Teachers and students in the Round
Rock School District say they're
seeing benefits from a statewide ban
on cell phones in public school
classrooms.
That ban went into effect at the
beginning of this school year and
some students say they feel more
engaged inside the classroom and
outside of it too.
We'll have more from Williamson
County.
In Texas, prisons without air
conditioning routinely reach 90
degrees in the summer heat with some
even topping the triple digit
mark. Such temperatures would
routinely violate state standards
for other types of lockups like
county jails.
We've got more data and more about
that story on today's
show.
The Austin Signal is a production
of KUT News, hosted by
Jerry Quijano.
Plus, this week in Texas Music
History, Willie Nelson finishes up
a pair of classic albums.
Come find out which ones.
That's coming up next on Austin
Signal.
Howdy, and thank you for
tuning in today.
This is Austin Signal.
It's Thursday, February 5th.
I'm your host, Jerry Quijano.
Thank you for making us part
of your day. We've got a lot to get
into today, so let's jump on
in.
This past legislative session, Texas
banned cell phone use in public
schools. And since the beginning of
this school year, district and
teachers have worked out how to take
the law into account and over the
past several months have started
seeing some results.
At Round Rock ISD, students and
teachers say they have benefited
from it mostly.
For more, we are talking with Kailey
Hunt. She is KUT's Williamson
County reporter and she's joining us
live right now on Austin Signal.
Kailey, thanks for coming in today.
Thanks, Jerry.
So let's first off, before we talk
about the results, let's talk
about how we got there.
Remind us about this law and
how have educators at Round Rock ISD
been implementing it?
Yeah. So this law is commonly
referred to as the cell phone
ban.
It's name is House Bill 1481,
and it went into effect in
September.
And basically what it does is
requires school districts to
prohibit students from using cell
phones or other personal
wireless communication devices.
Play any kind of iPads, things like
that, I'm guessing, okay.
And so in Round Rock ISD,
what that means is that, you know,
phones or any of these other
electronic devices must be
stored out of sight during school
hours.
Okay, that seems pretty basic.
So students have sort of been
working hand-in-hand, I guess, maybe
with some school leaders to discuss
how things are going so far.
How are these relationships,
how are they playing out?
Yeah. So, you know, one of the
first things I did when I was
reporting this story is, you know, I
wanted to see how
the students were actually feeling
and the teachers and the folks in
the classroom.
And it turned out that Round Rock
was actually holding a meeting
itself where students would get on
a Zoom.
And this happened in December.
Students got on a zoom and they met
with district leaders and basically
got a chance to tell them how they
were feeling about this cell phone
ban and
Yeah, like you said in the intro,
you know students maybe
Right over the moon, right?
They're not jumping right a bit to
do this
But they overall acknowledged
that they felt more
socially engaged, both inside
and outside the classroom.
Okay, well that certainly sounds
like a positive. What about the
teachers? How are they feeling?
Yeah, I'm just gonna quote here
a Spanish teacher that I talked to
from Round Rock High School.
She says it's been, quote, a delight
from a teacher perspective,
which I'm sure.
And, you know, what I thought was
interesting with this teacher,
Jerry, is, you know she's been at
the school for 11 years, a long-time
teacher.
And she told me that over
the years, you know, she had
been kind of flip-flopping on her
cell phone policy in the classroom,
figuring out the best way.
To manage it as more and more
students brought them to school,
and no matter what,
she said she always just had a fight
with those cell phones, couldn't
capture students' attention.
And she said with this ban in place,
being able to say, hey, this is a
state law, it's actually became
pretty easy for her to
enforce it.
Yeah, kind of like a tool in her bag
right now she could actually use
that and it's really
hard It's understandable right that
frustration with cell phones or
all these personal devices are a
huge part of all of our lives now
So what else did you hear from some
of the students or the teachers or
anybody else who was working
themselves through this process?
Yeah, you know, well, and
I want to acknowledge, you know,
that the students did bring up some
concerns.
Um, most of those concerns were, uh,
revolved around like school safety,
right? Um, especially students
who were in portables.
