On the record is brought to you by Steve and Adele Dufilho.

San Antonio is a fast growing, fast moving community with something new happening every day.

That's why each week we go on the record with the news makers who are driving this change.

Then we gather at the Reporters Roundtable to talk about the latest news stories with the journalists behind those stories.

Join us now as we go on the.

Hi, everybody.

And thank you for joining us for this edition of On the Record.

I'm Randy Beamer.

We've been off for a couple of weeks, but in that time, the city, one of the things that they did, the council just okayed spending one and a half million dollars of its federal pandemic relief funds to go to nonprofits that help with people who are seeking U.S. citizenship to nonprofits that help with that and help us explain what's going on there.

Melody Woosley is the director of San Antonio's Department of Human Services.

Thank you very much for coming in.

In one headline where you see federal money for pandemic relief going to nonprofits for citizenship age, some people might wonder, well.

Why so immigrants and living in San Antonio have been negatively impacted by COVID, disproportionately more than a number of other populations.

The US immigration system was really halted to some extent by COVID19.

And so there are a lot of people that are here that may not have been eligible for federal assistance, may have had to stop working.

And it's created a demand for resources with our nonprofit agencies that provide those services to immigrant families.

And now this is a small percentage out of the 327 million or so in that first batch of aka money that the city got.

And in terms of the framework of of how it's going.

4 million has to go to nonprofit And this one and a half million of that is to help with citizenship.

Whereas where is some of that money going to to go to a number of different groups right.

Because they still have to apply and go through the process.

Right.

And so on June six, we released a request for applications to the public nonprofit government entities.

Faith based organizations are eligible to apply for that to provide financial assistance to immigrants or to help with legal processes for people who are trying to get their citizenship or maybe facing deportation.

So that's also an eligible activity.

But the the point is really to focus on family stability, financial stability, and to help people through legal processes if needed.

And the vote was nine to one.

Many players wasn't there.

And Clayton Perry, a District Ten, voted against it.

So it's pretty overwhelming that the council wanted to do this.

There are also some decisions to be coming up about some of the money going to nonprofits for young people and for the elderly.

That's correct.

So there's a separate process for youth services or B, $10 million in ARPA funds that are allocated to help offset the impacts of COVID on youth population, and similarly with seniors.

$5 million that'll help seniors who have been financially impacted by COVID or have been isolated and, you know, are looking to be reconnected.

And now some of these nonprofits, specifically the ones we're talking about that are helping with citizenship, they had a really tough time overall through the pandemic getting funding.

How will this help get them back on their feet?

So, you know, the dollars for nonprofits can be used to help with capacity building.

You know, agents sees that need their technology upgraded so that they can continue to provide services in a virtual way if needed.

Make sure that they're have the digital access that they need, and then it can be used for PPE, know if people need hand sanitizer and masks and better air conditioning systems to be safe.

And now Clayton Perry's argument in terms of what he why he voted against it was he thought the money should be going to help businesses affected by the pandemic.

And the argument on the other side, one of them was that there are so many people coming through, not staying here, that it affects San Antonio as a city.

How many people are we talking about that come through here?

And it's kind of, I guess, a way station that people here help with.

Right.

And it's really two different populations.

And so the migrants that are coming from the southern border they are seeking asylum in the United States.

They're here illegally and they really transition through San Antonio.

So we assist them to get their tickets, get through the airport, get to the bus station and move on to the destination that they've identified.

And so that that effort is really very different from the effort of helping migrants who are are immigrants who have stayed in San Antonio or have moved to San Antonio.

Three, either the refugee resettlement program or another another reason.

So we've seen over the last year a lot of families from Afghanistan, from Ukraine being resettled in San Antonio or coming to San Antonio because they have family members.

And so do.

You expect to see we're about out of time, but that number increase over the next few months, year or so?

I don't know that that's anyone's guess.

It has a lot to do with the federal government's decisions regarding refugees.

And then, you know, it'll it'll depend on what's happening in those countries as well.

All right.

Well, thank you very much, Melodie Woosley, director of San Antonio's Department of Human Services.

Appreciate you very much coming in.

Thanks.

Sure.

Thank you.

This week, the Texas State Board of Education in Austin was expected to unveil a new draft of the new curriculum for social studies in Texas civics government history classes.

It's rewritten every ten years.

It has been very political in the past.

It's expected to be this year, but that was delayed from this week.

And we're going to find out why with Marisa Bea Perez Diaz of the State Board of Education District three.

Thank you for joining us.

And now you are in Austin where the state board is meeting.

