Driving the Chevy Volt

I test-drove the Chevy Volt today. I've been following the story of this car and its technology on the gm-volt.com web site for about three years now, and am excited to have the opportunity to finally see it in person.

The Volt is an electric car with a gasoline engine. It's not like the gas/electric hybrids currently available; the gas engine exists to charge the battery, not to drive the car. It's more properly known as an Extended Range Electric Vehicle. The battery will drive the car for about 40 miles before the gas engine kicks on into "charge-sustaining mode." The electric engine is still driving the car; at some higher speeds, the rotations from the gas engine help drive the car a bit, but never on its own. With a full tank of gas, the total range of the car should be about 250 miles.

The car itself was pretty nice looking; it had that new-car appeal. Under the hood there are what look like individual modules; the gas engine is in there, as well as a computer system, and containers for various fluids (brake, coolant, wiper, etc.). The back is a hatch-back, with a small open space behind the back seats; I worry a bit that things might fly forward out of there if you stop suddenly. Lifting up the "floor" of the hatch space, you see access panels for the battery terminals, and space for a charger cord. Not until later did I realize I hadn't seen the spare tire; there may be one under the vehicle.

There are four bucket seats in the car; the two seats in back are separated by what I believe is part of the T-shaped battery. The back seats fold down, to allow more cargo space. Someone remarked "that's plenty of room for camping gear!" but I thought "only if you don't take your kids with you." This is not a cargo car; it'll move groceries around, and take you and a friend to the airport, but maybe not more.

Overall, this is a practical electric car to have. It will take you around town on the electric charge, and take you on a longer trip with the gasoline engine as an extender. If you have a family, your second car should have some hauling space, and probably seat at least five. Houston won't likely have any available until next year or so; I just hope the $7500 tax break is still around when I'm ready to buy my Volt.

Airport Searches and the TSA

An interesting case from UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT FOR THE SOUTHERN DISTRICT OF OHIO, EASTERN DIVISION, USA v. FODE AMADOU FOFANA, decided 2 Jun 2009, which held that the defendant could suppress the presentation of the forged passports he was carrying through security because the search was only reasonable to find "weapons, explosives, or prohibited items". Contraband or other generally illegal items are not reasonable targets for a TSA search.

Fofana does not challenge his selection for secondary screening, but rather argues that the hand search of his luggage went beyond the permissible scope of an airport screening search because Agent Stroud had already determined that he was not carrying weapons or explosives when she decided to open the envelopes containing the passports. He further argues that his search exceeded the TSA's statutory mandate under 49 U.S.C. § 44902(a) and 49 C.F.R. 1540.111. He reasons that under 49 U.S.C. § 44902(a) and 49 C.F.R. 1540.111, [*13] the TSA is only permitted to search passengers and their belongings to detect dangerous weapons, explosives, or other destructive substances. He contends, therefore, that the TSA exceeded its statutory authority by opening the envelopes after his bags had been cleared of any suspicion that they contained weapons, explosives, or prohibited items.

For the reasons explained above, the Court GRANTS Defendant's Motion to Suppress. Any evidence that was seized or subsequently obtained as a result of Fofana's unlawful search, including the three passports, will be suppressed.

The key part of the reasoning seems to be that the forged passports were found in a search which commenced after Fofana had been cleared (by X-ray, wand, and explosives swabbing) of having any "weapons, explosives, or prohibited items". A subsequent search for further items is, according to Judge Marbley, an unlawful search on the part of the TSA.

Another fun map

Here's another fun map, showing how many students travel 10+mi at various magnet programs. Larger boxes mean more students.

I'm not sure how useful this one is; it's just a fun one to look at.

Where do the 10+mi riders live?

I got an early holiday present on Thursday: a response to my open records request to HISD for data on the magnet students riding 10+ miles to their programs. I was pleasantly surprised; I'd not received an acknowledgment, and was about to send a "snail mail" follow up to my original email request.

