- Today on "Austin Insight," South by Southwest is coming up fast, and we have a preview of the action and how you can have the best festival experience.

- Plus, we're sitting down with the chancellor of Austin Community College to learn all about the school's innovation inside and outside of the classroom.

"Austin Insight" starts right now.

- [Narrator] Support for "Austin Insight" comes from Sally and James Gavin, and also from Suerte, Este, and Bar Toti restaurants, bringing Austin together around culinary excellence to celebrate creativity, conservation, and culture in Central Texas.

(upbeat music) (upbeat music continues) - Hi, and thanks again for joining us on "Austin Insight."

I'm Laura Laughead.

- And I'm Danielle Banda.

- Afraid to go to school.

That's one of the apparent impacts of recent immigration enforcement activity in the Austin area.

According to a recent Austin American-Statesman article, attendance at one elementary school fell 50% during the week President Trump was inaugurated.

Around this time, AISD staff created and posted a "We miss you" video to students who've been out of class to encourage them to come back to school.

Take a look.

- Hi.

We recently noticed more empty desks in our classrooms, and we wanna remind you, we miss you.

(upbeat music) (driver speaking in foreign language) (employee speaking in foreign language) (upbeat music) - At Austin ISD, we love our students.

(employee speaking in foreign language) - Definitely a heartfelt message from AISD staff.

Joining us now is AISD superintendent Matias Segura.

Thank you so much for being with us.

- Oh, of course.

Happy to be here.

- Yes, thank you so much.

Well, first let's start with that video from school district staff.

It definitely showed how much teachers and staff care about their students.

What caused them to post that video?

- You know, it was actually, you know, coming from a place of love.

You know, one of the things that we always talk about here in Austin ISD is that we're a family.

And anytime there is uncertainty or concerns or just, you know, a little bit of unsettling, we wanna make sure that our families and staff know that, you know, we love them, we care for them.

- I know a lot of people were very touched by that video on social media.

Can you tell us why, though, are these students missing school?

Some people are wondering if these students who are predominantly Hispanic in the district are missing class out of parents' concerns about recent ICE activity in Austin, parents who may be undocumented.

- You know, we have a large immigrant population that we serve here in Austin ISD.

And it's always critically important that we communicate effectively to all of our families.

And so, you know, anytime there's a change in the community or in politics or in legislation, you know, that can be unsettling.

And so for us, we recognize that unsettling.

We were hearing from different families.

We've heard from students, and certainly from some staff, that there was a concern with all the recent changes.

- And you mentioned policy changes that are impacting the school community.

And I want to note, this comes after a recent policy change where federal immigration agencies can now make arrests at schools, churches, and hospitals.

So how long have these absences been going on?

Can you give us a timeline of when maybe they started?

- You know, for us in Austin ISD, you know, we are a large organization.

We have 73,000 students that we serve every single day.

And we have noticed some variance, but it's really hard to tell how much of that is tied to concerns in our community regarding some of the changes and how much is just due to the flu, how much is due to just sickness occurring in our community.

So for us as an organization, we track it week by week.

We will, you know, certainly note that on the day where we had the community and a lot of activism around Day Without Immigrants, we did see about a 12% reduction in attendance that day.

And so we do want to acknowledge that there is an impact.

I just also wanna reinforce that, at this point, it is fairly small and it is hard to determine kind of what is associated with policy changes and what's associated with just, you know, the flu going around, which is happening, like, at the moment right now.

- What then are you telling parents, immigrant families, who are concerned about their children coming to school right now?

- Certainly, Austin ISD is always gonna be compliant with the law, but that we have protocols in place to communicate with family and with guardians in the event that something were to occur.

And again, it's not any different than what we would do in the event that it was a different agency engaging with one of our schools.

And so for us, being very clear about what is fact, understanding what our protocols are, and just communicating over and over and over again that when your student is with us, they're gonna be safe.

I want our families, our taxpayers, the entire community to know that we are desperately trying to create a balance of being compliant, ensuring that we're responsive to all the changes occurring around us, but doing it in a way that aligns with our values.

