HISD receives millions in funding from EPA for clean school buses

seeing green

All aboard the bus to greener transportation. Photo via Unsplash

Houston Independent School District is hopping on the city's net-zero carbon emissions bus, so to speak, thanks to more than $6.2 million in funding from the Environmental Protection Agency.

The funds are part of the EPA's Clean School Bus Program Fiscal Year 2022 rebate competition, which will award nearly $51 million in funds from President Biden’s Bipartisan Infrastructure Law to Texas school districts, and $965 million in total to districts around the country.

Houston's $6.2 million will go toward 25 new school buses, according to a statement from the EPA. Fifteen of the vehicles will be brand-new electric buses.

"Taking steps to make our school buses greener while remaining safe and effective is not only imperative for the wellbeing of students and bus drivers, but also for the public at large,” Houston Congressman Al Green said in a statement. “I applaud this announcement by the EPA under President Biden’s leadership. I look forward to seeing the positive impact that this outstanding award to purchase electric and propane school buses will have on reducing our carbon footprint.”

HISD must now submit Payment Request Forms with purchase orders that shows the district has ordered the new buses and eligible infrastructure.

The district is among 13 Texas school districts to receive funding. Dallas ISD, the second largest school district in the state behind HISD, was awarded roughly $7.6 million. Killeen ISD and Socorro ISD received the largest sums among the districts, totalling nearly $9.9 million in funding each.

At the time of the statement, the EPA had selected 389 applications across the country totaling $913 million to support the purchase of 2,463 buses, mainly in areas serving low-income, rural, and/or Tribal students. More applications are under review, and the EPA plans to announce additional districts that will receive funding, bringing the total investment to the full $965 million, in the coming weeks, according to a statement.

The EPA intends to make available another $1 billion for clean school buses in Fiscal Year 2023.

HISD's new dashboard will track active COVID-19 cases. Photo by Klaus Vedfelt/Getty Images

Houston Independent School District launches new COVID-19 tracker

TRACKING COVID IN HISD

Greater Houston parents have an important date circled and marked on their calendars: October 19. That's the day Houston Independent School District welcomes students back for in-person instruction at all schools.

However, a major point of concern and contention with area parents is the possibility of fellow students contracting, carrying, and spreading COVID-19. To that end, the district has announced a new COVID-19 dashboard to keep the community informed about the impact of the pandemic. Parents can view the COVID-19 dashboard here.

The online dashboard launched Monday, September 28, to track the number of confirmed COVID-19 students and staff cases on campuses, in an effort to display transparency, according to a press release. As of September 28, some 23 active cases are reflected on the dashboard, out of more than 222,000 students and staff.

HISD's new dashboard was developed using Texas Education Agency guidelines for reporting COVID-19. It will be updated daily, allowing users to review student and staff data by location and districtwide, according to the district. The dashboard will also include a map to clearly illustrate and mark active cases throughout the district.

All applicable privacy laws relating to the release of personal health information will be followed, according to a press release.

"As we navigate this pandemic together, we want to ensure that we are transparent as we provide crucial updates," said HISD interim superintendent, Grenita Lathan, in a statement. "This new dashboard will give our staff members and families the information they need in an accessible and easy-to-use way to make informed decisions."

For more information on HISD's reopening plan, visit the official site.

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This article originally ran on CultureMap.

Kids in need will receive 2,000 new computers. Photo courtesy of Pixlr

Houston kids connect to $1 million in new computers thanks to local nonprofit

helping hand

As the global pandemic and hurricanes and tropical storms pester the Greater Houston area, a greater emphasis is being placed on online learning for local students. Now, to ensure there is less of a limited digital divide, a local nonprofit has made a significant gift to the Houston Independent School District.

The Moody Foundation announced a grant of $1 million to HISD for the purchase of more than 2,000 computer devices. The grant will cover devices for pre-K through fifth-grade students in the district's Achieve 180 schools, which have been designated as underserved and underperforming HISD feeder pattern communities, according to a press release.