Part of what I found out can be seen graphically here at Geocommons.com, a web site that lets you upload geo-coded data and see it plotted on a Google (or Yahoo or Open Street Maps) map. You can have several "overlays" if you like, each corresponding to a data set. The data on that map shows how many students travel 10+ miles from each zip code - it's their home code, not the destination. I also received a long list of every school and the number of 10+ mile riders, and I got a small table explaining the racial breakdown of the same group:

Race	Percentage of 10+mi riders	Percentage of District
White	10%	8%
African American	48%	28%
Hispanic	34%	60%
Asian	8%	3%
Native American	<1%	<1%

In my request, I asked for income level bands, which they don't have; but I did get the response that 84% of the 10+ riders qualify for free/reduced lunches (this was also reported in the Houston Chronicle today). I also asked for the same distribution information for the magnet program as a whole, and for the district; I got the district racial breakdown from a different source, which also pointed out that district-wide, 79% of the students qualify for free or reduced lunches.

I worry that reducing or eliminating services for the 10+mi riders will make magnet attendance difficult for 84% of them (2822 students). They are likely to have the least flexibility in their schedules or access to transportation.

Resouces:

• geocommons.com
• batchgeocode.com calculates lat/long coordinates for a batch of addresses
• swivel.com lets you graph various data sets, but I didn't really get the hang of it. Looks cool though.

Houston ISD December Board Meeting

Hi Folk(s?)

Prior to today, there was a widespread assumption that the Houston ISD Board would address the issue of transportation for Magnet students at their December meeting. However, when you look at the agenda published for the meeting, there's no mention of that issue as a topic for discussion or decision.

It's been reported that the decision will happen at the January meeting; but, as always, read the agenda first.

That said, there is a group of parents who will be attending the meeting to demonstrate their position on the issue. The plan is to meet at 6:00pm at

HISD Administrative Headquarters Hattie May White Building - Board Auditorium 4400 W 18th St, Houston, TX 77092-8501 Hwy 290 @ Loop 610

HISD Magnet Statistics

I've heard some opinions from Mary Nesbitt (HISD District Advisory Committee Member), Maggie Solomon, Judy Long, Ann Blackwood (HISD Parent Engagement Committee Members) and Ed Klein (Greater Houston Partnership) floating around in emails and on the Viewpoints page of a local weekly. The gist of their argument is that by making changes to magnet transportation, HISD is potentially removing large amounts of funding from magnet programs. While they may be correct in the worst case, I believe that their argument is incomplete; and that's perhaps intentional, as a complete analysis would diminish the alarm they seem to profess in their writing.

Let me be clear. I am opposed to HISD making transportation changes for the 2009-2010 year for magnet students, but for different reasons, which I outlined in an earlier post. What I'm objecting to is this use of statistical information to try to create an extreme reaction, which in my opinion, makes it more difficult to enter this discussion on a collaborative basis. Let me say how I disagree with the conclusions in the email/article.

First, the facts. They are, unfortunately, not simple to corroborate. The authors claim a student is worth $3446.00 in funding to the school they attend; let's accept that on face value. The authors also seem to know exactly how many students at various schools must travel 10+ miles to attend; I have been unable to date to get this information from HISD, so I'll assume they have direct access to information I can't corroborate.

Next, the analysis. Given the number of 10+ mile travelers in each magnet program, the authors make a straightforward calculation on how much funding the school would lose if those riders were unable to attend; they multiply the number of students by $3446 and report the result. For example, Lamar HS, with 230 affected students, would potentially lose $792,580.00; Westside HS, with about 400 affected students, would lose $1,374,954.00. Those are big numbers, and would cause a big disruption; the program would have to curtail staff and possibly faculty to meet the shortfall. Overall, the nearly 3400 affected students would represent over $11,500,000.00 in funding at stake.

But it's only half the story. Their analysis assumes that the magnet programs would not be able to find new students to attend, which is almost certainly not the case. I called Lanier MS (163 affected students) and found out that each year 600 applicants qualify for 235 spots. If students 10+ miles away were unable to attend, it would affect those directly (which I would argue is a worse effect), but is unlikely to affect the program at Lanier much. For Johnston MS (206 affected students), a similar situation; they receive on the order of 1000 applicants for 250 spots. TH Rogers MS receives several hundred applicants for 75 open spots. Carnegie HS (141 students affected) has several hundred applicants for 150 spots. Westside HS, with a huge 399 students potentially affected, admits 120-200 per year, of around 400 qualified applicants. Again, a transportation disruption could have a huge affect on the students, but may or may not cause the programs to see the financial reductions the authors describe.

