Austin, TX
FAFSA delays stall Austin-area students’ college decisions into summer
Brian Lerma-Alfaro, a senior at Lehman High School in Hays County, started his Free Application for Federal Student Aid with paper forms in December.
After months of trying to submit the paper forms, he opened an online application in March.
Two weeks from graduating from high school, he’s still wading through technical difficulties.
“Literally, the only thing I need is a signature from my mom,” Lerma-Alfaro said. “When I go into her account, my form doesn’t pop up.”
Lerma-Alfaro received his acceptance to the University of Texas in February, where he wants to study data science and statistics. But he needs his aid package from the university — which requires the FAFSA form — to receive other scholarships.
He spent two hours in his counselor’s office Monday, trying to work through the form’s technical issue.
“It’s been a huge pain in the butt,” Lerma-Alfaro said.
Delays in the FAFSA process have plunged what’s already a stressful and cumbersome matter for high school seniors into a plague of uncertainty.
Weeks after the usual May 1 college decision deadline, many seniors are still waiting on aid information that’s crucial to making a decision.
A lot of things went wrong this year to create the uncertainty, said Shareea Woods, director of the Texas College Access Network. The organization is meant to improve students’ ability to attend college.
The U.S. Department of Education overhauled the entire system to one that’s meant to be a more streamlined, easier process.
However, glitches pushed back the opening of the FAFSA application process from the typical October date to January. The federal department also didn’t start processing applications until March.
Processing turnaround times are down to one to three days now, according to the federal department.
Burden on colleges
Cindy Melendez, the vice president of student success at Concordia University Texas in Northwest Austin, said universities’ largest challenge with sending out financial aid packages has been waiting on data from the U.S. Department of Education.
“We’re used to these packages going out in February,” Melendez said. “So from February to May, our staff has been really working hard to figure out how we prepare for this time when we have to condense packaging into a much shorter time frame than usual.”
For students with multiple acceptances trying to decide which college will give them the most educational bang for their buck, the delays are causing stress.
“There has been some understanding that our students need more time, especially our students that are coming from economically disadvantaged backgrounds,” Woods said. “We’ve heard some stories of parents putting in deposits at multiple institutions so they can hedge their bet.”
Melendez said the university sent out the first round of aid packages last week. Because Concordia works so closely with families, the deadlines are very flexible, and university staffers have been working with applicants one on one to offer support and guidance.
The University of Texas included an option for students to extend their deadline to June 1. Miguel Wasielewski, vice provost of admissions, said about 1,000 students opted for more time, while about 9,000 committed to the university without knowing their financial aid packages. The office has been in contact with all 1,000 students, he said.
“In this case, it’s all about just making sure that we advocate wherever possible to get them the resources that they need, while also monitoring where they are in the process,” Wasielewski said.
To date, the university hasn’t noticed differences in the makeup of next year’s class compared with previous years because of the FAFSA delays, he said.
Brian Dixon, vice provost for enrollment management, said UT plans to start sending out packages this week. Earlier in the process, the admissions team identified some particularly strong candidates that it anticipated would need financial aid, something typically evaluated from FAFSA data, and offered some early tuition guarantees.
“The institution took that financial risk to try to provide the assurance for those students, and that has been highly effective,” Dixon said. “About 4 out of 5 students who received those early guarantees have taken us up on that offer.”
Cost of delays
Even if colleges let students push back their decision, the delays still cost them, Woods said.
A postponed college acceptance means students could miss out on summer boot camps that colleges offer for some intensive programs or might delay housing choices, she said.
“Our concern is some students may be so turned off by this process they may choose not to enroll,” Woods said.
For students who are still waiting, they should keep an eye on their inboxes and stay in communication with the colleges they’d like to attend, she said.
Dixon still thinks there will be problems to work out next year. For instance, students of parents without a Social Security number initially could not complete the form this year.
Nationwide, fewer students have completed the FAFSA this year compared with last year.