Such a grant is pivotal in a time when data shows Texas leading the country with the widest digital divide among students and teachers. According to research from the distinct, some 35 percent of HISD 209,000 students lacked internet at home, while another 40 to 45 percent lacked a computer device. Meanwhile, per the distinct, thousands of impoverished students still require devices.

The Achieve 180 students scored lower than non-Achieve 180 students at the Approaches Grade Level on STAAR, per HISD. Reports show that these students were also less engaged during remote learning.

"The pandemic has only further magnified the digital divide," said Ross Moody, trustee of the Moody Foundation. "The Moody Foundation has a long history of supporting early childhood education to build opportunities for student success. Everyone deserves and should have the same level of access to education."

Since the onset of COVID-19 in March, the foundation has granted over $10 million in COVID-19 funds to more 100 nonprofits and schools in Houston, Galveston, and Austin.

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This article originally ran on CultureMap.

Harris County is making sure all kids stay connected during the pandemic. Photo courtesy of Pixlr

Harris County connects students in need to free high-speed internet and devices

PLUGGING IN

Schools around the nation are in a rush to return to normalcy despite the pandemic. So varied are the opinions on how to reopen that Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo just released a "roadmap" for reopening.

One pressing issue is the massive digital divide between households that have internet access at home and those that do not — especially as school districts push for virtual learning. Roughly one-third of households with children ages 6 to 17 and an annual income below $30,000 a year do not have a high-speed internet connection at home, according to a 2020 Pew Research Study.

To that end, the Harris County Commissioners Court approved two programs aiming to end the digital divide in Harris County. The $32 million combined programs will provide more than 120,000 mobile hot spots (with unlimited data plans) and more than 250,000 devices (such as tablets and laptops) for students during the pandemic and for the remainder of the school year, according to a press release.

The programs use CARES Act Funds allocated by the Federal Government. A dollar-for-dollar match from the Texas Education Agency is also part of the funding. Nationwide carriers T-Mobile, AT&T, and Verizon are partnering with the program.

Once purchased, the devices and hot spots will become permanent property of the districts, which will then distribute to students within four and 12 weeks, according to the release.

"On one hand, I am thrilled we are offering help to families with the goal of flattening the education access curve," said Commissioner Garcia. "However, it pains me that it took a pandemic to close the gap between kids with reliable access to the internet at home and those that, in some cases are having to use mom or dad's smartphone to do their homework, if such a device is even available in the home. This is a great example of what we can accomplish when the state of Texas and local counties work together to help people in need."

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This article originally ran on CultureMap.

Even in light of community concerns, HISD is moving forward on its pursuit to receive a District of Innovation designation. Getty Images

Houston school board votes in favor of moving forward with innovation designation

moving forward

In the Houston Independent School District's board meeting on Thursday, May 14, the board of trustees voted in favor to begin a process that would designate HISD a District of Innovation.

The ruling allows HISD to begin the process of receiving the DOI designation and to join the almost 900 other Texas school districts with the designation, which would be implemented for the 2021-2022 school year.

The designation would allow for several exemptions from state law, including beginning the school year earlier than the fourth Monday in August, allowing flexibility in attendance requirements, and allowing for non-accredited teachers to conduct Career and Technical Education courses.

Before the HISD board discussed the motion and voted, they heard from community members who expressed concern with this particular accreditation matter during the meeting's call for community speakers. Due to COVID-19, the speakers wrote in their concerns, which were then read for the board.

Andrew Dewey, executive vice president of the Houston Federation of Teachers, asked the board to oppose the motion as the exemptions allowed by DOI aren't in themselves innovative, he says.

To allow for non-accredited CTE instructors, "the district would have to be exempted from the entire section of the law requiring certification," writes Dewey. "That action would open the door for future administration and school boards or board of managers to allow non-certified teachers in other content areas."

Several other community members voiced this concern over allowing non-accredited teachers, and another concern was timing of the motion. A few community members argued that now is not the time to pursue the DOI designation — and Trustee Elizabeth Santos of District I echoed that concern.