I think there are already plenty of reasons to ask HISD to postpone or amend any changes to transportation for magnet students. I just think this reported analysis is sloppy, and should be disregarded.

Don't Change Magnet Transportation in 2009-2010

HISD is considering making changes to the transportation made available to students in its successful magnet programs. Unfortunately, these changes seem to be part of a terribly compressed timetable between proposal, discussion, and decision. Very few pertinent facts and analyses are being presented to students and parents by HISD. Finally, HISD is presenting these changes as an opportunity to reduce expenses, but is not giving a commitment on how those savings may be applied elsewhere. For these reasons, I think HISD should not try at this time to make changes to transportation; instead, they should consider starting a discussion and deliberation process which will frame these changes as part of a plan to support, strengthen, and extend the magnet programs. To put this into a bigger context, they should also discuss the expense reductions available in other parts of the budget, and should plan for implementation no earlier than the 2010-2011 school year.

The timetable. It seems a bad idea to rush through a decision process which has the potential to negatively affect almost 3,400 students directly, and possibly 11,000 students overall (the total population of the magnet programs). These students and their families, who are among other things citizens and taxpayers, deserve more consideration than they seem to be receiving during this process. Surely these stakeholders should receive more than an opportunity to "be heard"; the process should be more collaborative and consultative, and should be slowed down so each group participating can receive good information and make informed decisions.

The information. There has been a lot of information (data?) flying around, but not enough of it identified as directly from HISD, or available from their web site. Faced with a proposal which affects such a large community, HISD should seriously consider creating a web site with at least the proposals and an impact analysis. At best would be community oriented tools, such as at least a feedback form so people can contact HISD and ask for more information and/or discuss how the proposed change might impact them.

I would like to see, for example: how many students will be affected at each magnet program? what are the demographics of the affected students (aggregate age, economic, geographic, ethnic/racial information)? How does that compare to the populations of the whole magnet program and the district? Is any sub-group going to be impacted disproportionately? What provisions will be available for families which cannot adjust to the new regime?

The bigger context. I have not heard enough about how these changes fit into the plan for either the magnet programs in general, or the overall HISD budget at large. If these proposed economies would be applied back to the magnet schools and programs, where will they go? Will existing programs get expanded? Failing programs get more resources? New programs established? In what proportion? And is that a firm commitment?

If this is instead about cost reductions, it's not clear that saving $8 - $9 million in an overall annual budget of $1.6 billion is going to have much effect. If the issue here really is a concern that falling property values will lead to lower taxes and a smaller HISD budget, then where are the significant reductions going to come from? How many students will those changes affect? Given the magnitude of the possible savings and the number of students involved, is this proposal reasonable?

Perhaps students, teachers, families, and staff might feel better about participating in this process if HISD were to commit to its magnet programs, to promise that any changes would affect the smallest possible number of students and families, and that families which demonstrably can't cope with the changes will not be left behind or forced to exit their chosen programs. It appears that HISD needs to go a long way to establish trust with its constituents, and should consider how to take advantage of every possible opportunity to do so.

HISD Transportation Meetings

Dear readers: please don't forget these upcoming transportation meetings, as well as the regularly scheduled Board meeting at 5pm at the District headquarters:

• Districtwide Magnet Transportation Community Meetings Schedule

  Date	Time	Location
  December 2	6:30 p.m.	Waltrip High School
  December 4	6:30 p.m.	Chávez High School

• Regional Magnet Transportation Community Meetings Schedule

  Date	Time	Location	Region
  December 3	6:30 p.m.	Madison High School	South
  December 3	6:30 p.m.	DeBakey High School	Central
  December 8	6:00 p.m.	Austin High School	East
  December 9	6:00 p.m.	Davis High School	North

Transportation in Houston ISD

I went last night to the HISD meeting at Westbury High School, which discussed possible savings from reconfiguring transportation for magnet students (I'm pretty sure this includes Vanguard students as well). I found it interesting for a number of reasons.

