Listen
The forecast continues to evolve as an arctic cold front heads towards the Austin area this weekend. Temperatures are forecast to remain below freezing starting Saturday night in Central Texas and could stay that way through Monday. We’ll have the latest forecasts and updates from city officials.
Austin Community College’s free tuition pilot program ballooned to nearly 10,000 students this academic year. We’ll look at the students who are being impacted and the things they’re learning about.
Huston-Tillotson University’s Jazz Orchestra is among the top bands in the country. We’ll hear about their competition last weekend in New York.
Plus, photojournalism collides with original songwriting in the new project “Witness.” We share a special sneak listen.
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] The forecast continues to evolve as an arctic cold front heads toward the Austin area this weekend. Temperatures are forecast to remain below freezing starting Saturday night here in Central Texas, and they could stay that way through Monday. The latest forecasts and updates from city officials, that’s coming up on today’s show.
KUT Announcer: Laurie Gallardo [00:00:26] The Austin Signal is a production of KUT News, hosted by Jerry Quijano.
Jerry Quijano [00:00:31] Austin Community College’s free tuition pilot program ballooned to nearly 10,000 students this academic year. The students who are being impacted and the things that they’re learning about. And Huston Tillotson University’s Jazz Orchestra is among the top bands in the country. We’ll hear about their competition last weekend in New York. Plus photojournalism collides with original songwriting in the new project, Witness. We have more about that coming up on Austin Signal. Howdy, it’s Austin Signal. Thank you for making us part of your Friday. Let’s get right into it because we have a lot to share with you. A massive Arctic front is bearing down on central Texas. The National Weather Service expects it could bring freezing temperatures to Austin through maybe Tuesday with a chance of freezing rain or sleet. At a news conference today, Austin Mayor Kirk Watson’s message was simple.
Mayor Kirk Watson [00:01:31] Winter is here.
Jerry Quijano [00:01:33] KUT’s Andrew Weber has been covering the storm And this week he has more about preparations.
Andrew Weber [00:01:38] The days-long blast of cold air is expected to bring some freezing rain or sleet to Austin sometime Saturday, likely in the afternoon. That Arctic blast could coat Austin’s roads in a fine glaze of ice, and it could weigh down the city’s dense tree canopy, presenting the risk of power outages if limbs tumble down onto power lines like they did in 2023. Travis County Judge Andy Brown issued a disaster declaration today ahead of the front. At a news conference this morning, he was joined by Mayor Watson. Who had a simple request.
Mayor Kirk Watson [00:02:09] If you don’t need to be out over the weekend, please don’t be out, don’t be on the streets and get your home ready.
Andrew Weber [00:02:18] Watson Brown and other officials urged Austinites and Central Texans to have a plan. Jason Runyon with the National Weather Service said this dangerously cold weather system could bring up to a quarter inch of ice accumulation starting Saturday when freezing rain and sleet are expected to hit the hill country. Runyon added that the forecast is changing. He urges residents to keep up to date on the forecast.
Jason Runyon [00:02:41] This forecast is still evolving, even over the next 24 to 36 hours. While our confidence is increasing on the overall impacts, fluctuations in the ICE forecast are still possible and likely.
Andrew Weber [00:02:54] While ERCOT, the state’s electrical grid operator, says it does not anticipate large-scale power outages, the local concern about Austin Energy’s grid is very real. Ice weighed down tree limbs across the city in 2023, causing outages for hundreds of thousands of Austinites for days. General Manager Stuart Riley said the city-owned utility has spent the years since retooling and improving its responses to winter weather. Austin Energy is fully staffed and is prepared to reach out to other utilities
Stuart Riley [00:03:23] need be. Austin Energy over the past few years has done a great deal to prepare for storms, in particular to prepare for winter storms like what we’re facing right now. Our crews are ready, our staffing plans are in place, so we are the most prepared that we have ever been for a winter storm.
Andrew Weber [00:03:39] Watson and others advised Austinites to have a plan in place in case the power goes out, check on your neighbors, and make sure you have enough food and water ahead of the front. I’m Andrew Weber in Austin.
Jerry Quijano [00:03:53] As conversations about the costs of higher education continue, community colleges have seen a small percentage increase in enrollment. Now this is true for Austin Community College as well, but another factor is ACC’s free tuition pilot program. It launched in the fall of 2024 and a year later saw double the number of participants. For more about this story, we’re speaking with KUT’s Greta Diaz-Gonzalez-Vasquez. Thanks for coming on Austin Signal.
Greta Diaz Gonzalez Vasquez [00:04:19] Hi Jerry, thank you for having me.
Jerry Quijano [00:04:21] Yeah, so remind us, what is this free pilot program? I’m assuming it’s free tuition, but what is the goal behind this?
