ATX-LLH: Impact 10/27/2025

Liberty Hill ISD has adopted new goals to improve student performance in the 2025-26 school year and beyond.

What happened: LHISD officials presented an updated district improvement plan, as mandated by state law, at an Oct. 20 board of trustees meeting.

The overview: The plan details goals to raise student achievement in math and reading as well as college, career and military readiness, or CCMR, alongside providing additional support for historically-underperforming student groups, said Heather Stoner, LHISD’s new assistant superintendent of teaching and learning who formerly served as an assistant superintendent for Georgetown ISD.

Diving in deeper: LHISD is aiming to improve student performance in several areas, including:

• Increasing math and reading performance on the State of Texas Assessments of Academic Readiness, or STAAR, test by at least five percentage points at each performance level for each high-focus student group
• Increasing the percentage of graduates meeting CCMR criteria from 78% in the class of 2022 to 88% in the 2025-26 school year and 90% by the class of 2027

Faubion Elementary is celebrating 50 years of serving the Leander ISD community with an anniversary event in November. 

The details: The event will be held Nov. 8 from 11 a.m.-2 p.m. and include a proclamation from Cedar Park Mayor Jim Penniman-Morin and speeches from Ada Mae Faubion's grandson Kern Faubion and other district officials. The event will also feature carnival games, a bounce house, food trucks and more. 

Did you know?: Faubion first opened its doors for the 1976-77 school year as LISD's second elementary school and is named after Ada Mae Faubion, a former LISD teacher. 

Faubion is one of three elementary schools LISD officials are considering closing and repurposing in the 2026-27 school year due to lowering enrollment in southern LISD campuses and a growing budget shortfall. However, no decisions have been made yet, and the board of trustees approved a resolution in September for district staff to establish a clear process for long-range planning efforts, including determining the threshold for campus consolidations and finding alternative revenue generation and expenditure reduction strategies. 

As the Austin metro area continues to see expansion in the technology sector, industry leaders are highlighting key critical area of interest: power delivery. 

What you need to know: In an Oct. 22 meeting of Opportunity Austin's Economic Development Council, panelists representing a variety of arms of the local technology industry shared insights regarding technology industry expansion in the area. 

What they're saying: The technology sector in Austin has experienced rapid growth, panelists said, and one of the first questions being asked by companies seeking to locate here are about power supply. 

"So much of our current project was defined by how much power we could bring into the building," said Eric Van Hensbergen, a fellow and member of the leadership team of the architecture and technology group at semiconductor and software design company Arm. "In speaking with a lot of our partners, that's the No. 1 thing that they're looking for in regions that they're expanding into."

These considerations are especially relevant for data centers, he said.

Travis County officials approved a $124,953 feasibility study Oct. 21 to explore a potential commuter rail line between Austin and San Antonio.

The big picture: Championed by Travis County Judge Andy Brown, the study will examine passenger rail options along state-managed land near highways, potentially connecting the Amtrak station in San Antonio to Austin-Bergstrom International Airport. Brown said the goal is to use existing corridors like SH 130 and I-10 to avoid major land acquisition and speed up development.

Why it matters: Brown said a rail line could remove up to 25% of I-35 traffic between the two cities as the corridor’s population—projected to reach 8 million by 2050—continues to grow. The study will run 175 days and include engineering, ridership and cost analyses.

Zooming out: The project complements a separate TxDOT study reviewing 11 alternatives along I-35, including commuter rail and multimodal lanes. Rail ranked as the top community preference in 2024 public feedback sessions.

Here are the top trending Community Impact stories in the Austin metro from Oct. 20-24.