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Texas can force schools to post the Ten Commandments in classrooms following a ruling this week from the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals — but for now, the Austin school district does not have to comply because of ongoing litigation.
Highland Park Elementary School has become a powerhouse in the sport of archery, and they’re going after another national title.
Plus: Are there wild elk lurking in South Austin? ATXplained investigates.
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] Public school classrooms in Texas have to post the Ten Commandments. That’s the ruling this week from the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals. For now though, the Austin School District does not have to comply with the ruling because of ongoing litigation. More about the fallout from that ruling. And an Austin Elementary School has become a powerhouse in the sport of archery. They’re multi-year defending state champions and now they’re after another national title. We’re going to hear from the team and their coach coming up 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] Plus, are there wild elk lurking in South Austin? One man swears he encountered one while driving to the airport. Nobody believed him, so he asked our ATX Plane project to get to the bottom of it. The answer, that’s coming up next, right here on Austin Signal. Howdy out there, you are listening to Austin Signal here on KUT News, we are community-powered public radio. I’m your host, Jerry Kikano, it is Thursday, April 23rd, thank you for tuning in and making us a part of your day. A court order allowing the sale of smokable hemp products in Texas has been extended through May 1st. A temporary restraining order against new state regulations had been set to expire tomorrow, and that would have forced hemp stores to remove cannabis flower and concentrate from their shelves. But a hearing over those rules was pushed back to next week, running Tuesday through Thursday, so both sides agreed to extend the temporary restraining order until the end of the month. Plaintiffs, including the Texas Hemp Business Counselor, are suing the state to block some of the new regulations that include a ban on selling smokeable hemp products and sharply higher fees for retailers and manufacturers. And today, Acting U.S. Attorney General Todd Blanch signed an order that reclassifies state-licensed medical marijuana from schedule one. Normally reserved for drugs without medical use, to the less-strict Schedule 3. The order also allows state-licensed companies to deduct business expenses on their federal taxes. Surely more developments to come at the statewide and national levels on this story. We’re going to keep you updated on the latest news here on Austin Signal. This week, a federal appeals court ruled that Texas can require the display of Ten Commandments in Public School Classrooms. The 5th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled 9-8 on Tuesday that Senate Bill 10 can move forward. That law was passed by the Texas Legislature last session. But KUT’s education reporter Greta Diaz-Gonzalez-Vasquez says that Austin ISD may not have to comply with the law, at least for now. She’s joining us now to explain. Howdy, Greta.
Greta Diaz Gonzalez Vasquez [00:02:52] Hi Jerry!
Jerry Quijano [00:02:53] So first, remind us of the specifics of this law and the challenge to it.
Greta Diaz Gonzalez Vasquez [00:02:57] Yeah, okay. So this is Senate Bill 10. And like you said, it was passed last year. And it says I that K through 12 schools must have posters of the 10 commandments in every classroom. And districts can buy them, but they if that’s what they want, of course, but they can also accept donations. And so the poster has to be durable or even framed once again, if that is what they and it has to be 16 by 20 inches at least and if people donate posters to the districts then campuses must have posters on the wall. And so that’s what the bill says. And it’s important to note that there are three different lawsuits right now going on. The one that we heard a ruling from this week was filed by multiple families against different school districts, saying that the law is, quote, establishment of religion, end quote, and that it courses students into reverence of the Ten Commandments.
Jerry Quijano [00:03:52] Okay, let’s talk about the ruling that was announced this week. What did that have to say?
Greta Diaz Gonzalez Vasquez [00:03:55] Yes. So, this lawsuit had been heard at a court in San Antonio where a federal judge said, okay, this does interfere with families’ free exercise of religious or non-religious beliefs. And then Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton asked the Fifth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to take a look at it. And there, 17 active judges listened to the case and decided that SB 10 is far from coercing students into engaging with religious worship. But they also said that it simply, quote, puts a poster in a classroom wall, end quote, and that it doesn’t summon anybody to pray. So now the districts that had been in the lawsuit have to comply with SB 10 once a mandate comes, which is expected sometime around mid-May.
Jerry Quijano [00:04:42] Okay, let’s talk about the Austin ISD part of the equation. Your reporting says that the district say they will not post the 10 commandments in the meantime. How are they getting around that?