Greta Diaz Gonzalez Vasquez [00:04:27] Yes, that’s right. So it’s free tuition and no fees for students who graduated after July 2023 in the ACC service area or students who got their GED after that date, also students who were homeschooled. And the idea is that more students can access college education because we all know that is very expensive.
Jerry Quijano [00:04:48] And was there a reason why they wanted to start this program? It was just, I’m guessing, to increase enrollment, to increase education among the community. What was the reason they wanted to start it in the first place?
Greta Diaz Gonzalez Vasquez [00:04:58] Yeah, so back in 2024, when the pilot program was approved, ACC officials said that at least 12,000 Central Texas high school graduates were not going into college. So they hadn’t enrolled to college after graduating. And so they wanted to bring that number down, make sure that people had access to college, but not only that, that they would be able to enroll and also stay in college because maybe you can do the first year, but then, you know, the budget changes. Yeah, right.
Jerry Quijano [00:05:26] It changes, things change as we hear on the radio, you know, things are always changing. Different factors are impacting people’s ability to do anything and everything here in Austin and across the country. So I know that you’ve spoken with folks at ACC. So first off, I wanted to ask you, what are the kinds, who are the kind of students that are benefiting from this program so far.
Greta Diaz Gonzalez Vasquez [00:05:46] Right, yeah, I spoke to Jenna Kulinane-Hagee and she is the Vice Chancellor of Institutional Research and Analytics and she was telling me that they did interviews with students who have benefited from this program and she said there are three main groups that have benefited from this. The first is students who thought they wouldn’t go to college because they couldn’t afford to go to College. Second is students, who thought well maybe I can wait a couple of work a little bit, save money, and then go to college. Uh, studies find that those students rarely go to college. And the third group was students who plan on getting a certificate and then jumping into the workforce. They now can go to and get an associate or even a bachelor’s degree.
Jerry Quijano [00:06:29] Now I mentioned at the top that this program has doubled in size, this current academic year is featuring about nearly 10,000 students who are benefiting from this program. What were the numbers in the first year and how much of that might be a little bit of a crossover?
Greta Diaz Gonzalez Vasquez [00:06:44] Yeah that’s right the first year it was around 5 000 students but then you know that not all of them will come back
Jerry Quijano [00:06:50] These are not all unique students, right?
Greta Diaz Gonzalez Vasquez [00:06:52] Right. But then they also realized that a lot of those students were coming back. The rate of students that would come back every semester would also increase because students can stay in college. And then this year with the two cohorts is almost 10,000 students.
Jerry Quijano [00:07:07] OK. What kinds of programs are these students learning about? What kind of classes are they taking?
Greta Diaz Gonzalez Vasquez [00:07:13] You know, they said that they are taking all kinds of classes, but there were three programs that ACC saw an increase on enrollment this year. And they’re mainly workforce-aligned programs or health-related programs. And so it was advanced manufacturing, skilled trades, and health sciences. Those three programs saw at least a 17% increase in enrollment. And I have to say ACC saw a 7% increase, And that would be. Around 41,000 students. And out of all these students, out of that 41,024 are part of this pilot program according to our math.
Jerry Quijano [00:07:51] Okay, according to your math, okay, excellent. Well, we have more about this story over at KUT.org. Greta Diaz-Gonzalez Vasquez is a morning edition producer here at KUt, but you will be hearing more of her here on Austin Signal, KUT’s education reporter, Greta Dias-Gonsalez-Vasquez. Thanks for coming on the show, we appreciate you.
Greta Diaz Gonzalez Vasquez [00:08:11] Thank you, Jerry.
Jerry Quijano [00:08:17] Huston-Tillotson University’s Jazz Orchestra is among the top bands in the country after their finish at the National Collegiate Jazz Competition in New York last weekend. As KUT’s Katy McAfee reports, Huston- Tillotson was the smallest school selected to perform and the only all undergraduate band.
Katy McAfee [00:08:36] Huston Tillotson’s jazz program didn’t exist until about four years ago. That’s when Jeremy George rolled the dice and left his job teaching music at the high school level in Florida to develop the university’s jazz programs.
Jeremy George [00:08:48] Before I moved here and took this job, I didn’t know anything about Huston-Tillerson University. You know, I was over in Florida, like, working at Huston- Tillerson, this job opening, where? Where is it?
Katy McAfee [00:08:59] George says once he got to Austin, he realized even people in Austin haven’t heard of Huston Tillotson. But within four years, his students were on stage at Austin city limits and playing next to Wynton Marsalis at a residency in Virginia. Still, George felt like his band, only a few years old and with limited funding, was kind of an underdog. Being selected to perform at the National Collegiate Jazz Competition was a stretch. Until September, when George got an email.
Jeremy George [00:09:31] I looked at it and I closed my phone. I was like, this can’t be what I read.