They noted that they wanted to have
the ability to communicate with
their parents or loved ones, uh in
the event that there'd be a serious
emergency situation.
Um, but yeah, overall,
they- The students said that they
were interacting more.
They were making friends with
people. They said that, they
wouldn't normally be friends
with, you know, playing cards
at lunch. They're not staring
at their phones as they're eating
their lunch.
Okay. Yeah.
All right. Well, that sounds pretty
good. I might have to take some of
these things into account on my own
life. Maybe I'll have to start
talking to my coworkers in the
kitchens, and normally I'm just
looking straight at my phone.
This has been enlightening at the
least, and hopefully they'll
continue to figure out this process
up in Round Rock and everywhere else
across Texas.
For the Round Rock angle, we have
been speaking with Kailey Hunt.
She is KUT's Williamson County
reporter, and we're going to have a
link to her supporting in the
podcast show notes and at kut.org
slash signal.
Kailey, thank you very much.
Thanks, Sheri.
In East Austin, Elon Musk's
Tesla stands to lose millions in tax
rebates if it doesn't meet Travis
County requirements.
That deal is under review to make
sure Tesla is holding up its end
of the agreement.
We're going to have a link to that
story in our show notes.
But another Musk business is looking
for the same deal, except this time
with state funds.
SpaceX, that's in the Rio Grande
Valley, is one of the poorest
regions in Texas.
And SpaceX is applying for
a state tax refund program.
But as the Texas Tribune's
Berenice Garcia reports, critics
are questioning whether the
potential tax incentives are
an efficient use of state tax
dollars.
SpaceX has applied for the Texas
Enterprise Zone program and could
receive up to $7.5 million in
state sales tax refunds through it.
The program is designed to encourage
investment and job creation in
low-income areas.
Two South Texas SpaceX projects,
a rocket production facility and a
launch pad expansion project, are
all together expected to create more
than 1,000 new jobs.
But advocates argue the company's
goals of launching more rockets from
Starbase means that SpaceX probably
would have created these jobs
anyway, without the tax incentives.
And while some argue this tax refund
program encourages investment,
critics say the program isn't
working as intended.
I'm Bernice Garcia in McAllen.
Most Texas prisons do not
have air conditioning, and the
temperatures inside these prisons on
a scorching hot day can get
dangerously high.
Investigative reporter Lauren
McGaughy, who's been covering this
for years, teamed up with Media
Innovation Group fellows at UT
Austin to look at new temperature
data from these prisons.
That group of fellows is headed by
Christian McDonald, an associate
professor of journalism.
McGahey and McDonald spoke with
Texas Standard's David Brown about
their work together.
Christian, what about data and
prison temperatures?
What sort of data is out there,
and how did your team go about
analyzing it?
There are a couple of different.
Things that we looked at, but this
first one, this main one, was a
listing of those indoor temperatures
that are taken in each un-air
conditioned prison.
They're taken at 3 p.m.
And they're taken during the
summertime from April 1st to
the end of September.
And so they provided
those to us in a
big, like a PDF of a spreadsheet and
we had to suck the numbers out
of the spreadsheet and
in a way that we could count them.
So that we could see how many
days were at different temperatures
in different prisons.
And what did you find?
There were a lot of days with a lot
of hot days within that time
period.
We looked at how many times it
was above 85 degrees inside a
prison, and at some
point over that four-year period,
almost every prison got over 85 at
least once.
That doesn't seem very hot, but as
you mentioned, it's that
standard for local lockups.
And so we wanted to look at
that first, but we also looked at
how many times it was over 90
degrees and how many time it was 100
degrees.
And that was consistent.
We, you know, there were, it was
consistently that hot across
these on air conditioned prisons.
And just as a reminder, you know, if
you sit in your car on a summer
day with the windows up, try,
try to withstand 90 degrees
inside of hot car for five minutes,
you know, uh, people living in these
conditions being incarcerated in
these conditions, they don't have
the free ability to just walk
outside and get a breath of fresh
air. You know, they're in a dorm,
they are in a cell.