But you're not talking about public comments on the revising of the curriculum itself yet.

Why?

That's correct, Randi.

Well, first of all, thank you so much for having me here today to talk about this really important topic.

So we as you mentioned, we look at these standards every ten years.

And, you know, over the last ten years, we have absolutely experienced drastic change in terms of just even events have happened that we hope to integrate into our social safety standards because it's important for our students to understand where we've been in order to get to where we want to be.

And so as we started our conversations, one of the proposals by our content experts, so we go through several different iterations of review.

We have content advisors at the very beginning of the process who are experts in the subject matter, who provide us initial guidance.

And then they use that guidance.

And then as we're convening our work groups to to build on our standards.

And so what happened during the initial phase of our review and advisor suggested looking at a reformatting of how we even approach our standards.

In Texas, we have standards for all of our courses that count towards graduation, and our core content areas have the most amount of standards.

So I'm talking English language arts, math, science, social studies, Well, social studies is the one content area where we have I mean, just an overwhelming amount of standards.

And so they were really trying to get at how do we teach in depth some of the standards that we really know our students need to be successful in the future.

And so part of that and part of that framing involves how we introduce certain themes and concepts in a way that our students are able to not just, you know, get the information, but they're able to retain that information.

And and we're talking about the big picture like grade levels when they should get into Texas history, what periods of history should come in certain grade levels.

So it's the big picture.

But then the politicization or the things that might be controversial or when we're talking about rewriting specific things in the curriculum and that's been put off, is it just because of the whole process is taken longer than expected?

I think that we're trying our best to purchase in a more thoughtful way.

But to your point, you know, as we move into our August board meeting, we do absolutely anticipate a lot of unfortunately, what we know to be the culture wars to sort of rear its ugly head all over again.

Because, you know, I think that for very long time, there are a lot of histories that have not been shared in our social safety standards to begin with, that, you know, I, for one, have worked really hard to get things like Mexican-American studies and African-American studies even acknowledged as electives for our high school graduation.

And in a state where over 52% of the population is identified as Latino, it took us almost six years to get mass integrated as even just an elective course.

So we have that those sorts of battles about what patriotism means and what it means to to be an American and have American values that on top of now this horrifying national narrative that's completely misguided around what critical race theory is and how that's impacting our social studies standards.

Because to have any that's having an absolute direct impact in terms of sort of the recommendations we're getting from public through public comment and.

Some of them also from content advisers.

There was a controversy earlier this year about one of the contract advisors who is very controversial, has been called racist.

This is Stephen Baulch, who said that Joe Biden is president because of a coup not President Trump trying to stage a coup.

But but President Biden and also the white replacement theory that he is supported you would ask for him to be taken off that advisory committee, but he has not been.

We we had asked there isn't a mechanism, unfortunately, in place within our rules to remove those advisers.

And so it would have involved an entire well as some sort of a rewrite to our policy standards.

Our procedural standards.

So, you know, unfortunately, yes, we have this individual who has no business serving in this advisory capacity on this board or on his invited advisory board.

The the positive thing is, though, he is absolutely in the minority in terms of the recommendations that are coming through that content advisory group.

So the majority of those content advisors agree and a lot of the really positive things that we're looking at.

And so when it comes to the recommendation these are passed down to our working groups, you know, sort of as a starting place, we usually go with the majority of the content advisers recommendations.

We appreciate your time.

We know you're in a conference room there.

That's not even part of your area to get back to the Board of Education meeting that's going on right now.

Thank you very much, Marissa.

Be Perez Diaz Texas State Board of Education and good luck with rewriting that history or the curriculum.

Thank you, Randi.

What would you like to see as the future of the Institute of Texan Cultures downtown?

Been there since 1968.

Started out as part of Hemisfair and now part of UTSA since 1973.

Well this is a question right now because UTSA is in the process of getting feedback for three scenarios of what to happen in the future there that they just released.

And joining us to talk about that is Kimberly Andrews SB with UTSA, the Provost and Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs, and Sabrina Kasambala, the Institute of Texan Cultures Visioning Process Steering Committee, as well as other titles.

Thank you very much for coming in.

First of all, there was a process in 2016 where the UT system asked for people to submit basically bids of what to do with a property.

And that blew up and was very controversial this time and it was so it was withdrawn this time.

It's a whole different process.

This is a very different process.

What we've done this time around is we have involved the community from the very beginning.

Right.

We have a process that has been a little protracted.

It's taken us about a year to get to this phase, but we've engaged community leaders, business leaders, those who are familiar and have expertize in the cultural arts and brought them together around some task forces that developed reports.