Katy McAfee [00:09:37] Only 10 schools are selected to play at nationals each year. That’s out of hundreds of programs, many with 20 plus years of performances behind them. Huston Tillotson was one of just two schools from Texas selected to perform, the other being UT. The competition goes like this. Each band plays three songs. Two of them have to be from Duke Ellington’s library. And if you’re not familiar, Ellington is widely considered one of the greatest American composers of all time. The third tune can be a student arrangement or a piece from the Jazz at Lincoln Center Library. That adds up to a performance that lasts about 18 minutes. George and the band practiced those 18 minutes for more than four months. Dorian Verner is a third year percussion student. He says he had his eye on this competition for years and rehearsing for it felt like getting ready for battle.
Dorian Verner [00:10:31] That was my mindset going into it the whole time, because we were about to be in front of the biggest jazz schools in the nation, and coming from Austin, Texas all the way to New York, like one of the big jazz cities in the world.
Katy McAfee [00:10:47] But when competition day came, George says he told his students to focus, not on the audience, not about the fact that they’re playing in New York, focus on the music.
Jeremy George [00:10:59] We blocked the world out, and it was all about us in that moment. As soon as I say it, one, two, three, four. I didn’t even think about the fact that you know thousands of people were watching online and you know there were hundreds of people in the audience. Not at all. I just, I was with my students.
Katy McAfee [00:11:43] Joshua Saffold plays trumpet in the band. He says the whole performance was a blur.
Joshua Saffold [00:11:48] I walked on and then I walked off. Like, everything happened so fast.
Katy McAfee [00:11:55] Verner said this, too. The gravity of their performance didn’t hit him until the next day.
Dorian Verner [00:12:00] Sitting and watching and listening to the performance that we had on Sunday, that was probably the best we have ever sounded.
Katy McAfee [00:12:11] Huston Tillotson came in third place. Michigan State University finished second, and Temple University came out on top. With the third place win, I asked George, is the Huston Tillotson Jazz Orchestra still an underdog?
Jeremy George [00:12:24] We are no longer the underdogs. Technically, we are the third best jazz program in the world. Think of that.
Katy McAfee [00:12:32] I’m Katy McAfee in Austin.
Jerry Quijano [00:12:39] The Huston Tillotson University Jazz Orchestra will be back on the big stage in April. They open for Parliament Funkadelic at the Austin Blues Festival at Waterloo Park. Follow more KUT Art Beat coverage at KUT.org and we’ve got more Austin signal for you after this break. This is Austin Signal. Austin-based photojournalist Tamir Khalifa has covered numerous stories over his career, from Hurricane Harvey to the aftermath for victims of mass shootings in El Paso in 2019 and Robb Elementary in Uvalde in 2022. But along with the images that he’s made, Khalifa also penned lyrics and music inspired by the events in a project that he calls Witness, which is debuting tonight out at the Long Center. He brought this new project to Studio 1A here at KUT and spoke about it with Texas Standards’ Laura Rice.
Laura Rice [00:13:34] Absolutely. Well, it’s actually your second time on our program and the last time we spoke, almost a year ago exactly, you had just been awarded the American Mosaic Journalism Prize for your photography in Uvalde. And I understand you actually took that prize money and put it toward this new project, which explores Uvalda and beyond. What do you want people to know about witness?
Tamir Kalifa [00:13:56] So, Witness is a combination of my photographs and music that has been inspired by my reporting and experiences behind the camera. So, Uvalde, the songs I wrote about Uvalade, three of them, are the emotional center of the piece, but this project is really career spanning. It covers my time documenting the Texas-Mexico border, the Walmart shooting in El Paso, the pandemic, Hurricane Harvey. And covering the Kilauea Volcano eruption in Hawaii in 2018. And so throughout all of my experiences in all of these places, the theme that kept emerging was that when people are pushed to their limits and to their extremes, they can reveal an extraordinary resilience. And music has always been an important method for me to process some of what I’ve experienced and some of I’ve witnessed. And starting in 2018, I started writing music about it and trying to make sense of it while also trying to appreciate some of the people I’ve met along the way. And so this project is rooted in a sense of care and compassion for these people and these issues, but it’s also an attempt to prolong some of, the lifespan and the relevance of some of this work, which some of it’s years old. And as we know, the pace of the news cycle moves. Extremely quickly and some of the work that we do tends to get looked past very quickly as it’s eclipsed by whatever else is happening and so this is this project is an attempt to Slow down a little bit to linger and it’s grounded in the humanity that made these stories urgent in the first place
Laura Rice [00:15:37] You mentioned some of the topics there, also COVID, immigration, the El Paso shooting. These are really heavy stories. You were writing along the way, but were you also re-exploring as you entered into this project?
