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A flood watch has been issued for the Austin area for Wednesday night to Friday night, overlapping with the first day of the Austin City Limits Music Festival.
A drop in Austin ISD’s enrollment could soon be impacting its budget. The district also planned to save money by cutting down on bus routes, but that may be undercut by the rising cost of diesel.
Smart glasses are one of the most visible pieces of hardware incorporating artificial intelligence — but like most things related to AI, their use remains polarizing. We’ll hear from some blind users.
And: We’re gonna talk about the best wings in the city with American-Statesman restaurant critic Matthew Odam.
The full transcript of this episode of Austin Signal is available on the KUT & KUTX Studio website. The transcript is also available as subtitles or captions on some podcast apps.
Jerry Quijano [00:00:08] Charges have been filed against the man shot this month by an ICE officer in North Austin, the latest on the case of Wilbur Garces Perez, and a drop in Austin ISD’s enrollment could soon be impacting their budget. The district also plan to save money by cutting down on bus routes, but that may be undercut by the rising cost of diesel. How big that financial impact could be, plus smart glasses are one of the most visible pieces of hardware incorporating artificial intelligence. We’re going to hear from some of the folks using them. That’s on today’s show.
KUT Announcer: Laurie Gallardo [00:00:36] The Austin Signal is a production of KUT News, hosted by Jerry Quijano.
Jerry Quijano [00:00:41] There is increasing confidence in a deluge of rain this week in Austin that could make for a muddy first weekend of ACL Fest. The latest forecast and weather warnings. Plus, who has the best wings in the city of Austin? We’re gonna tell you about a few. That’s up next. It’s right here on Austin Signal. Howdy out there, this is Austin Signal and I’m your host Jerry Keconnell. It is Tuesday, September 29th, thank you for tuning in. A bit of breaking news to start off today’s show, Wilbur Garces Perez, the delivery driver shot by an immigration enforcement agent in North Austin this month, is now charged with assaulting a federal officer. KUT’s Moe’s Bouchelle reports court documents filed by ICE agents contradict the man’s count of what led up to his shooting.
Mose Buchele [00:01:35] In early accounts from his legal team, Garces Perez said he did not know the SUV that sideswiped him belonged to Immigration and Customs Enforcement before he was shot. But the criminal complaint filed by ICE says agents had pulled him over after running his plates and finding deportation orders against him. It says they did identify themselves before he fled in his car, hitting one of the agents with a side-view mirror. That prompted a chase in which the two agents were separated and ended with his being struck by one agent. Forcing a stop, that agent said he shot Garces Perez, fearing he’d be struck by his car. The complaint says one of the two agents was wearing a body camera for the initial stop, but says that agent turned the camera off before joining his partner at the scene of the shooting. If Garces Peres is found guilty on the charge of assaulting, resisting, interfering, and impeding a federal officer, it could bring a maximum of 20 years in federal prison. The criminal charge comes one day ahead. Of a federal court hearing in a lawsuit filed on behalf of Garces Perez. I’m Mo’s Mushel in Austin.
Jerry Quijano [00:02:50] The Austin School District has fallen short of its projected enrollment for this school year. That complicates a tight budget, which relies on students and their attendance for funding. Joining us to talk more is Acacia Coronado. She is the education reporter at Austin Current. They are our partners in covering the city. Acacia, thanks for being back here.
Acacia Coronado [00:03:07] Thanks for having me.
Jerry Quijano [00:03:08] So tell us first off, what exactly does this enrollment situation look like this year for Austin ISD?
Acacia Coronado [00:03:15] So what we have right now are the beginning month numbers. We’re not yet at the October snapshot, which is usually a more key indicator of the year’s enrollment. But what we had right now from the first month is that the school district has just under 66,000 students, which is about 2,000 students short of the projected enrollment that they had when they passed the budget for this school year.
Jerry Quijano [00:03:42] And how many students did they lose that were enrolled at the end of last school year?
Acacia Coronado [00:03:47] So the school district lost about 6,400 students that were enrolled at the end of the school year last year that were not students who graduated. So it’s not counting the graduating students. And they did gain 8,500 new students from pre-K, including pre-k and kindergarten enrollment. But they are still 2,000 short of the amount that they had projected they would have when they pass the budget.
Jerry Quijano [00:04:17] And as I understand from your reporting, that 6400 departure number, it seems like the general bulk of that was in elementary grade school children. Do we know the reasons for why they left the district?