And so I would just ask our families to give us grace as we navigate the ever-changing landscape.

- Thank you again, AISD Superintendent Matias Segura.

Thank you so much for sharing your insights on this important topic.

- Of course, happy to be here.

(upbeat music) - Recidivism: when convicted criminals commit new crimes and wind up back behind bars.

It's a major issue for law enforcement and correctional facilities.

Experts agree that access to education can help reduce this.

Of course, inmates can't simply walk out of jail to go to school.

But what if you put the school inside the jail?

That's the premise of a small program making a big difference at the Travis County Jail.

More now on this report from our news and public affairs director, Ed Bryson.

- [Ed] 45-year-old Matthew McCoy is focused on the future.

After several personal experiences with the criminal justice system, he wants to help others navigate it.

- Trying to get my paralegal license so I can start assisting some of these public defenders as just kind of a liaison between them and their large case loads, and maybe help get certain things done that would speed their process up by half again.

When people are stuck in jail, they're stuck in the system, whether or not they're guilty or not, they're there.

And there's this huge amount of time that is, there's this huge amount of time that is wasted.

- [Ed] And McCoy knows what being stuck in jail is like.

Drug use and related activity sent him spiraling into trouble for about 10 years, including three years behind bars, most recently joining the nearly 2,500 others held inside the Travis County Jail.

- I was caught manufacture delivery, first degree, which is I guess the highest standard of drug sales.

And through my legal issues with that charge and another one in a possession and, you know, possession of stolen property, 'cause when, you know, you take payment in different ways, ultimately, I was immersed in the street crime lifestyle.

It was a criminal lifestyle that I became addicted to.

- [Ed] So what's helped him turn his life around?

- [Teacher] And we all had a blank new document.

- [Student] Okay.

- [Ed] McCoy is one of 12 inmates participating in a new education program launched last year, teaching skills that can help them find their way to a non-criminal livelihood after their release.

The students range in age from their mid-20s to 50s.

- [Teacher] File.

- [Student] File.

- [Teacher] Save as.

- [Teacher] Save as.

- Then you open them.

- These are the most engaged students I've ever taught.

- [Ed] Deborah Benavidez, head of the Office Administration and Technology Department at Austin Community College, came up with the idea for the program.

Her classroom at the jail is a judgment-free zone.

She doesn't know, and doesn't want to know, her student's criminal history.

(teacher speaking in foreign language) - When they walk into my classroom, they're my students.

They are ACC students.

What their past was, whatever, if they wanna share that with me, I will listen to it, but it bears no weight on them being able to learn or succeed in these courses.

- [Ed] The students learn basic computer literacy, like how to use Microsoft Office, also written and verbal communications, how to draft an email or express an idea.

And they also learn something important about themselves.

- A lot of times education isn't something that is lifted up in a poor neighborhood.

It's how tough are you?

How much drugs can you sell?

How hard can you dunk a basketball?

You know, that sort of thing.

And this gives them an opportunity to reevaluate that.

- They are nervous to speak in front of people, but the passion that they have in what they wanna do, it's kind of like somebody turned that light on for them again.

- [Ed] Travis County Sheriff Sally Hernandez and Program Director Danny Smith see benefits in this program for the student inmates and for the community.

- Coming to jail is a very depressing thing.

You lose hope.

You lose contact with your family and everything.

But now this program gives them that hope, and it gives them a vision for the future.

- We want them to see something bigger, that they have a future, that they can do more than what they're doing, and launch them into a better place.

The people that are in our facility, they've done wrong, they've made a mistake, they're in our care, but they have to see past that.

Because if they don't see past that, they're going to go out and they're gonna continue down this path.

And that's not good for them, and it's not good for our community.

- Inside the Travis County Jail where our cameras aren't allowed, a graduation ceremony was recently held for the first class in this special pilot program.

Whether the program can continue is contingent upon efforts by the Sheriff's Office and Austin Community College to find funding from either public or private sources to keep the program alive and to pay for the tuition.

McCoy was released from jail in early January, so the program team brought his cap and gown to our interview.