"Our students deserve better than to have something shoved down their throat when there's a pandemic, and we should be solely focusing on safety and instruction," Santos says in the meeting.

Trustee Anne Sung of District VII made a motion to push back voting on the matter to the board's June meeting, but the motion was struck down in a 3-6 vote. Moving forward, Sung called for the district to proceed with caution on the accreditation of teachers.

"I want to say publicly that in the plan I will be looking for extreme rigor in protecting certification in our teachers," Sung says in the meeting.

Now that the motion has passed, it has allowed HISD's Superintendent Grenita Lathan to push forward on the DOI designation. The district's next move is to create a planning committee and collect the community's concerns on the process.

Harvin Moore, who has a 20-year career in tech and innovation, serves as president of Houston Exponential. Courtesy of HX

Innovation leader discusses the future of HX and how the city of Houston is at an 'inflection point'

Featured Innovator

If there's one person optimistic about Houston's innovation ecosystem, it's probably Harvin Moore.

"There's no question that five years from now, or 10 years from now, Houston will be a very large and continually rapidly growing tech economy," Moore tells InnovationMap. "The question is just how fast it is going to get here."

Houston Exponential — the city's nonprofit meant to connect the dots within innovation in Houston — named Moore the president of the organization earlier this summer. He's hit the ground running since then.

Moore discusses with InnovationMap how his tenure is going and where the innovation ecosystem is at as the city dives into a busy fall season.

InnovationMap: How has your first few months at HX been?

Harvin Moore: It has been, I would say, chiefly defined by the fact that I've been on a grand listening tour. I went back over my calendar recently to count the number of meetings, because it really does seem like I don't come up for air. It's summer in Houston, and I've been getting in and out of a hot car like most of every day. I'm up to somewhere in the high nineties — like 95 of these meetings. And what has really kind of blown me way about that is that five years ago, there really wasn't an ecosystem. You could have had a listening tour in a week.

IM: How is HX's role in the ecosystem evolving with the ecosystem itself?

HM: HX's role from the start was to attract, promote, and connect. Let me first say that of those three, HX as a staff has been mostly focusing on promotion in the past. However, the board has been doing all three — attract, promote, and connect. We will be focusing more on connecting and attracting in the future.

Attract is bringing in big companies, small companies, and startups to Houston, as well as bringing in talent. It's the people who want to move to Houston because there are a lot of good job opportunities — not just in energy, medicine, and logistics. It's also an effort to attract capital so that there is more access to the enormous number of high net worth people in Houston for angel capital and investments, but also venture capital.

We're going to continue to promote. You're going to see a difference in how we promote. We're going to be more focused on shining this light all around the community, and we're going to be more focused on diversity.

Connect relates to how are we are helping startups — like by finding venture capital firms.

IM: So, how is HX looking to connect startups to investment opportunities?

HM: In the past and how the situation is now, there's something like 80 percent of venture is on the West and East Coasts. It's like all the attention is in the Bay Area and then New York and Boston. And, in Houston, we talk about how far behind we are of Austin. And, I guess that's true, but still — Austin is a blip on the map compared with San Francisco and the Bay Area for example.

But what's happening now is a shift. There are these venture capitalists that are really starting to look — in the last two or three years and for various reasons — at the growth of ecosystems. So, when a VC calls, in the past they would have looked for a company that they're interested in, and they would come down to visit and see it. Maybe to be a little bit more efficient, they might call TMCx, for instance, and say that they'd like to come down and ask for TMCx to find some other companies to meet with.

Now with HX active in this connecting role, that's what we'll be doing. Now if a VC calls on, let's say, Station Houston, Station will say, "OK, yes, we can help, but you can also call on HX because Houston has a lot more to offer." That's not the way it works in most cities because of competition, but this is one of the keys of how we're going to really break out in Houston because we have a collaborative nature in the city.

IM: What's a goal you have for HX?