Greta Diaz Gonzalez Vasquez [00:04:51] Yeah. So for people who have been paying extreme attention since last year, they knew that Austin is off the hook for now, but it’s a little bit complicated. Even lawyers I spoke to yesterday had to like pause and look back and say, okay, what is happening here? So this lawsuit once again is from families against the school districts. And back in August, Austin ISD had said, okay. We do not want to spend resources in litigation. We’ll comply with what families are saying for and will abide by a final decision. And so the question here was… Is the final decision from the Fifth Circuit or is it a final, final decision from the Supreme Court? And so I noticed that Austin was not mentioned in the ruling this week. And so, I asked lawyers like, what does this mean? Can the state come after the district for not complying with the law? And I talked to Rachel Lazar from Americans United for the Separation of Church and State, which is one of the organizations that is representing families in the lawsuit. And this is what she told me.
Rachel Lasar [00:05:47] It was a federal court who approved the stipulation that Austin agreed to not post until litigation is totally complete. So in this case, the attorney general would be in contempt of court if he went after Austin because he would be violating that court order.
Greta Diaz Gonzalez Vasquez [00:06:07] So in short, for now, Austin ISDs off the hook until a final ruling comes.
Jerry Quijano [00:06:13] Okay, we have been speaking with Greta Diaz-Gonzalez-Vasquez. We’re gonna have a link to her reporting in today’s show notes, and you can find more at kut.org slash signal. Thank you, Greta.
Greta Diaz Gonzalez Vasquez [00:06:24] Thank you, Jerry.
Jerry Quijano [00:06:37] Almost 200 kids from Austin are arriving in Salt Lake City, Utah for a national archery tournament that kicks off today. KUT’s Nathan Bernier visited an Austin Elementary School gym where the sport is teaching kids how to focus and turning some of them into champions.
Nathan Bernier [00:06:55] Inside the gym at Highland Park Elementary School, a line of a couple dozen kids raises their bows, draws, and lets arrows fly. The arrows smack into the center of targets downrange. The kids make it look easy, but they’ve been working at it for a long time. 10-Year-old Adam Moskowitz won a state title in March.
Adam Moskowitz [00:07:15] This is my first year doing archery. First year and you want state championship?
Nathan Bernier [00:07:21] How’d you do that?
Adam Moskowitz [00:07:22] Um, lots of practice, and like teammates help also.
Nathan Bernier [00:07:28] Her 11-year-old teammate, Louis Garcia, also won a state title last month in bullseye. He says practice matters, but so does mindset.
Louis Garcia [00:07:36] Don’t get in your head, that’s like the biggest thing. Stay calm. There’s this quote, like, just be a goldfish. Just don’t worry about it. It’s just one arrow at a time, one step at a time, basically like that.
Nathan Bernier [00:07:46] Together, they’re part of one of the most successful youth archery programs in Texas. Three, four, and relax.
Nathan Bernier [00:07:54] Austin ISD does not pay for the archery program. Families mostly cover the cost, which can run about $1,000 a year for each kid, including equipment. Some scholarships are available. For now, though, it means the program only exists at a handful of campuses. But the sport has been growing in Austin since the program started about a decade ago at Highland Park Elementary. That’s when a longtime PE teacher named Jim DeLine let his students try archery as a two-week class.
Jim DeLine [00:08:20] Class unit. Instantly found that it was a game changer for a lot of kids in a lot of different ways. Kids that are kind of on the peripheral of team sports or don’t get a lot social interaction with other people or you know might be on the spectrum a little bit, right? Instantly saw the change in how this impacted them.
Nathan Bernier [00:08:38] So they started a club, and in 2018 the archers at Highland Park Elementary won state championships. They haven’t lost since.
Jim DeLine [00:08:47] Finish while he’s doing it. Keep going. And relax, Mario. Keep that bow up a little bit. This guy right here is one of the hardest working. You should really interview him.
Nathan Bernier [00:08:56] 11-Year-old Robbie Schooler walked over and told me about his daily routine.
Robbie Schooler [00:09:01] I have a whiteboard and I made a chart of all the exercises I do and I do it almost every day and I keep a journal just to like write down all my thoughts about archery.
Nathan Bernier [00:09:13] He says that’s how he trains his mind.
Robbie Schooler [00:09:15] If you want to get really good, you have to set small goals or like have a routine that you do every day. If you don’t do it, it doesn’t feel that good, so it kind of makes the mindset you want to do every single day.