- Knowing that I did all this time and I did all this, you know, back and forth with the legal system and all this trouble and all this severe environment, would be very upsetting if I didn't realize that that's what exposed me to doing something that I think that I'm called to help people do.

The trial and tribulation that you've gone through, was it a waste to get through it, or did you get to something?

(upbeat music) - Studies show that state prisons in Texas have a relatively low recidivism rate, about 21%.

But for county lockup facilities, the rate is about 10% higher.

Sheriff Hernandez emphasizes that there's not a single solution, but they see great promise in this ACC collaboration, and hope it can continue.

(upbeat music) Austin Community College has helped shape the future of education in Central Texas for 51 years now.

And today we take a closer look at the impact of the ACC system on the people and the economy of this area.

- We'll talk about the role of ACC and its future with Chancellor Dr. Russell Lowery-Hart.

But first some facts about ACC.

The most recent annual budget for the school was $534 million.

About 60% of that goes to the 6,100 members of ACC staff and faculty.

And the school offers a wide array of courses with more than 100 programs.

- There are 11 ACC campuses, and Austin PBS is actually located at one of them now, at the Highland Campus.

Their newest site is in Lockhart, where more than 60% of voters recently approved an annexation vote, raising taxes to join ACC.

As for the student body, annual enrollment is more than 70,000.

39% are Hispanic, 37.4% are white, 10% of ACC students are Asian, and 8% are black.

- ACC is one of the first community colleges in the country to offer bachelor's degrees in high-demand fields like nursing.

And it's home to the state-of-the-art ACCelerator, which is the largest computer lab in the country, also located here at the Highland Campus.

(upbeat music) - And as we turn now to our interview with Chancellor Russell Lowery-Hart, here's brief bio information, okay?

He was named the ninth chancellor of Austin Community College District in 2023.

He's known for being a change agent and an innovator.

And prior to this role, he served as president of Amarillo College, about nine years.

He earned a prestigious 2023 Aspen Prize for Community College Excellence.

He holds a bachelor's degree in speech communication and rhetoric from West Texas State University, a master's in communication studies from Texas Tech University, and a doctorate in interpersonal communication from Ohio University.

And Dr. Russell Lowery-Hart joins us now for more on what we can expect at ACC in the future.

So welcome.

Thank you so much for being here.

- So glad to be here.

Thank you.

- Yeah, absolutely.

A lot to discuss, for sure.

But first, your staff did tell us that we could call you Russell.

Is that okay with you?

- That is my preference.

I don't like the formality, and call me Russell, please.

- Well, thank you so much.

Now, like I said, a lot that we wanna ask you, but first, let's go ahead and start off with the mission of ACC.

Now, community colleges, of course, often straddle two roles.

There's the vocational, the workforce education, you know, and for some, affordable college prep.

It's a path to a four-year degree.

But how in the world do you balance the two?

- We don't have to balance the two.

We have to ensure that our students have a pathway, whichever direction they go.

I think our job is to know our students.

And what we're committed to is loving her to success.

And to love our students to success, we have to know who she is, what her dreams are, and establish a path to that dream.

What I worry about the most, though, is a lot of students come to us who have the skills and the ability to dream bigger, but life has caused them to doubt themselves.

And they're the students that I worry about the most.

And they're the reason I'm in a community college, because I think we're perfectly situated to help them.

- Yeah, life gets in the way, and sometimes those goals can seem so, so challenging, those obstacles.

So thank you for saying that.

I know a lot of people can relate to that.

Of course, one of the most noteworthy steps that you've taken is to offer a free tuition program.

So why is that so important to you and passionate to you, personally?

- Well, there's two main reasons.

One is what we just talked about, where our typical student may make choices that don't fulfill their passion.

It's based on finances.

They're coming and they ask, "What's the shortest degree I can get, the time to degree, that immediately leads to a job that pays a family-sustaining wage?"

They're not coming in and asking what they're most passionate about because they're struggling financially and they need a degree.

And it costs a lot of money to get a college degree.

So I worry about that.

The second reason that we launched this pilot is because if you look at what's happened in Central Texas, it reflects what's happened across the country.