Now we have our steering committee again, composed of similar experts across our community.

That have developed these three scenarios.

So it's a very different community driven process.

And the scenarios are to leave it where it is more or less not as it is but to do something with it.

And what are the other two scenarios?

So leave the Hemisfair and stay in the Hemisfair area, but in a new vision and.

Leave the Hemisfair the site, the Texas Pavilion site, but stay somewhere within.

The.

District.

And then the other one is to leave the Hemisfair district entirely.

Correct.

And whatever happens to the future of the building, the facility is is kind of up in the air.

Correct.

And so how can people give their input on this?

Yes.

So there's a link on do you want to share the link?

Yeah, sure.

So it's called Community Conversations.

If you log into the it's 20, 68 visioning web page, it literally is right there.

Click on the link and then it'll ask you just a couple of questions about each of the scenarios what resonates with you and what would you think we could do differently if you had unlimited resources?

And now this is a thing that a lot of people have gone to and they have memories of when they were a kid, but over the years there's been declining attendance, decaying infrastructure.

Tell us about some of those that need to be fixed one way or the other.

There is something called the A.M. And there is a core standards for museums that are measured by the invitation.

Yes.

And so when we are looking to bring in new exhibits and so forth, they look to see if we have the core standards.

And at this moment in the current location, we do not meet those standards due to HVAC challenges, electrical challenges, sizing the list goes on and on.

And recently, an Urban Land Institute report that looked at it with an outside experts coming in saying emphasizing what it needs to have happen, like the Alamodome has seen so many rows of a renovation since it was completed in 1993.

Correct.

This was built in 1968 and hasn't had much done to it.

That's correct.

That attendance problem and the way people engage with a museum like this has changed.

When you think about modern museums, you know, San Antonio is blessed with so many, the wity, the Magnay sama, right?

You really engage with them in different sorts of ways.

It's not the old passive walks to the museum and take a look, it's engage, it's get involved with the materials, it's look at your phone to find more information if you want to dove in.

That's the kind of user experience that that our population really demands.

And when you think about the exciting topic about texting cultures, that's such a rich mosaic.

We want to be able to display and exhibit and draw people in to that richness, to that full tapestry.

And as part of the as part of UTSA, this could be distributed or some of the things move to different areas or move to one area.

And then that location used by UTSA for one of many things, there could be mixed use down there.

There could be lease restaurants, that kind of thing.

And the Urban Land Institute recommended maybe a hospitality school.

Correct.

They're kind of thinking outside the box.

What kind of reaction have you had to some of that idea, those ideas?

Yeah.

So of course, the community has responded in many different ways because everyone has different opinions.

So there has been some negative and some positive responses.

But at the end of the day, that is not an option.

That has been 100% approved or it's not one of the scenarios either.

So I just want to let the community know like keep bringing those ideas, you know, even if it's something completely outside the box, like putting a hospitality school there.

I think we need to look at all options at this juncture and right now is really trying to get people to submit their comments and feedback because once we collect all of that, we're able to make decisions that are our better correct.

And the next step is then end of July 12th or whatever it is.

What happens after.

That?

The community conversation is open through July 12th.

And then at that point, we will the steering committee will collect all of those comments and sift through them and then present the report to President Amy.

At that point, we'll have an evaluative process because we need to move to the next step from these three scenarios.

So we'll begin to engage other subject matter experts, engineers, architects, developer to more specifics.

So cultural.

Arts folks.

Exactly.

To evaluate with all of that because I know it's not going to be controversial at all as to the future of what happens.

The Institute of Texan Cultures, get down there if you can and put your input.

Thanks very much with Kimberly Andrews, SB and Sabrina Cassis Avalon.

Thanks for coming in.

Wonderful.

Thank you.

There are so many aspects of the aftermath of a school shooting tragedy in your valley.

It seems to be something coming out every day.

About the narrative or the timeline of what happened.

But also it is tougher for journalists to cover this aftermath than other school shootings that I've covered in Santa Fe or in Sutherland Springs.

And joining us to talk about that is Emily Eaton, the San Antonio Express-News, and you wrote a story.

Thank you for coming in.

First of all, you wrote a story with Bryant Chestnut about how the media are being treated out there right now and why.

Because this is a different whole atmosphere because of maybe what, you know, the police, the criticism of the police.

How are news media being treated out there?

The news media, including journalists from our own organizations, San Antonio Express-News and our sister paper The Houston Chronicle, have been essentially continually harassed by police.

I think there's this notion that journalists go in there and they're just trying to get the next big story and then.