Nathan Bernier [00:09:27] Why do you like archery so much?
Robbie Schooler [00:09:29] When you see all the middle schoolers, high schoolers getting these perfect 50s and stuff, you’re like, I want to work hard to get that, even if it’s going to take a lot of work.
Nathan Bernier [00:09:40] Have you done that? Have you got a perfect 50?
Robbie Schooler [00:09:41] Yeah, too. Yeah.
Jim DeLine [00:09:43] If you’re not nervous, you’re now what? Normal! And it’s okay to be nervous as long as you don’t? Barf! Barf and throw up, right? We’ll let the other teams barf and throw up but we’re not going to.
Nathan Bernier [00:09:52] The Lion has watched his first archery students grow up. Some of them are in college now. When seniors graduate from high school, they’ll sometimes come back to Highland Park for one last team picture. So cool.
Jim DeLine [00:10:05] And I’m the smallest one in the bunch. And again, getting back to your original question, what keeps you in this? All coaches will tell you the same thing, relationships, you know, you’re making lifetime friends. So I’ll keep you there.
Nathan Bernier [00:10:17] Just as I’m about to leave, the students start applauding for some reason.
Jim DeLine [00:10:24] Everybody got a picture? Yeah.
Nathan Bernier [00:10:26] Robbie got another perfect score, all five arrows in the 10-point center ring. So is that three this year, or three F total?
Louis Garcia [00:10:32] To be this year.
Jim DeLine [00:10:34] When you get a 50 here, right? What happens?
Nathan Bernier [00:10:36] You get a sticker and then we get to feed you to the llamas, so. Well now Robbie and his teammates are taking their focus to Salt Lake City where they’re competing in a national tournament that wraps up on Saturday. I’m Nathan Bernier in Austin.
Jerry Quijano [00:10:59] And we’re gonna have a link to Nathan’s story in today’s podcast, Show Notes, and you can check out more over at kut.org slash signal. Lots of great photos from that story. Wanted to let you know about something that happened yesterday. Austin has lifted its ban on open flames in city parks. It was a fire hazard during the dry conditions, but after the rain of recent weeks, the city has announced that grilling can commence for the first time since October of last year. It is okay to use wood or charcoal-fired grills and propane grills in parks during hours of operation, but smoking is still banned in Austin parks. And if you’re planning on doing some grilling, weather should be nice this weekend, mostly cloudy. Highs right around 90 on Saturday and Sunday, but no rain in the forecast. We got more Austin signal coming up after this break. Stay with us. This is Austin Signal, welcome back. Austin has its share of strange and even exotic-seeming animals, armadillos, wild hogs, all kinds of bats. But when Austinite Darren Smith saw an unusual animal on the road early one morning, it was just too far-fetched for his friends and family to believe. So he brought the case to our A.T. Explained project. KUT’s Olivia Aldridge went full private eye to answer his question.
Olivia Aldridge [00:12:29] December 11th, 2019. It was a dark, chilly morning. My client Darren Smith left his home in Driftwood before dawn.
Darren Smith [00:12:38] There’s nobody on the road. It is pitch dark.
Olivia Aldridge [00:12:40] He was driving to the airport to meet his graduate school cohort for a class trip to South America. But the drive didn’t go as planned. Smith was on South Mopac when things went awry.
Darren Smith [00:12:53] Almost to lacrosse where the wildfire center turns off. There’s no lights I look down for a second just looks down at something on my floor and I look up and directly in front of me is an elk
Olivia Aldridge [00:13:06] in Austin, Texas.
Darren Smith [00:13:07] Or something huge. I was so big, but I just like swerved. And I mean, my heart’s racing a thousand beats a minute. I’m like, what the hell was that?
Olivia Aldridge [00:13:18] An elk or something huge. Smith admits that at first he wasn’t sure what he saw.
Darren Smith [00:13:24] So I get all the way over to the airport, fellow students were all kind of gathered up to get on the same plane. I’m like, I almost hit a moose.
Olivia Aldridge [00:13:33] His friends weren’t buying it. There were no moose around Austin. Maybe you just saw one hell of a deer. But what he’d seen was taller than a deer, leggier, with bigger antlers, and altogether just more huge. After a quick Google, Smith set the record straight. Not a deer! Not a moose! It was definitely an elk. But his peers remained unconvinced.