Just in the last 10 years, our college going rate went from 60% of all high school graduates, 10 years ago, in Central Texas, went to some post-secondary entity.

Now only 42% go.

We're having to import talent because we're not taking care of our own talent.

And when we worked with Trellis EDU, what we found is the number one reason why students weren't going to school was because the cost of tuition and fees.

We live in a resource-available community.

We can figure out how to make that affordable, and that's what this pilot's trying to do.

- Yeah, I love that, because maybe there are folks out there that don't know about these resources.

And knowing about this can make the world of a difference.

Now, for many of your students, cost, as we've already discussed, but beyond that, just the overall value.

It's an important part of choosing ACC.

And at $85 per credit hour, or indeed, free for some, as we mentioned, you know, this looks like a bargain education.

So how do you ensure quality in this case?

- Well, we're one of the most affordable community colleges in the state of Texas.

We have one of the lowest tuition rates.

We have one of the lowest tax rates.

Yet the cost itself isn't always just the only barrier to success.

How I ensure quality is I work with amazing people that care deeply.

Our faculty are world class, and we hire for it.

And we hire people that know the student, are willing to do whatever it takes to educate them.

So the quality starts from the very beginning.

And then the support that we surround our students with ensures that they can live up to that quality.

- Yeah, there's a story behind every student, every staff member, and somehow it all becomes connected, so.

- Yes, definitely.

- If you think about the local economic growth drivers along that note, for example, technology and computer chip making, how do you think that those are coming together to support the workforce training that you mentioned and just overall aligning and curriculum?

- We're in such a unique moment in our collective history with... You've got things that are happening locally with semiconductor, with chips, with other technology development and adaptation.

We are in a biotech revolution, an automation revolution, and Austin, in a lot of those ways, is central to that reformation.

As a college, we are needing to respond to that by making sure that we're offering the kind of degrees and skills that lead to the jobs in those sectors.

So we're doing that, but we also have to be the college that uses those tools and skills in the way we execute our work.

And I think we're a college that is focused on innovation in the future, and I think it's because we reflect a community that's focused on innovation in the future.

- You know, you are known for the Theory of Change.

So what do you think are some of the more significant changes to come at ACC?

- So the Theory of Change was using data analytics to predict if students engage in certain behaviors, they will complete.

And our data led us to some key elements.

One is a strong start.

If they have dual credit or if they have an engagement with an advisor in their first couple of weeks, they're more likely to be successful.

The second area of the Theory of Change is enrolling full-time.

77% of our students are part-time because they're working two part-time jobs and raising a family.

We've got to restructure ourselves and provide enough support that they could enroll full time.

And the third element of the Theory of Change is meet basic needs.

I came in and asked our students what was keeping them from being successful, and the top five things they said were keeping them from being successful in the classroom had nothing to do with the classroom.

- Wow.

- Childcare, healthcare, transportation, housing, food.

- Wow.

- Those are the barriers that are getting in the way of their academic success.

And then they want to and need to be in a college that cares about them and that they feel a connection to.

And that's fundamentally our Theory of Change.

What we're doing now is reimagining our structures and our processes to ensure that students engage that theory anytime they walk on our campus.

- Yeah, it's not just about the physical resources that are available, but that emotional, you know, hope that you're giving them.

So thank you so much to you and all of your team just for offering these discussions and open dialogue.

We really appreciate you being here and also sharing that information.

- Thanks for having me.

- Absolutely.

Well, that again was Dr. Russell Lowery-Hart, chancellor of Austin Community College.

Thanks so much for watching.

(upbeat music) (upbeat music continues) - South by Southwest is a little under a week away, and the city is preparing for hundreds of thousands of people from around the world to descend on Austin for the film, music, and tech extravaganza.

Last year, South by Southwest generated a little over $377 million for the local economy.

Here to give us a preview of the film festival side of things is Peter Hall, South by Southwest's senior film and TV programmer.

Peter, thanks so much for joining us.

- Thanks for having me.

- And I wanna point out that right now we are in the iconic Paramount Theater, which is quiet and empty.