Tamir Kalifa [00:15:52] Yeah, absolutely, I found that the writing process actually sort of seeped into the songs in their totality and sometimes when I was thinking of, when I writing one piece, say about Uvaldi, I was actually thinking about something in Hurricane Harvey and vice versa. And so it’s really been an experience that has combined all of these different elements and different experiences, but I’ve tried to make the music as accessible as can be.
Laura Rice [00:16:18] Well, you talk about combining music and your photojournalism. What does that look like in practice? This is really an experiential project that you’ve put together.
Tamir Kalifa [00:16:28] Yeah, so I’m still figuring it out myself, but this project really is an experience or at least I want it to be. And so I’ve developed a performance where as we play the songs and as I sing them, I screen the photographs that inspired the songs and I’ve timed it so that when you hear a certain lyric, you see an image that actually in some cases inspired that exact line. And during the performance I try to tie it all together with stories about some of my experiences that in some ways pulls the, draws the curtain from behind journalism and helps just give a little bit more insight into the humanity that underlies it all.
Tamir Kalifa [00:17:15] They woke up on America’s doorstep What’s another day, what’s another hour? Bottle for a shower, they woke up Above the Rio Grande, when past the razor wire They could see the texas skies for three days And three nights The bridge was a bedroom with headlights for nightlights And now they’re waiting at the border
Laura Rice [00:18:10] Is this something you always wanted to do, or did it kind of come up as a dream that was made possible in part by winning this prize? I mean, how did this come about?
Tamir Kalifa [00:18:19] So I played in Austin bands for many years, one of them was Mother Falcon and I’m grateful to be joined by some of the members of that band, but we played in Austin for many years and I always, part of me wanted to make music about photography because as I was in the band I was also starting to take on assignments and more ambitious projects and I wanted to do something that combined all of these things, I just didn’t quite know how. I’ve long felt that the whole can be greater than the sum of its parts. And so by combining music and photography, I can try to present an experience that I hope is more powerful than the two of them independently.
Laura Rice [00:18:59] You’ve mentioned this wonderful group of musicians with you. There’s really someone especially I want you to introduce first. Could you talk to me about your co-vocalist here?
Tamir Kalifa [00:19:10] Yeah, so I’m actually getting chills just out of gratitude. But I’m joined here by Jasmine Casades. And she is truly one of the most extraordinary young women I’ve ever had the privilege of meeting. And I feel immensely grateful that she’s joined us here. And I’d like her to just introduce herself.
Jasmine Casades [00:19:31] Well, yes, I’m Jasmine Casades. I’m from Ivaldi, Texas. I’m the eldest sister of Jackie Gossetis, who lost her life at Robb Elementary. So tell me why you get involved in this project. Tamir asked me to. Well, it was one of the first songs that Tamir showed us was Jackie’s song and just to participate in a project like this that memorializes my sister in such a different and unique way. I’m just very, very honored and very grateful to keep sharing my sister’s story.
Tamir Kalifa [00:20:06] There’s a rock from Uvalde on a ledge by the banks of the Seine It’s tucked in the roots of an ivy bush Jackie’s name is written in white She’d always dreamed of Sien, the city of light
Tamir Kalifa [00:20:36] I met the Kastas family early on, covering the aftermath of the New York Times. And Jasmine had recognized me from some of the time I had spent in the square, and we just really forged a meaningful connection and bond. And I found out Jasmine was an amazing singer, and I brought my guitar, and we started singing all sorts of different songs. And then I just brought them a song one day that I had written about them. And then it’s sort of been this amazing, it’s been just an amazing journey since then. All of the
Tamir Kalifa [00:21:12] All of the things that’ll check me
Jasmine Casades [00:21:25] After such a tragedy, like the one that happened in New Valdi, the relationship between media and the people that these stories are being told about is such a complicated one, and the way that Tamir is telling these stories so beautifully and so respectfully, I just, just props to Tamir.
Laura Rice [00:21:44] Tamir Khalifa is a musician and photojournalist based in Austin. His latest project is Witness. We’ll share videos of these performances and links to more at TexasStandard.org and on the Texas Standard 82 page. Tamir, Jasmine, all of you, thank you so much.
Tamir Kalifa [00:22:02] All of the things that’ll check you
Jerry Quijano [00:22:22] And you can find more about this story and this Studio 1A performance over at kut.org. That is it for today here on Austin Signal and for this week here on the Austin Signal. Remember, you need to have multiple ways to stay weather aware as we head into this weekend. We’re gonna be doing our best to keep you updated on the latest at kut.org, on the KUT app and the Kut social media channels. So be sure to follow us there. Thank you to Andrew Weber, Greta Diaz-Gonzalez-Vasquez, Katy McAfee, and Laura Rice for their help with today’s episode. Have a great weekend, stay safe. This is Austin Signal.
This transcript was transcribed by AI, and lightly edited by a human. Accuracy may vary. This text may be revised in the future.