They don't have ready access to
water all the time or showers all
the times.
And so we really wanted to gage how
many days in a row that they
were sitting in cells or dorms
in those temperatures.
Lauren, I know that you and I have
talked about this in the past since
you have, as you were saying
earlier, done a lot of reporting on
this subject.
But for the benefit of many
of our listeners who may not
understand this, why is it that
in a state that gets as hot as Texas
does, there are prisons without
air conditioning?
Yeah, you know, this is actually a
national problem.
So Texas isn't an outlier.
Most prison systems across the
country also do not have full
air conditioning across all of their
prisons. The difference, as you
said, is here in Texas
and also in the Southwest
and in the South, it gets much
hotter than it gets in other places.
The reason why they don't have AC
is that we've chosen not to
install them with ACs.
Some of these prisons are very old.
The oldest prison in Texas dates to
before the Civil War.
But the prisons that we built in
the 90s when we built dozens of
prisons, they chose to build
them without air conditioning.
There were actual legislative
discussions and hearings over that.
And the decision was, well, let's
save some cash.
This isn't something we're gonna
prioritize.
The voters haven't asked us to do
it, and so we're not gonna do it.
And now the state is being sued over
whether those conditions are
actually violating the
constitutional rights of
incarcerated people because the
allegation is that it's cruel and
unusual punishment to live in
that heat.
I want to loop back to that a
little bit further, but Christian,
can you tell us about a couple of
prison facilities where the data
shows that excessive heat has been
a demonstrable problem?
There are several.
Garza West is one of those units
that had a lot of
days that got really, really hot,
especially during the summer of
2023, where
we had a heat wave
throughout.
And in that case,
there were only 11 days where it did
not reach 85 degrees
during the summer of
2025. So that's just last year.
In 2023, it
reached 95 degrees or above
108 times.
So that's nearly 60%
of the days that we recorded
during April to September.
And it reached 100 degrees
indoor 46 times
in 2023.
Lauren, in your story,
you compare the heat in some of
these state prisons
with standards that
are set for county jails,
even animal shelters.
Right.
Okay. So what are those standards
and why do, if I
understand this correctly, no
standards exist in
prisons?
Right. So county jails, many
of those facilities are newer and
there have been standards existing
on the state administrative law
books that say they have to keep the
indoor temperatures between 65 and
85 degrees.
You know, county lockups, you
know, just for people who may not be
familiar with the criminal justice
system.
County jails often where you go, you
know pre-trial before you're
convicted of something, right?
You get thrown in a drunk tank,
you get pulled over for a DUI,
you're sitting waiting for trial.
That's county lockup.
Prison is post-conviction.
You've been convicted of a crime.
So there's no direct one-to-one
that they wanted the conditions to
be poorer in state
prisons, but there are better
conditions in terms of temperature
rules just on that face of it in
county lockups where people still
have that presumption of innocence,
right? Many people have that
presumptions of innocence.
And then for animal shelters,
there's also temperature rules.
They're not as strict.
They keep that 85 degree
ceiling as well as best practices
as it should not get above 85
for dogs and cats and the like,
but if it does, then they have to
trigger all of these special
fans and extra water
and all that kind of thing.
Interestingly enough, those same
conditions, standards,
exist internally for prisons.
If it gets too hot, people
incarcerated inside these Texas
prisons should get extra water,
access to fans, but what we hear
from the people on the inside as
that. The staffing problems are
so bad that they don't have enough
staff to actually provide those heat
mitigation steps.
And so that's all part of this
lawsuit that I mentioned where
incarcerated people and advocacy
groups are litigating saying,
we have lived too long with
these disparate standards between
lockups.
The state needs to actually put
into state law right into
our laws that there
needs to be a 65 to 85
degree.
Standard and we need to invest
the money for this air-conditioning
the prison system admits that it's
hot They say of course we know it
gets hot inside but they say
we need time and cash from
the state legislature to actually
make this happen and The
advocates believe that without a
court order to do that that they
can't get it done
Is there any political pushback
against, like say for
instance, setting a state
prison standard the way that
these standards are set for jails
and even animal shelters?