Acacia Coronado [00:04:29] Yeah, so a great majority of the students who left were elementary. We did see that I think 41% of the student who left out of those 6,400 didn’t give a destination or a reason why they were leaving. 39%, I believe, was the number that ended up leaving the district because they left the county, the city, the state, or the country. And then about 20% of students were students who left either to a private school, a charter school, a homeschooling option, a virtual link schooling option.
Jerry Quijano [00:05:04] So I believe you said the number was about 66,000 for this school year, the enrollment numbers.
Acacia Coronado [00:05:09] Yes, currently enrolled is just under $66,000.
Jerry Quijano [00:05:13] Okay, so for that $2,000 or so that fell short of the projection, how does that affect Austin ISD’s budget?
Acacia Coronado [00:05:20] So school finance from the state is heavily tied to enrollment and attendance. And so it could affect in the sense that if they don’t hit the amount of students that they projected, it could mean less funding for the school district from the State. And so what they’re estimating right now based on these figures is it could mean around $14 million less. In funding, and that’s not counting attendance. We don’t have the attendance figures yet. They get those around the first six weeks. And so what we know so far is that if the district were to lose those 14 million in funding that would be 14 million less than what they thought they would have to operate with which could affect a deficit in the future.
Jerry Quijano [00:06:09] AISD made some transportations for this school year, which were intended to save about five million dollars. How have those expected savings changed over the course of the year?
Acacia Coronado [00:06:19] So one of the biggest things that we’re looking at when it comes to transportation spending right now is how much they’re spending on diesel. And so diesel prices have actually risen from what they projected them to be when they passed the transportation budget. And so right now they are projecting that they might spend close to $2 million more than they anticipated on transportation, mostly because of that rising diesel cost. Which has almost doubled what they spent last year around this first month of school on diesel.
Jerry Quijano [00:06:56] That’s a big change. So as they look ahead towards this possible budget deficit, how does AISD plan to cover that?
Acacia Coronado [00:07:05] So as of right now, they’re having conversations about where to find $5.7 million in reductions, which is what they need to find to avoid a deficit as of now. And if they are in further red, either with the enrollment decline or rising diesel costs, then they’re gonna have to look for other places in the budget where they can reduce that cost or they’ll be facing a deficit at the end of the school year.
Jerry Quijano [00:07:33] What else are you going to be watching from AISD board meetings as far as this budget discussion goes forward?
Acacia Coronado [00:07:39] I think something really to look at is the line by line of where those cuts are going to come from. We’re really going to try to understand what, if anything, is going to be cut or decreased in funding to try and make up that difference of what was either overspent or money that didn’t come in.
Jerry Quijano [00:07:57] All right, that is Acacia Coronado. She is the education reporter at Austin Current. They are KUT and Austin Signals partners in covering the city of Austin. We’re gonna have a link to her reporting in today’s show notes. Acacia, thank you.
Acacia Coronado [00:08:08] Thank you so much for having me.
Jerry Quijano [00:08:16] When it comes to visible symbols of AI as a polarizing force, it’s hard to top smart glasses. Wearing a pair of specs with a visible camera and the potential to identify faces can make you pretty unpopular in some quarters. Elsewhere though, these high-tech glasses are changing lives, and the folks using them say they’re gonna keep fighting to keep them. Texas Standards’ Shelley Brisbane attended a conference in Austin with some of those users, and dug in more about how these specs can be a game-changer.
Mathew Odam [00:08:46] Stalker Glasses, they’re not just for stalkers anymore.
Speaker 6 [00:08:54] Because of a few bad actors, any person wearing these glasses may end up looking like a
Shelly Brisbin [00:09:00] Riz camera. Smart glasses have been banned from cruise ships and courtrooms and slammed by politicians and pundits, all angry about the privacy implications of people wearing cameras on their faces. The glasses have used to take and share images of people without their permission, often in very private situations. But smart glasses are more than their divisive cameras. With included AI software, they can tell you details about a landscape, how to get in an unfamiliar city or the breed of dog you just met at the park. Some of Smart Glass’s most enthusiastic fans gathered in a hotel ballroom in Austin this summer.
Ron Miller [00:09:37] One of the really neat areas that are emerging on the AI side of things is live interaction. The workflow is you and the AI interacting with your environment. Have you guys used your metaglasses with Aira or any of those things?