HM: HX has not yet built out its data capabilities and responsibilities. You can't be a great connector at scale without a good system, like Hubspot, for instance. How many startups are there in Houston? Nobody knows. How many seats are there at the startup development organizations, or SDOs? Nobody's counted them. None of this stuff's been measured. I mean, there are some people that are trying to measure how much venture capital is coming into Houston, and it's amazing how much it is, but it's still missing data.

One thing I want to talk about is the startup database, which has never been done before. We really haven't even seen anyone make a real attempt to do this because it's such a daunting task. Of course, if we don't start quick, it's going to be pretty hard to do later. However, we as a board decided around a year ago that we were going to make this a priority to create a really good, useful, accurate database of as many of the startups and growth-stage technology companies in Houston as possible. We just reached an agreement with Texas A&M University to be the data partner. So, they're going to assign doctorate student up there who's going to be running the project.

IM: You have a long career in education with positions at Houston ISD as well as KIPP Houston Public Schools. How does education merge with your career now?

HM: Well, it's actually a question that makes sense now. Every time I've been asked that question throughout my entire career, it's been harder to answer. I started volunteering in education when I was living in New York as a banker, and I would take the subway up to Harlem and I would tutor up there. When I moved back to Houston, I found a place to tutor here, and my involvement got bigger and bigger until I ran for public office — and won with something like 74 percent of the vote and was re-elected three times serving HISD for 13 years.

Now, it looks like a brilliant career decision, although it never was meant to be. And the reason it makes so much sense is that academia and research and universities are huge parts of the ecosystem. During my time in education, I began to realize that the workforce development — particularly at the post high school level — was job skills. We did a study and found out where the jobs were and worked our way back from there. We redid our career technology programs because of this study.

How this experience ties into what I do at HX is that quality jobs skills credentialing is one of the most important things that the education system can do for the growth of the technology ecosystem.

IM: How have you seen the industry evolve recently?

HM: It's good advice to look around and remember how things look today cause we are living through an inflection point, and there's been several of those in our history. When people started looking around and seeing people walking around with these little PDAs, palm pilots, and things like that — that was the beginning of an inflection point. There are these inflection points in history, like whoever the hell put rollers on suitcases for the first damn time — that was not even long ago. And now no one carries a bag anymore. That was a silly example, but we are living through this inflection point here in Houston.

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Portions of this interview have been edited.

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Houston students develop cost-effective glove to treat Parkinson's symptoms

smart glove

Two Rice undergraduate engineering students have developed a non-invasive vibrotactile glove that aims to alleviate the symptoms of Parkinson’s disease through therapeutic vibrations.

Emmie Casey and Tomi Kuye developed the project with support from the Oshman Engineering Design Kitchen (OEDK) and guidance from its director, Maria Oden, and Rice lecturer Heather Bisesti, according to a news release from the university.

The team based the design on research from the Peter Tass Lab at Stanford University, which explored how randomized vibratory stimuli delivered to the fingertips could help rewire misfiring neurons in the brain—a key component of Parkinson’s disease.

Clinical trials from Stanford showed that coordinated reset stimulation from the vibrations helped patients regain motor control and reduced abnormal brain activity. The effects lasted even after users removed the vibrotactile gloves.

Casey and Kuye set out to replicate the breakthrough at a lower cost. Their prototype replaced the expensive motors used in previous designs with motors found in smartphones that create similar tiny vibrations. They then embedded the motors into each fingertip of a wireless glove.

“We wanted to take this breakthrough and make it accessible to people who would never be able to afford an expensive medical device,” Casey said in the release. “We set out to design a glove that delivers the same therapeutic vibrations but at a fraction of the cost.”

Rice’s design also targets the root of the neurological disruption and attempts to retrain the brain. An early prototype was given to a family friend who had an early onset of the disease. According to anecdotal data from Rice, after six months of regularly using the gloves, the user was able to walk unaided.

“We’re not claiming it’s a cure,” Kuye said in the release. “But if it can give people just a little more control, a little more freedom, that’s life-changing.”