I mean, if you can require
county jails to do this,
require animal shelters to meet
those standards, what is the
rationale for not having one for
prison?
You know, I haven't seen a lot of
people saying, let them live
that way, but
the pushback is usually that
the cost is going to be very high.
That these are old buildings,
the state runs more than a hundred
prison units and
60 plus percent of
them don't have full AC.
So this is a massive, massive
project that we would have
to invest a lot of taxpayer money
into to actually fix.
So, a lot of the pushback is on
the complexity.
And the cost rather than
the issue itself.
Has the State Department of
Criminal Justice responded to
your findings at all or no?
They didn't weigh in on the
data analysis itself.
They have said that they believe
that the heat mitigation protocols
that they have in place, which
like I said include the extra water,
fans, et cetera, are enough
to keep people safe during
these heat waves.
And they disagree that the
conditions inside amount to
cruel and unusual punishment.
That's the argument.
That's a decision that is now before
a federal judge and he will
ultimately.
Make that decision when we go back
to court next month.
Christian, what did you want to-
get involved in this?
A lot of it is a learning
opportunity for my students who
can use these data journalism skills
to find and tell stories,
and the kind of
problems that Lauren brought to us
to be able to tell a story that we
wouldn't otherwise be able tell.
It's one thing to go, oh, look at
one prison and figure out what it
was across a particular
day, but to look across all
of them against all these
months and all years.
It takes a little bit more
effort and a little different style
of looking at it, and it gives my
students an opportunity to go
through this work.
That was investigative reporter
Lauren McGahey and Christian
McDonald, associate professor of
journalism at UT Austin,
talking with Texas Standard's David
Brown.
Austin Signal will be back after a
break.
This is Austin Signal, welcome back
to the show.
The city of Austin is overflowing
with music history,
and then of course you have one
Willie Nelson, Jason Mellard
from the Center for Texas Music
History at Texas State University.
Tells us about a pair of classic
albums from the redheaded
stranger.
This weekend in Texas music history,
Willie Nelson completes two albums
in one week with Atlantic Records.
In April 1972 Willie Nelson departed
Nashville for Austin, returning to
the Texas scene that nurtured him.
That same year he left his contract
with RCA after meeting Atlanta
Records mogul Jerry Wexler at a
house party.
Wexlar, known for his groundbreaking
work with Ray Charles and Aretha
Franklin, was branching out into the
sort of progressive country being
forged in Austin at the time.
He already had a relationship with
Doug Somm and is reaching out to
Texans freedom fired up.
Stevie Ray Vaughan, Sleep at the
Wheel, and Lou Ann Barton.
Unlike the Nashville majors,
Atlantic afforded Nelson the
creative autonomy he desired.
Wexler encouraged Nelson's rootsy
sound and idiosyncrasies that graded
against Nashville norms.
So, in early February 1973,
Willie Nelson and his family band,
along with guests Doug Somm, Waylon
Jennings, and Jesse Coulter,
traveled to New York City to record
not one, but two Nelson albums
in quick succession, Shotgun Willie
and The Troublemaker.
The first album recorded was The
Troublemaker, a gospel compilation
recorded in honky-tonk style over
the span of just two days.
Nelson used his band, alongside Doug
Psalms, to add breadth to the
album's sound.
Unfortunately, Atlantic chose not to
release it. The label wanted
mischievous, counter-cultural
country, but maybe not in the form
of gospel that framed Jesus as the
original outlaw.
It only came out in 1976 after
a redheaded stranger had launched
Willie into superstardom.
I'm loud today
Whiskey river, take my
money
Bye!
Don't let her memory
torture me
They recorded Shotgun Willie later
that same week.
A combination of originals and
covers, including Willie's
definitive version of Johnny Bush's
Whiskey River, the album was a
statement of Willie's new image.
The raucous rebel and good timing
Buddha, poignant song smith and
reluctant leader, a breakthrough
album in every sense of the word.
I am drowning in
a whiskey river
You can hear music from the Lone
Star State 24-7 on the
Texas Music Experience at tmx.fm.