Shelly Brisbin [00:09:52] At the National Federation of the Blind Convention, NFB for short, Ron Miller, who works for the organization, was excited about how a blind person can use AI glasses to see what’s around them.
Ron Miller [00:10:04] All of a sudden, I’m not trying to carry my phone in one hand, use my cane, or if you’re a dog guide user, a harness in your other hand, and then carry stuff in your third hand. The ability to wear a set of glasses with a camera that frees up a hand is great.
Shelly Brisbin [00:10:19] Glasses are everywhere here. People are using them with visual description apps like Aira. In this space the glasses aren’t about fashion or clips for social media but about independence and having the same information someone with typical vision takes for granted.
J.J Meadow [00:10:35] AI image descriptions allow a blind person to get the most detailed representation of the image. I am talking to a lady who’s holding a microphone who’s standing in front of a yellow pillar next to a person on an iPhone.
Shelly Brisbin [00:10:47] J.J. Meadow owns a company that sells tech products aimed at a blind audience. He’s attending the NFB convention along with 3,000 others from across the country. Meadow’s glasses can tell him how long the coffee line is or steer him to his next conference session. Tonight, the Michigan native says they’ll guide him to Austin’s best Detroit-style pizza. AI glasses and apps are useful at home, too.
Judy Dixon [00:11:11] Things like, is there a stain on this shirt? You know, which of these bottles of wine is in?
Shelly Brisbin [00:11:18] Judy Dixon, who writes about blindness tech, says AI visual description with smart glasses has upgraded her quality of life. But like the AI chatbots many of us have used, blind people’s mileage may vary.
Judy Dixon [00:11:31] I like to bake and I’m very intimidated about frosting things. I made cupcakes and I intentionally left off some frosting and I asked the AI glasses, you know, is this cupcake completely frosted? And all three of the glasses that I tried this with said yes, it was completely covered and it was not.
Shelly Brisbin [00:11:57] Monter Lane is community manager for Be My Eyes. Their Be My AI tool provides visual description with an app or smart glasses. She says that when AI does work for blind users. It can be extremely meaningful. When Be My AI first got available, I saw a lot of people, particularly then, going I just uploaded a picture of my family for the first time and so they were able to ask questions about it and ask as many as they wanted whose noses are the same tell me all about that dress that she’s wearing tell me about their hair and like go deep, deep, into these things She says Be My Ai users have turned the tool on themselves too. There are descriptions that are good, but not subjective. They’re not using words like big or small, skinny or fat. They don’t use loaded words. As a leading maker. Of smart glasses, Metta has been eager to tell the stories of how blind users embrace devices that are controversial elsewhere. They’ve partnered with education institutions and donated glasses to people with disabilities. Metta says it’s giving 130,000 to legally blind veterans. On September 11th, an Austin VFW post posted a donation event. The hall is decked out with red, white, and blue bunting and metal logos. Veterans sit across from META employees who are unboxing and pairing brand new smart glasses with each person’s phone.
J.J Meadow [00:13:21] I’d like to demo these glasses.
Shelly Brisbin [00:13:23] So get them in your hands just to kind of orient you to them. Jerry LeBlanc is seated next to his black guide dog. He was a combat medic in the Army. Part of that time he spent providing vision care. He lost his own vision due to service-connected injuries. LeBlank runs an animal rescue center in Bertram, Texas, and he has some very specific questions in mind to ask his new glasses.
LeBlanc [00:13:45] Being able to decide I can or can’t give the animal that food like you know our tortoises on a diet or whatever.
Shelly Brisbin [00:13:51] LeBlanc says he’ll also use the Glasses Translate feature to communicate with his non-English-speaking neighbors. A smart glasses feature that’s both more controversial than the rest and potentially more important to blind people is facial recognition. Meta has developed software that would allow the glasses to identify a person by name. But when Word of the Option, which hadn’t been released, got out, the backlash was swift, with many citing privacy concerns. Meta removed the code that would have supported facial recognition. For now, but if you’re blind facial recognition could allow you to find a friend across the crowded room or introduce yourself to your hero
Jonathan Mosin [00:14:30] How do we, as blind people, use this technology ethically so that we can find out who is in a room? Especially at something like our National Convention, where you can have close to 3,000 blind people all over the place.
Shelly Brisbin [00:14:45] Jonathan Mosin is the NFB’s Executive Director for Accessibility Excellence and an enthusiastic user of AI and smart glasses. He says he’s concerned about privacy issues, but wants blind people to know as much as possible about the world around them and the choices that requires.