The beginning of the presentation was information about the current situation. HISD spends (according to their calculations) a net of $16.2M on transportation for students in the various magnet programs. When they look at how that breaks out, $8.9M is spent on transporting students 10+ miles to their destination, often on buses which are only partially full and which make a lot of stops on a long route. In the Q/A session, it was discovered that the transportation expenses were essentially flat for the past 8 years; that's impressive, actually, when you consider the various increases in salaries and the cost of living (including fuel). The last interesting statistic (if I understood it correctly) was that over 70% (it was either 72% or 78%) of that transportation budget was for salaries and benefits, not fuel or maintenance - so rising/falling fuel prices are not a huge effect, and more efficient buses would be a big capital expenditure for a small cost savings.

With that in mind, the officials at the meeting made four proposals to realize savings in the system:

1. Eliminate bus routes of 10 miles and over. Students outside the 10 mile radius from their destination school would have to travel inside that radius to a pick up point at an HISD school. They would be assigned to schools on a space-available basis.
2. Students outside the 10 mile radius would have to come into a 'drop off' spot inside the 10 mile radius where a bus would pick them up. This may be one spot for a common set of students. It may or may not be a school.
3. ALL magnet students would be assigned to a pickup and drop-off spot, which may not be their local school. This would allow HISD to coalesce students to pick-up locations based on their destination, not their home address.
4. ALL magnet students would be picked up from their local high school.

Now, you'd think that the last option would save the most money; instead of having buses originating from elementary schools (a lot of them) and terminating at magnet schools all around town (elementary, middle, and high schools), you'd instead have collection points at high schools (only a few places) and drop-offs as before. Fewer collections points should mean fewer routes, but maybe the number of kids at each collection point would be large enough to require a large number of buses on each route anyway.

In any case, each option would have a different amount of savings realized. The first option would save the most - the whole $8.9m. The last option would save the least - $6.1M, with the other two falling in between. To me, the last two options would be maximally disruptive, as it changes the transportation habits of all magnet students; the first two options would only affect students traveling 10+ miles to their school. According to HISD, of about 200,000 students, about 40,000 are magnet students, and about 12,000 are being transported via bus. Nearly 3,400 students travel 10+ miles from pickup to drop-off.

Many parents at the meeting seemed to have the impression that these transportation changes were only the first step in a grander plan to eliminate magnet programs altogether. They based this, I think, on some comments by HISD Superintendent Dr. Saavedra; I've not heard the comments (can someone provide links if they can find them?), but I've heard that impression from a disparate set of parents in various venues. The officials at the meeting kept responding that it was the Board of Trustees who made the final decision; If I read between the lines, I'm guessing that this was to perhaps reassure the parents that Dr. Saavedra was not making the decision, no matter what his public comments. I spoke with one of the officials afterwards, who said the board was in fact very proud and supportive of the magnet program; I came away with the impression that the board's goal was to preserve and strengthen the magnet program, not to impair it, certainly not by making it difficult for students who are zoned to under-performing schools and who attend schools farther away.

Another issue which will need to be considered is that there are a significant (how many?) number of parents for whom it would be difficult to drive their students back and forth from a bus stop distant from their house. I'm guessing that their children right now walk to their local elementary school to be picked up, and walk home from there when they're dropped off. I do think that some provision should be made to assist those parents and students; it may be that Metro can help out with subsidized bus passes or some other support. That seems less appealing for elementary and middle school students.

Of course most (all?) of the parents at the meeting had children attending magnet schools; many were from the neighborhood. I was impressed by principal Coleman of Westbury, who was calm while he listened to a number of parents angrily describe his school as unacceptable (some said attending his school would harm their children). I would hope that some of the savings from these changes would go to strengthening local/home schools.

The officials at the meeting made the point that the transportation savings could be used to make the existing magnet schools more uniformly excellent; it would be my hope as well that the funds could be used to create even more magnet programs in under-served geographic areas. It would be my hope that enough academically excellent magnet programs can be established so that no child needs to travel more than 10 miles from their home school to receive an excellent or specialized education. In fact, I think I'd only be comfortable supporting these transportation disruptions and savings if the amount saved were pledged back to the magnet program to strengthen struggling magnet schools and to establish new programs. I don't know offhand how that might be codified.