Only 50.4% of Texas high school seniors had completed the FAFSA by May 3, according to the federal Education Department.
By this time last year, 70% of students had completed the application, according to the Texas College Access Network. Even in 2021, which was a record low year because of the pandemic, 58% of Texas seniors filled out the application.
Dixon expects more students will still fill out the form once their peers start receiving letters.
Lerma-Alfaro is the only one among his group of friends left still awaiting an aid package, he said.
With graduation ahead, he’s been working to keep his grades up, look for jobs and spend time with his friends. The balance is already difficult, and he’s ready to get his college plans set in stone.
“I don’t like saving things until the last day,” Lerma-Alfaro said.
The Education Department has updates at studentaid.gov.
Austin, TX
Cody Jinks to play in tornado relief benefit concert
SAINT JO, Texas (KXII) – Red River Station is hosting a Texas tornado relief benefit concert in July.
Cody Jinks is playing at the Red River Station on July 14 and 100% of the proceeds will go to Cooke County Volunteer Organization Active in Disaster (VOAD) to help those affected by the 2024 tornadoes.
Click here for concert tickets. Click here to donate.
Copyright 2024 KXII. All rights reserved.
Austin, TX
AI could strain Texas power grid this summer
Texas is no stranger to power-grid anxiety. Between the heat that’s only getting hotter, an aging fleet of power plants, and the challenges of integrating renewable energy, the system is fragile.
Now, a boom in energy-hungry computer data centers is adding a new element of risk this summer.
“How many are coming? That’s still TBD, but we know that they are explosively growing,” ERCOT CEO Pablo Vegas, told lawmakers in one of two hearings this month at the state capitol.
Vegas said many of those centers mine crypto currency. But more and more of them are being built to support artificial intelligence systems. They are drawn to the state thanks to low energy costs, minimal regulation and a booming economy. But they use a lot of energy.
“If you do a google search and just look up ‘What is ERCOT?’ If you did that with a regular google system versus an AI google search, the amount of energy that it takes to run the AI search, is between 10 and 30 times the power requirement than to do a traditional google search,” Vegas said.
Many estimates you find online appear to be on the lower end of that spectrum. But it’s clear that Texas, in particular, could find that growing energy demand challenging.
Ever since a deadly blackout in 2021, state officials have worked to strengthen the power grid. They’ve started programs to subsidize new power plants and improve transmission lines.
But, those things take years to build. Data centers — some that use as much energy as small cities — can be built in just a matter of months. That is a serious challenge for grid operators, says Doug Lewin, who publishes the Texas Energy and Power Newsletter.
“How do we build enough infrastructure to accommodate a new city popping up in six months, with effectively no notice?” he asks.
The answer: maybe you don’t.
‘The most worrisome thing’
State officials have long declared Texas “open for business.” Reveling in each victory as they lured things like Tesla’s new gigafactory and Samsung’s new microchip plant to the state.
But now, some wonder whether data centers are worth it.
Cryptomines and data centers “produce very few jobs compared to the incredible demands they place on our grid,” Lt. Governor Dan Patrick posted on X, formerly known as Twitter, after the hearings. “Texans will ultimately pay the price.”
State lawmakers, likewise, peppered this month’s hearings with questions about whether the state could put the brakes on data center growth, or compel the companies to pay for their increased energy transmission needs.
“That’s sort of wild to think about,” Lewin said. “That’s a huge, huge break from the way things have been done.”
Assuming that cryptomines and data centers are here to stay, grid operators say they would like new rules to allow them to better monitor the facilities’ energy use and potentially control it.
Despite recent legislation compelling cryptomines to register with ERCOT, Vegas told members of the House State Affairs Committee that about half of companies still have not.
“On legislation […] what would be more helpful for ERCOT is to have more visibility to what these large loads are doing,” he said. “And so a good place to start could be making sure we can track and even potentially control the [energy] loads of cryptos.”
At a recent ERCOT board of directors meeting, Dan Woodfin, the group’s vice president of system operations, said the inability to forecast energy use by crypto mines and similar big power consumers was “the most worrisome thing” going into this summer.