Jonathan Mosin [00:15:01] And if we opt in to the collection of that data, because we want to build robust AI tools that can help a blind person to conscious act, but if we feel like we’re having to make a sacrifice in order to get better access to the visual world, that’s a much more complex discussion.
Shelly Brisbin [00:15:20] Some blind programmers and tinkerers have fully embraced AI, with or without smart glasses. JJ Meadow has used AI to build audio games, image description tools, and more.
J.J Meadow [00:15:31] So one of the things that I’ve done with AI is teaching AI how to use braille. It’s not a thing that AI does well, but you can teach it.
Shelly Brisbin [00:15:40] His project allows blind users to view and create their own graphics on the dot-pad braille display. These newly empowered blind creators, along with smart glasses fans, say their concerns are both the same and different for most who encounter it. Jonathan Mosin of the NFB says AI technology in general brings problems that are specific to people with disabilities. Consider someone applying for a job.
Jonathan Mosin [00:16:05] Whether it be time limits that they set that may disadvantage an applicant, or perhaps expectations that the AI has of the way that somebody should look and perform.
Shelly Brisbin [00:16:16] And he says, all this talk about blind empowerment has a downside.
Jonathan Mosin [00:16:20] We’re also just wanting to be sure that AI is sending the right kind of messages out there about what blind people are capable of because AI is a big sponge and it can soak up a lot of stereotypes if we’re not careful.
Shelly Brisbin [00:16:37] That’s a good lesson for anyone, including journalists who hope to understand humans better by using AI. I’m Shelley Brisbane in Austin.
Jerry Quijano [00:16:52] The National Weather Service has issued a flood watch for the Austin area ahead of heavy rain that’s forecasted later this week. That watch starts at 7 tomorrow night and continues through 7 p.m. On Friday. Some areas could see 2 to 4 inches of rain with as many as 8 inches possible in some isolated spots. That flood watch covers a large part of central Texas including Travis, Hayes, and Williamson counties. We’re going to be keeping an eye on how this might impact weekend one of the Austin City Limits Music Festival. And we’ll keep you updated on the latest here on Austin Signal. But for now, be sure to get familiar with all the Austin acts that are gonna be popping up on stage over the next couple of weekends. There’s more about the local artists, including Grocery Bag, this month’s KUTX Artist of the Month, who we got to chat with earlier in the month, as well as the Houston Tillotson University Jazz Collective and UV, who are out with their new single today. I believe that’s the KUTx song of the day. There’s about that. At KUT.org and on the KUT app, and we have more Austin Signal that’s coming up after this break. This is Austin Signal, welcome back. Looking forward to today’s On Our Plate segment, we recently caught up with Austin American Statesman restaurant critic Matthew Odom about his picks for the top burgers and wings in Austin. It was a conversation so juicy that we had to air it in two parts, so if you missed his picks of top burgers, we’re going to link to that episode in today’s show notes. On our plate today, we are serving up the second half of that interview with I’m sharing his favorite wings here in Austin. Last week I ran into you at a bar during the day. I was off, but you were working very, very hard on a new list. What’s that list? Yeah, it’s hard. It’s a hard.
