates… 🟪 (READ MORE)