Brian South [00:13:56] My main memory is just thinking Baron was nuts and didn’t really see an elephant.
Olivia Aldridge [00:14:03] Brian South is a close friend of Smith’s from graduate school. He remembers pulling up photos to argue the point.
Brian South [00:14:09] Cause I was like, no dude, this is an elk, this isn’t deer. He’s like, No, this was what I saw the elk. And I was there’s no way there’s, there’s no elk in Austin, but he was pretty set on it. So I was all right, man. Maybe you did.
Olivia Aldridge [00:14:20] Smith’s classmates laughed at him throughout their trip. Silly Darren, with his delusions. Elk belong in colder climates, the rocky mountains of Colorado, the snowy expanses of Yellowstone. So Smith returned home and sought solace with his loving wife. Surely she would believe him.
Darren Smith [00:14:39] Uh, yeah, she doesn’t believe me.
Olivia Aldridge [00:14:42] But Smith couldn’t let it go. Even as weeks passed, months, years. Frankly, it started to get a little weird.
Brian South [00:14:50] He’s like, Hey, do you remember when we talked about that elk in Austin? I was like, vaguely, dude.
Olivia Aldridge [00:14:54] So finally, Smith brought the case to me.
Darren Smith [00:14:59] I saw it for a fleeting, you know, millisecond. But in that millisecond I saw it, I know it’s there.
Olivia Aldridge [00:15:05] And you were sure it wasn’t a deer. Oh yeah. I asked him to describe the creature he’d seen.
Darren Smith [00:15:11] It was almost all leg and then this body, the body was just like, it was just massive. If you looked in my window, it just, it almost took up like the, like the physical bit of its actual like torso was probably like five or six feet wide it seemed like in this head and it just looked straight at me.
Olivia Aldridge [00:15:28] I grew concerned. He just didn’t sound like a man who knew what an elk looked like. I began to fear I’d been approached by an unreliable witness. But Smith was a man possessed. For years he’d been consumed, losing sleep, losing sanity, wondering how he could prove he saw what he saw.
Darren Smith [00:15:47] I want to find the white whale. Like, I know it exists. I know they’re there. Like, one day I’m going to see them. I want find these elves.
Olivia Aldridge [00:15:54] Against my better judgment, I too became consumed. What exactly had Smith seen in the gloom? Was it simply a deer, some strange cryptid of the night, or could his suspicions be true? Darren needed to know, are there wild elk in Austin, Texas?
Darren Smith [00:16:14] There’s gotta be help.
Olivia Aldridge [00:16:15] There was one sign that pointed to yes. What appeared to be an elk crossing sign on the 45 Southwest hole, the connector between Mopac and 1626. The road opened mere months before Smith saw his creature of the night, and the sign did not escape his notice.
Darren Smith [00:16:34] Why would they put up these signs if there’s not some kind of else?
Olivia Aldridge [00:16:37] I took the case. As it turned out, Smith wasn’t the only one intrigued by that sign. It also aroused discussion among the good people of TexasBowHunter.com. Some in the forum were dismissive. Ain’t no elk here, one user wrote. But others told strange tales of elk roaming near the highway. My painter took a photo of a free-range herd in that area ten years ago. I saw elk while building houses in Circle C. There are elk in a ranch down by the and fill. I realized there were plenty of stories of elk in southwest Austin for those with the eyes to see, all somewhat mythical around the edges. There was the fuzzy video shot from a cell phone posted on Reddit, the questionable photo from a game camera in the hill country, and there was my own editor, Ben Philpott, telling me that everyone knows the sign on 45 is about escaped elk from the Texas Disposal Systems Exotic Game Ranch.
Darren Smith [00:17:37] Everyone knows that.
Olivia Aldridge [00:17:38] Well, it was news to this detective. Texas Disposal Systems operates the landfill in far southeast Austin that accepts most of the city’s trash. On the same property, one can lock eyes with rhinoceroses, kudus, and, yes, elk, also classified as exotics in this state. Odd, perhaps, that a waste management company would keep exotic animals near a landfill, but the ways of Texans are strange. In fact, There are plenty of these ranches scattered across Texas, some raking in thousands of dollars a pop from hunters hoping for a shot at the elusive elk with its distinctive bugle and large impressive antler rack.