Mathew Odam [00:18:45] When you’ve got to be at a dive bar at 2 p.m. On a Tuesday you should have seen the look on your face you know busted you know so the the wings is another thing that I kind of broke ended up breaking down by categories I went into it thinking I’m just gonna say the 10 or 20 best wings in Austin and I broke them down by category is in the kind of a classic Buffalo wing that you’re kind of used to although maybe different sauces an Asian inspired wing a couple smoked wings from barbecue joints a couple southern places and then a couple wild cards. So let’s just say you and I were at Frasier’s Long and Low. I might go there occasionally. You look very comfortable there. So those are just classic small wings with a variety of sauces. They also are on my burger list with their $6 cheeseburger. So if you want kind of classic, crispy, crunchy, fried wings that you’re familiar with Frasier’s. Is a great one. Kome is a sushi spot over on Airport Boulevard, but they do this kind of like a cornstarch slurry that they batter their wings in and it’s almost paper thin. It’s kind of a pale brown and they fry theirs and the skin is crackling again, kind of almost like shattering glass and you can get different flavors there. I like to go salt and pepper and then hit it with your own amount of lemon juice to taste. It I’ll switch. Up on North Lamar, they smoke there, they cold smoke their wings, then they flash fry them. I like to get them tossed in Alabama white barbecue sauce, very tangy, creamy barbecue sauce. So if you’re looking for a barbecue style wing, that is a favorite. And then Whip My Soul, which is out on 620, kind of near Anderson Mill on the way to Cedar Park. It is a soul food restaurant, Chicken and Waffles restaurant. Really one of my favorite spots in the city. They serve a fully attached wing, golden and craggy and deeply fried and everything there. They have a fried pork chop sandwich, I believe, or a fried Pork Chop. And you would think it’s going to be dry because it’s already a pork chop and it’s fried and it is so moist inside. Everything they do fried there is delicious. They do sweet candy jams there that are great. But their wing has the beautiful advantage of coming on a equally golden waffle. You can drizzle with syrup. So if you’re looking for some soul food, Whip My Soul out on 620 is a favorite. And one last one, I’ll give you a wild card. I was in Kelly’s Irish Pub on Old Torf, okay, down in South Austin. It used to be a wine bar, Wine Belly, I believe it was called. It’s owned by a gentleman, I think from Northern Ireland. And they have, in the mode of the UK and the Republic of Ireland. They have… Curry flavored wings. So maybe you go to a fish shop, a fish and chip shop in the UK or the Republic of Ireland, you might be used to the curry spices there. So they’re a curry dry rub, very fragrant, warming spices. And then they serve it with, if you’ve been to McDonald’s in Northern Ireland or in Ireland, they serve a curry sauce. It’s kind of sweet and tangy and And that curry sauce you can find all over the UK and Ireland And the sauce that they serve with these wings, if you ask for it, tastes just like the one from McDonald’s over there. So maybe they lifted it from them. But those are just a few. The wing, I really think after doing this research, I think the wing has the highest floor of any bar food or any food. I think you can make a bad pizza. You can make bad burger. It’s hard to mess up a wing and there’s so much you can do with it. It’s kind of a blank canvas for… These creative folks at restaurants and bars around town. So I had a lot more fun with that research than I even expected I would, as you saw.
Jerry Quijano [00:22:45] I saw a little bit of that. You mentioned different kinds of sauces that you could get, and since we’re talking about wings, the question always comes up, like ranch or blue cheese. Do you partake in sides, or how do you approach that?
Mathew Odam [00:22:58] You know, it depends on what you get, what kind of the spice and flavor complex profile of the wing is. The best ranch I’ve ever had, maybe anywhere, is at Side Eye Pie. It’s a pizza trailer at Meanwhile Brewing. It is just loaded up with dill. Tony Currett there, the chef, went to the CIA and worked for Hillstone and other big restaurants before he opened this pizza trailer. So they make some of the best pizza in town And then this, this dill, they serve with their duck fat, fried chicken wings. Uh, it’s fabulous for, uh, for the pizza and for the wings. I actually was over there recently. Uh, and Jose Andreas was in town. Watch your toes. And, uh and, and we, uh we, Jose grabbed some of the wings and I think he spent 20 or 30 minutes talking to Tony about those, uh Chef Currant, which I, I know was, uh was great for, was great for Tony and, uh. Chef loved them. And if, uh, if the deal is, if the ranch is good enough for a Jose Andreas, it’s probably good enough for the rest of us. That’s right. It sounds like the real deal. And at the meanwhile,
Jerry Quijano [00:24:05] They have this kale Caesar salad as well. I don’t know if you’ve ever gotten that, but they roast a lemon and then they put the lemon inside and then you just squeeze that thing all over. So good. It is fantastic. Well, I am super hungry now, so I’m gonna have to end this interview so that I can go get some food. We have been chatting with Matthew Odom. He is the restaurant critic at the Austin American Statesman, and we’ll have a link to his rankings in today’s show notes.
Mathew Odam [00:24:25] And if anybody wants those lists and many more ranked lists, we’ve got them at statesman.com slash restaurants. Matthew, thank you. Thanks so much. Great to see you.
Jerry Quijano [00:24:35] And great to talk with all of you out there. Thank you for spending part of your afternoon with Austin Signal. That is it for us today. But there’s more in the podcast show notes and at KUT.org slash signal. The Austin Signal team is Reina Sevilla, Alexandra Hart, Kristin Cabrera, and I’m your host, Jerry Quijano. We’ll be back at the same time tomorrow. Talk to you then.
This transcript was transcribed by AI, and lightly edited by a human. Accuracy may vary. This text may be revised in the future.