But this time next week, it's gonna transform into a red carpet and an epicenter for all the premieres.

So what are some of the biggest premieres we can expect this South by and maybe some of the biggest stars coming to town?

- Well, the opening night film is "Another Simple Favor" directed by Paul Feig, which stars Anna Kendrick and Blake Lively.

That will be here at the Paramount and will be quite the spectacle, I'm sure, for anyone who wants to come and view the red carpet.

The way that we are doing it now is that the Congress Street, which is right out front of the Paramount, is actually under a street closure.

So pedestrian traffic can come and go a lot easier.

And then following "Another Simple Favor" is the world premier of "The Studio," which is a new Apple TV comedy starring and created by Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg.

And it's got Kathryn Hanh and a whole host of other people in it.

And for anyone who follows the industry or pays attention to film and TV, it is going to be become their new favorite show.

If you do the full festival, you will start to see filmmakers or actors attending other screenings.

And it's always nice to look around and be like, "Oh, I just saw that person in a movie and now they're here sitting next to me watching a different movie."

- That is cool.

So look around when you're sitting in the audience.

You don't know who could be sitting next to you.

And I know Dua Lipa, during ACL, she went and danced at the Broken Spoke of all places.

So maybe keep your eyes peeled there too.

Now, we talked about biggest, but what are maybe some of the more interesting and unique premieres we can expect this South by?

- That's a very good question.

One of the things South by prides itself in is having a sense of discovery and finding films before anyone else has had a chance to really see them.

There's a film out of New York called "Bunny," which is a really, really strong dark comedy about an apartment full of friends who have to hide a dead body and move it from one apartment to the next.

There's a documentary called "The Age of Disclosure," which is world premiering here, that I think is going to open a lot of eyes.

It's about the, essentially, UFOs, or, as they call them, UAPs, and the government recent disclosure, and a hopeful future of even more disclosure.

So if you are someone who is on the "I want to believe" spectrum, you'll definitely wanna see this film.

- I'm gonna have to add all those to my list.

And I know there's, like, a little bit of something for everyone.

And for people that are going, I know a lot of the activities require a badge, which can be expensive.

So for the people here in Austin, they still wanna be a part of things and go to the events and have fun, but maybe don't have the ability to get a badge, what's your advice to them on how to still have a good South by?

- If you don't have a badge, particularly this year, for the Film & TV Festival, there's a really smart way that you can approach it.

There's the Film & TV Wristband, which is limited to be sold to locals.

But we're also doing public presale tickets for select films and screenings that we, looking at the data, think it's gonna have the capacity to have just a random ticket holder.

So if you are only interested in "Forever We Are Young," which is a documentary about BTS Army, you could buy a ticket just to "Forever We Are Young."

So if you go to sxsw-filmtvticketing.com, that'll have a full list of all of the individual tickets that you could get.

- Good to know.

And you've just activated with that the BTS Army with that.

I'll have to add that to our list as well.

Well, certainly, so much to look forward to.

We're gonna be out there, and we're gonna be covering it, and we're really excited.

South by Southwest runs March 7th through the 15th.

And Peter, we'll see you there.

Thanks so much for joining us.

- Yes, thank you.

(upbeat music) - Well, that's all for today's show, but before we go, we wanna congratulate all of the winners of this year's Austin Music Awards from the Austin Chronicle, and especially one of our very own production crew members here, Rodney Connell, and his electronic act Night Drive, who won for the Electronic Music category.

So way to go, Rodney.

We are so proud.

- Yes, congratulations, Rodney, who is a pleasure to work with.

We're gonna be off for a couple weeks as PBS pledge programming takes this time slot, but we are back on March 20th with even more news and features.

But in the meantime, you can always watch all of our "Austin Insight" episodes on the PBS app, which is free, by the way.

We'll see you soon.

(upbeat music) (upbeat music continues) (upbeat music continues) - [Narrator] Support for "Austin Insight" comes from Sally and James Gavin, and also from Suerte, Este, and Bar Toti restaurants, bringing Austin together around culinary excellence to celebrate creativity, conservation, and culture in Central Texas.

(perky music)