I'm Jason Mellard from the Center
for Texas Music History at Texas
State University.
A number of currents flowing
from my mind
And leaving the
heart you left so cold
Super Bowl Sunday is drawing near
and for the first time in
a while, at least what I can recall,
the anticipation for the halftime
show is much higher than the actual
game itself.
Here to tell us more is Maile
Carballo from our sister station
KUTX.
Howdy Maile, how are you?
Well, hey, Jerry, I'm doing great.
I'm excited for the show.
I'm excited for the game, for
the food, and particularly for the
show.
Who's gonna be performing on Sunday?
Yeah, there's a star studded
lineup. You know, normally at KU-TX,
we're an alternative music station,
but we still love our pop artists.
And for one, I'm really excited
for them.
Green Day will be opening the
ceremony.
Okay, opening before the game even
gets started, right?
Yes, sir.
Yes sir, yes sir.
Charlie Puth will be singing the
national anthem.
Mr. Perfect Pitch, as people
call him.
Brandi Carlile, Coco Jones,
they'll be performing as well.
And of course, Mr. Bad Bunny,
who is in the hot seat of pop
culture right now, will be
performing at the halftime show.
For sure, definitely in
the zeitgeist right now is Bad
Bunny, because he has had
kind of a crazy week and it's gonna
culminate obviously on Sunday with
the Super Bowl halftime performance,
but how did it start?
Absolutely.
Yeah. So last week was the Grammys.
He won three Grammies,
including having the first Spanish
language album ever to
win album of the year.
That's kind of like the coveted
award at the Grammies.
And now he's making history as
the first ever solo Latin headliner
at the Super Bowl, super exciting!
And I know that that
album has gotten a lot of play and
lots of cars and lots of headphones
and things like that.
What did you enjoy about that album?
It's just a great blend of
so many different historical
pieces and media and
culture.
Like there's a lot of layered in,
you know, kind of quotes and
different things in that album.
And you just, you can't deny a
beat like Bad Bunny brings too.
It's true, yeah.
Even if you've never heard the song
that you're about to hear, it's
going to be hard to ignore
the rhythm and the
groove that's hitting your body.
I think a lot of times these
Super Bowl performances are,
or can be, career spanning.
Last year with Kendrick Lamar, we
saw that it was maybe a little bit
more focused on his album that had
just been released.
What do you think Bad Bunny's going
to do? Do you think he's going focus
on these newer songs from his latest
album, or maybe try to do Sort of
a career retrospective, even though
he's still early in his career.
Yeah, I think he's gonna do
a full spread, honestly.
You know, his newer songs are really
great and are super hot right
now, but he's kind of at a point in
his career where he's trying to take
a stance too with all of his fame.
You know at the Grammys he used his
acceptance speech to kind of address
the recent concerns with ICE
and I surely believe
that he is going to address more
at the Super Bowl and really,
really make a moment in history.
Okay, Maile, so last question,
do you think, you know, the game is
between the Seahawks and the
Patriots? Do you think that
ultimately Monday morning Bad Bunny
is going to be the big winner?
Oh, yeah.
Oh, yeah. This is going to be the
most talked about 13 minutes for
the year so far.
And probably for a long time to
come. I'm excited.
We will see what Bad
Bunny brings to the field on
Sunday. And we have been speaking
with Maile Carballo.
She is from our sister station KUTX.
Maile, always great to talk with you
on Austin Signal.
Thank you, Jerry.
And that is it for today's
episode of the show.
Thank you for tuning in.
We are listener-powered public
radio here at KUT
News.
And we're going to have a link to
the stories that we talked about
today in our podcast show notes.
And you can find more from us at
KUT.org slash Signal.
Thank you to Kailey Hunt, Bernice
Garcia, Lauren McGaughy,
Christian McDonald, the Media
Innovation Group fellows, Jason
Mellard and Maile Carballo for
their help today.
Thank you always to Kristen Cabrera
and Rayna Sevilla.
I'm your host, Jerry Quijano.
Austin Signal will be back with you
tomorrow. Have a great day.