At a LASA faculty meeting held at 7:45 a.m. on Dec. 10, Area Superintendent Edmund Oropez announced that LASA principal Rene Sanchez had relinquished his position. AISD high school principal intern Scott Lipton has been named acting principal, to be e!ective immediately.

“Right now I’m here helping with a smooth transition,” Lipton said. “Not a lot of changes should be happening with an interim principal, so I’m here to support the programs LASA has now and support the students and the parents as best as I can and just keep the culture of excellence that exists here.”

In his ten years working at AISD, Lipton served as the district high school curriculum supervisor, the academy director at Johnston High School and the assistant principal at Crockett High School. He also helped found the Gri"n School, where he taught English and social science.

“I’m happy to be here at a school with a reputation that precedes it,” Lipton said. “I’m honored to be a part of this excellent educational institution.”

In a University of Texas biology labo-ratory, LASA junior Casey Chorens and LASA senior An-gela Liu collect and examine plant cells. Students toured this lab as part of a joint program between LASA and UT to promote research for the Siemens com-petition. see page 7 for story

LASA senior Tess Hubbeling wraps her arms around two Ghanian chil-dren. Hubbeling vol-unteered in Ghana over the summer of 2009, working at the Hardthaven’s Children’s Home. see pages 12 and 13 for Hubbeling’s story and the experiences of other LBJ/LASA volunteers

LBJ senior guard Deandre Byrd rises into the air for a jump shot during a game against St. John’s in the Houston Jamboree. !e Jags won both of their games during the competition. !e team is ranked in the top ten in the state for 4A. !e Jags begin district play tomorrow against Eastside. “I’m pretty con"-dent” LASA senior guard/forward Sam Faries said. “I think we’re the frontrunners now, and we’re used to being in that position because we’ve won 12 straight district titles.” see page 9 for story

Volume 37 Issue 3 7309 Lazy Creek Drive, Austin, Texas 78724Dec. 16, 2010the liberatorL I B E R A L A R T S A N D S C I E N C E A C A D E M Y,LY N D O N B A I N E S J O H N S O N H I G H S C H O O L S

#e Austin Chamber of Com-merce honored LBJ at its State of Education event on Nov. 9 for hav-ing the highest ApplyTexas submis-sion rate of any Austin high school campus. #is marked the fourth consecutive year LBJ has received the award. LBJ college advisor and Project Advance coordinator Yvonne Espinoza said she credits the achievement to the individual-ized attention students receive.

“Either a teacher, myself or one of the counselors make sure every single student applies somewhere for college,” Espinoza said. “We give them one-on-one attention if they don’t understand the process

or need help applying. I have a list, through Naviance and my own da-tabase, and I literally go through and make sure every student has received help.”

During the 2009-2010 school year, more than 92 percent of se-niors submitted an ApplyTexas form. LBJ principal Sheila Henry said they encourage all their stu-dents to apply to college, speci$-cally Texas public universities.

“We want all of our seniors to apply to universities, and de$nitely locally, because of the expensive nature of going out of state,” Henry said. “#at’s a goal [Espinoza] set for herself, to make sure that we do more than the year before each year. It’s really working out here at this school.”

LASA Quizbowl quali$ed all four of its teams for the national competition a%er having all four $nish in the top six at the Houston Holiday Tournament held Dec. 4. LASA becomes the second team ever to qualify all four of its teams for nationals.

“It was excellent,” LASA Quizbowl sponsor Jason Flowers said. “It was one of our big goals for this year, and it was great. We did exactly what we needed to do. I was very proud of the guys, and girls; they did really well.”

Quizbowl also competed in two tournaments in Boston—the Harvard Fall tournament on Nov. 13 and the Delta Burke college tournament on Nov. 14. #e A team beat long-time rival and $rst ranked team in the nation State College High School in the $nals to win the Harvard Fall tournament.

“We were having a good day, and we were playing well,” Pellowski said. “We used to feel like State College was so far ahead of us and that they had a better aptitude for the game on their side, that there was just not a way, even if we tried our hardest, to catch up to them. But now there’s a very close and material possibility for us to not only beat State College but to generally surpass them and maybe even by a substantial degree.”

Quizbowl quali"es for national contest to be held in Atlanta

With the rest of the Quizbowl C team, LASA fresh-man Nathan Weiser competes at the Delta Burke tournament. photo courtesy of Jason Flowers

RUNNING ON EMPTY

With Austin Independent School District (AISD’s predicted de$cit of $30

million, the school board is reviewing how the 2011/2012 school year’s budget should be distributed. As part of her policy on transparency, AISD superintendent Meria Carstarphen held a series of meetings for sta! and community members to vote on proposed budget cuts.

#ese solutions include cutting teachers’ salaries and one planning period, adding an additional class, dropping paid athletics and transportation to magnet schools and eliminating programs such as pre-k and dual-language education. #e community meetings concluded on Dec. 2 with an all-sta! meeting that announced the results of the Nov. 9 all-sta! meeting.

“We’re beginning early so we [can] have more community meetings and more sta! meetings,” Carstarphen said. “Having people really debate

and come to some consensus will really help us focus on the things that we have the most disagreement about [instead of] constantly arguing [about] everything.”

During the 2011/12 school year, the de$cit could be as much as $62 million a%er the loss of federal funding, anticipated cuts in state funding, the weakened economy, and the continued growth of the District.

“It’s not about AISD being ine"cient or bad district,” Carstarphen said. “It’s not that at all; there are other things happening to us. I know that people get very tense about the budget, but instead but instead of lobbying the school board we should be lobbying the legislature to change some of these laws to keep some of these things here in Austin.”

On Nov. 9, the board held an all-sta! meeting where AISD Chief Financial O"cer Nicole Conley-

Abram explained the causes of the de$cit and the di!erent programs that could be cut to balance the budget.

Sta! members were then given the opportunity to break out into small group sessions where they voted on which programs they wished to keep and which they believed should be cut, which will be considered by AISD board of trustees on Feb. 14 when the 2011/2012 preliminary budget is dra%ed. LASA German teacher Keri Jaworski attended the sta! meetings and said she holds doubt over whether teachers’ voices at the meetings are going unheard.

“#e superintendent is saying she wants to take everybody’s opinion into consideration, and when you go to the meetings, she reiterates this and you really want to believe it,” Jaworski said. “#at’s why I think it’s

AISD drafts solutions for budget deficit

City honors LBJ for high rate of ApplyTexas submission

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continued on page 6

Nov. 9

LASA principal resigns position

AISD held a Sta! Budget Conversa-tion to obtain initial feedback on budget.

Nov. 16

Administration meets with outside organiza-tions, such as Education Austin, to review the budget process.

Nov. 30 Dec. 2 Feb. 14 June 6

AISD held a community conversation for both sta! and parents about the 2010-2011 budget at Lanier High School.

AISD held a series of budget workshops for the sta!, where they announced results of the Nov. 9 meeting.

"e AISD Board of Trustees will #nish dra$ing the prelimi-nary budget for the 2011-2012 school year.

Superintendent Meria Carstarphen will present AISD’s preliminary budget to the board.

LBJ college advisor Yvonne Espinoza works with LBJ seniors Jourdan Win-stead and Liz Arce. LBJ was honored for having the highest rate of ApplyTexas submissions of any Austin high school on Nov. 9. photo by Autumn Kervella

M'*,- K./00)co-Editor-in-chief

LASA acting princi-pal Scott Lipton

M'*,- K./00)co-Editor-in-chief