Casey and Kuye are working to develop a commercial version of the glove priced at $250. They are taking preorders and hope to release 500 pairs of gloves this fall. They've also published an open-source instruction manual online for others who want to try to build their own glove at home. They have also formed a nonprofit and plan to use a sliding scale price model to help users manage the cost.

“This project exemplifies what we strive for at the OEDK — empowering students to translate cutting-edge research into real-world solutions,” Oden added in the release. “Emmie and Tomi have shown extraordinary initiative and empathy in developing a device that could bring meaningful relief to people living with Parkinson’s, no matter their resources.”

New Austin tower eclipses Houston landmark as Texas' tallest building

Tallest in Texas

Texas officially has a new tallest tower. The title moves from Houston, for the JPMorgan Chase Tower, to Austin, for Waterline at 98 Red River St. The new tower will contain mixed-use spaces including apartments, offices, a hotel, restaurants, and retail. It is scheduled to open in full in 2026.

Waterline held a "topping out" ceremony in August, when the final beam was added to the top of the tower. It now reaches 74 stories and 1,025 feet — just 23 feet taller than the JPMorgan Chase Tower.

Waterline height comparison Waterline is now the tallest building in Texas.Graphic courtesy of Lincoln Property Company

According to a press release, hundreds of construction workers and team project members attended the Waterline ceremony, and more than 4,750 people have worked on it since the project broke ground in 2022. An estimated 875 people were working onsite every day at the busiest time for construction.

The Waterline site is on a 3.3-acre campus with lots of views of Waller Creek and Lady Bird Lake. The building contains space for 352 luxury apartments, 700,000 square feet of offices, a hotel called 1 Hotel Austin with 251 rooms, and 24,000 square feet of retail stores and restaurants.

The only space that is open to new tenants already is the office space, with residential soon to follow. The hotel and residential units are expected to open in fall 2026.

Waterline tower Austin A view from above, shot by drone.Photo courtesy of Lincoln Property Company and Kairoi Residential

“Seamlessly integrated with Waller Creek, Waterloo Greenway and the hike-and-bike trail around Lady Bird Lake, Waterline will quickly become a top downtown destination and activity center," said Lincoln executive vice president Seth Johnston in a press release. Project improvements will also make it far easier for people to access all of the public amenities in this area from Rainey Street, the new Austin Convention Center, and the rest of the Central Business District."

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This article originally appeared on CultureMap.com.

Houston company awarded $2.5B NASA contract to support astronaut health and space missions

space health

Houston-based technology and energy solution company KBR has been awarded a $2.5 billion NASA contract to support astronaut health and reduce risks during spaceflight missions.

Under the terms of the Human Health and Performance Contract 2, KBR will provide support services for several programs, including the Human Research Program, International Space Station Program, Commercial Crew Program, Artemis campaign and others. This will include ensuring crew health, safety, and performance; occupational health services and risk mitigation research for future flights.

“This contract reinforces KBR’s leadership in human spaceflight operations and highlights our expertise in supporting NASA’s vision for space exploration,” Mark Kavanaugh, KBR president of defense, intel and space, said in a news release.

The five-year contract will begin Nov. 1 with possible extension option periods that could last through 2035. The total estimated value of the base period plus the optional periods is $3.6 billion, and the majority of the work will be done at NASA’s Johnson Space Center.

“We’re proud to support NASA’s critical work on long-duration space travel, including the Artemis missions, while contributing to solutions that will help humans live and thrive beyond Earth,” Kavanaugh adde in the news release.

Recently, KBR and Axiom Space completed three successful crewed underwater tests of the Axiom Extravehicular Mobility Unit (AxEMU) at NASA's Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory (NBL) at Johnson Space Center. The tests were part of an effort to help both companies work to support NASA's return to the Moon, according to a release.

KBR also landed at No. 3 in a list of Texas businesses on Time and Statista’s new ranking of the country’s best midsize companies.

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