They're vultures and preying on people.

Exactly.

And that's not the case.

I mean, we're there because we care about the community.

Many of our staff have friends and family and cousins there.

You know, we want to be there to tell their stories and tell the public about what could be done to prevent this from ever happening again.

And so, you know, there's this huge media presence.

And unfortunately, you know, we try to follow all of the rules that are put out for us.

You know, oftentimes the police will designate us into a certain area during a funeral and say, you know, please don't leave here.

But unfortunately, we're still getting harassed.

You know, you take one step outside of that, that designated area and police are suddenly all over you.

And now when you talk about police, it's not just police from Uvalde because they went underwent such a stress for this.

And have the media there's police from all over the state coming in now, hundreds literally rotating in.

Is that another reason that there is this tension with police and media?

I think so.

I think a lot of it may have to do with the communication aspect.

I mean, I think you have so many different jurisdictions.

And what some people have told me, what some sources have told me from these different law enforcement agencies, is that some of these are small town cops that aren't used to working with the media or don't aren't used to a huge media presence like the one that we've seen in New Baldy.

And as such, they don't know what the media's rights are and the media has a right to be on a public spot.

And so as such, they're sort of trying to intimidate or harass them or maybe there's just under a lot of pressure and this ends up coming out.

But whatever the case is, these journalists are being treated this way.

And some people are going to see this and say, oh, it's just reporters.

And, you know, they're whining about these things and that's not the story.

And it isn't the story, but it's also some people are being threatened that if they talk, these are citizens of value, that if they talk to the media something will happen to them.

And so there's a chilling effect on what they want to even maybe they want to talk to the media, but feel like they can't.

How does that work?

Yeah, there definitely is.

And that's, of course, is a huge concern because we are the eyes and the ears of the public.

We are the people who hold governments, who hold the police accountable.

And if we aren't able to get access to those individuals and we aren't able to tell their stories and what they think happened, then how will the public ever know?

How will we ever know what happened in Uvalde and how it could be prevented?

As I understand it, there are also people who may have been posing as the news media and really trying to go over the line, really pushing limits and going over the line.

Tell us about some of those.

Yeah, unfortunately, that is the case, and that's always is such a it's heartbreaking for people like you and I who really would never do something like that.

But there are some journals there, stories of quote unquote, journalists or people posing as journalists who have gone into funeral homes and tried to get photos of some of the dead children, which is something that most media organizations would never stand for.

And also the law enforcement more or less threatening people that if they talk, they may face consequences.

And one specific incidence of a woman who is threatened with legal action because she was on probation what what is going to happen, do you think, over the next few months as as some of the media presence is gone or we're talking about some of the media is going to be there for months, the national media, is it going to be this tense relationship, you think?

Because now it's there's nothing being released because it's a quote unquote, criminal investigation.

I think we will continue to face barriers in trying to get the truth.

But I also think that the citizens of Uvalde the witnesses, the people who have firsthand knowledge of what happened, will start to feel comfortable with the journalists who are sticking around.

The people from local news organizations who truly do care and who are there.

And they're going to show the people that it's worth worth speaking up.

And it's also and people don't realize this, but as a reporter, I'm sure, you know, it's it's cathartic for people to talk about what happened to their loved ones.

Or it can be because sometimes they are shushed or it's OK, don't or don't, you know, it's OK, but they want to talk about it to somebody.

And as a reporter who comes in, you're that out but for them and to a way for them to remember their loved one.

Absolutely.

I mean, having experienced grief not to this scale, but firsthand myself, I, I know how often you want to share your loved ones stories for years and years and years and, and having a journalist there to help tell that story can be really helpful for the families.

And how about because of the way it's now a criminal investigation?

How tough is that for reporters to get anything now?

On what happened what actually happened there during that time?

Exactly.

I mean, yesterday the mayor of Uvalde basically said that they've been instructed by the district attorney's office not to release any open records during the course of an ongoing criminal investigation.

And so where does that leave us?

How are we supposed to inform the public about what's going on?

It's going to be very difficult.

And how long that investigation could take is the the ban period of when we can get information.

Exactly.

Well, thanks very much.

Well, one of the places you can get information is the San Antonio Express-News, they're reporting, and Emily Eaton and the entire staff there.

Thank you for coming in.

We appreciate it.

And I hope you come back and we talk about more positive things that are coming out of there as well.

And thank you for joining us for this edition of On the Record.

You can see the show again or previous shows as well as the podcast klrn.org.

And we'll see you next time.

On the record is brought to you by Steve and Adele Dufilho