Callen Ahrens [00:18:18] Hunters that normally would try to go to New Mexico, Arizona, Utah, Wyoming, Colorado, you know, to go hunt elk.
Olivia Aldridge [00:18:26] Ranch man Callen Ahrens leads hunts from the open ranges of West Texas to the fenced off exotic ranches of the hill country.
Callen Ahrens [00:18:33] They’re finding it’s more profitable for them to hunt them in state.
Olivia Aldridge [00:18:40] Elk may be classified as exotic today, but they once roamed Texas as natives until overhunting and habitat loss took their toll. By the 1920s, landowners began to capture elk out of state and bring them back to West Texas. Today, up to several thousand may be ranging freely in that part of the state. But in the hill country, elk are relegated to high fence properties that keep wildlife out and exotics in. Funny thing about fences though,
Callen Ahrens [00:19:09] fences, you know, they get holes in them.
Olivia Aldridge [00:19:11] That’s right, they get holes. Flooding creates water gaps, sections of fence fall, elk escape, and then all bets are off.
Callen Ahrens [00:19:20] Yeah, they’re at the mercy of God Almighty because then they just breathe and do what they want.
Olivia Aldridge [00:19:26] Forget the image of elk ranging through a snowy yellowstone. These animals are adaptable survivors, holding up to both heat and cold. They have a flexible diet and sprawling home ranges of up to 100 square miles. That’s why errands can confidently say today that there are thriving, breeding elk around Austin.
Callen Ahrens [00:19:46] We managed the ranches along 290 between Johnson City and Austin. And there is some milk that I’ve seen on camera and from survey from the helicopter. And there’s even some on the north side of Austin that I have seen too.
Olivia Aldridge [00:20:00] Things were beginning to look up for my client, and signs kept piling up in his favor. Apparently, the elk crossing sign was placed after several of the animals were spotted during the road’s construction. The road authorities didn’t know where their interloping elk had come from, but they said nearby homeowners continue to report sightings. Maybe one of them could give me the cold, hard evidence I still needed.
Michael Ekrat [00:20:25] My name is Michael Ekrat. This is my second house in Circle C, but I’ve really wanted one with a green belt, so that’s why I moved to Gray Rock.
Olivia Aldridge [00:20:33] He placed a game camera in back of his home to enjoy sightings of wildlife. There’s a lot to see. Cardinals, foxes, deer, and yes, even elk trotting across the frame.
Michael Ekrat [00:20:45] In Circle City, a lot of people joke about having the elk signs on the highway. But when I saw those big racks, I knew that they were elk right away.
Olivia Aldridge [00:20:54] After so much rumor and speculation, there it finally was, caught on camera. I ran the footage by some experts. Callan Aron said, yes, there is an elk in Ekrot’s video, alongside a red stag, two similar species that often intermingle. So there I had it, my smoking gun. All there was left to do was give my client the good news. I called Smith into my office to show him the footage. Does that look like what you saw?
Darren Smith [00:21:22] Yes. Yeah, that looks very similar to what I saw. So I’m not crazy.
Olivia Aldridge [00:21:28] You are not crazy!
Darren Smith [00:21:31] Everybody thought I was crazy. I’m like I’m telling you there’s elk in Austin
Olivia Aldridge [00:21:36] At last, Darren’s White Whale. My client was vindicated. Questions still linger about where these elk originally came from. The exotic ranch by the landfill was one guess, but there were plenty of other properties with elk around. Perhaps it was even multiple escapes that led to these mavericks roaming free. But one thing is sure, there are elk in southwest Austin. And as I close the book on this mystery… I began to wonder if even stranger things could be lurking here. If there are elk in Austin, why not the Texas Bigfoot? That’s a question for my next case. Until then, I’m Olivia Aldridge in Austin.
Jerry Quijano [00:22:25] That story was first performed at our ATXplained live show last fall. My, what a performance it was, and our next show is coming up on May 21 at Bass Concert Hall. Details and tickets at texasperformingarts.org. We’ll see you out there. That is it for today’s show. Rayna Sevilla is our technical director, Alexa Hart is our producer, and Kristen Cabrera is our managing producer. I’m Jerry Quijano, Austin Signal will be back tomorrow at the same time, we will 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.