ERCOT puts the chance of rolling blackouts at around 12% in August.
Demand is outpacing supply
In the electricity business, what Vegas proposes — reducing energy use by certain users at certain times — is often called a “demand side” solution to grid challenges.
The idea is that you can strengthen the grid more cheaply and quickly by lowering energy consumption rather than increasing supply.
“We cannot build the grid fast enough to keep up with demand… Even before we had every damned crypto and data center … move to Texas,” Alison Silverstein, a consultant and former state and federal energy official, told KUT.
Texas currently consumes more energy than any other state. Silverstein has long advocated for increasing energy efficiency standards in the state to help bolster the energy system.
A recent study from the American Council for an Energy Efficient Economy says improving efficiency standards in Texas would be a more economical way of reducing high energy demand in the summer and winter to strengthen the grid.
Silverstein says it would not only mean people need less power to cool their homes, run their appliances and do business, it would also go a long way toward keeping the lights on.
But lawmakers and regulators have traditionally balked at improving efficiency in Texas, a state known for producing energy not conserving it.
Silverstein says that may be changing, as the challenges of rapidly increasing energy demand become clearer to those in charge of the Texas power system.
At one recent hearing ERCOT’s Vegas referred to efficiency and demand response as an essential tool in keeping the Texas grid stable.
Silverstein says the question is whether that rhetoric will turn into state policy.
“That’s when we’ll know that they really mean it in terms of demand-side solutions, and it’s not just hand waving,” she says.
Austin, TX
Austin woman missing for 40 years, one of many on site dedicated to solving cases
AUSTIN, Texas – The case of an Austin woman who went missing 40 years ago is still a mystery. She’s one of many on a site designed to collect information about unsolved cases called “Solve the Case.”
Sharon McCully disappeared on December 11, 1984.
She was doing Christmas shopping that day and had left lunch with her husband. She dropped him off at his job and drove away, last seen going east on Howard Lane towards I-35.
Her car, an off-white 1965 Volkswagen Beetle, was found two days later, unlocked and abandoned at an apartment complex on the 8600 block of Research Boulevard, about five-and-a-half miles from her last known location. Her keys and purse were gone.
“Sharon was not believed to have had any connection with that apartment complex,” “Solve the Case” founder Aaron Benzick said. “There’s just no information to be concerned about the husband or anyone close to her at that point.”
MISSING IN TEXAS
When her husband got home from work, she wasn’t there. After waiting and calling her friends, he reported her missing the next day.
“Really speaks to there being an unknown factor that gets involved in this,” Benzick said.
McCully’s story is one of many on “Solve the Case,” a place where all the facts of a case can be aggregated.
“With the Solve the Case platform, we’re opening up for missing persons, unsolved homicides, unidentified persons, even fugitives that are on the run, have warrants out for their arrest and haven’t been found for many years,” Benzick said.
Benzick’s day job is a homicide detective in the Dallas-Fort Worth area. He got the idea to create the website after he got a bulletin about a decades-old case of someone who went to the same high school as him.
“Family had expressed some frustration, ‘we’ve been trying to promote our son’s missing person case, bring awareness of the case, and some of the things we’ve shared haven’t been updated, and we don’t really know what to do with that.’ That kind of inspired me to create this home page for victims,” he said.
MORE STORIES
Cases on the site can come from law enforcement or families.
“When you create the case page on Solve the Case, we’re going to walk you through. Here are the things that should be happening in your case, during a missing person investigation,” Benzick said.
For McCully’s case and so many others across the nation, “We want to build out a database of where known offenders were operating at that time,” Benzick said. “At minimum, we want to tell Sharon’s story.”
The hope is that the community can work together to solve mysteries.
“Through creating this platform, we’re hoping to open up this information nationwide, get families, victims, law enforcement all on the same page in a consistent way so that we can do the most good on these missing person cases,” Benzick said.
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