Rally for Texas Schools in Austin

Saturday saw 13,000 people on the Capitol lawn to show their support for Texas schools.

The Cause:  The State legislature is facing a hefty budget deficit for the next two years.  In addition, the 2006 "tinkering" with school finance has created a bad situation for public schools in the state.


The legislature is planning to cut school funds dramatically, and legislators are too distracted with other budget woes to address the underlying school finance issues that have gone ignored for five years now.

So Diana and I road tripped up to Austin to join the crowd.  There was a march before the rally.  Now, if you've never been to Austin, that town is filled with professional demonstrators.  Since we didn't want to have much to do with the Socialist Party marchers (or even the "Our Governor Sucks" marchers), we climbed the nearby parking garage and tool pictures instead.

Then on the Capitol grounds, the rally went on for about two hours.  We met up with about a dozen faculty members from my school.  Our superintendent and our mayor were among the rally speakers.

After the rally, our group made went to Texadelphia for a laaaaate lunch, then split up in different directions.  Some were staying in Austin, many were headed back home to San Antonio, Diana and I were heading to Fredericksburg for an overnight trip.