Ames Elementary will open its doors to students in east Georgetown in August.

What you need to know: At a Dec. 15 board meeting, the board of trustees voted to name its twelfth elementary school after Jessie Daniel Ames—a women’s suffrage and civil rights leader in Texas whose activism had deep ties to the Georgetown community, said Wes Vanicek, chief of construction and future readiness initiatives.

Quote of note: “Ames’ played a pivotal role in expanding voting rights for women locally and across Texas and later became a leading voice in the anti-lynching movement in the American South,” Vanicek said.

The history: Ames started the Georgetown Equal Suffrage League in 1916 and helped women register to vote in Williamson County for the first time, Vanciek said. As treasurer of the Texas Equal Suffrage Association, she helped make Texas the first Southern state to ratify the 19th Amendment in 1919, according to the TSHA.

Also of note: Southwestern University named its new first-year residence hall after Ames, which is slated to open this spring.

Hillwood Communities, a residential and commercial developer, broke ground on the Melina neighborhood in early December.

The master-planned community has about 840 homes in the works, and will welcome its first residents in 2027, according to a news release from the developer.

The details: Melina is located off of University Boulevard and SH 130 on about 200 acres of land near southeastern Georgetown. Home lots in the neighborhood will range from 40-50 feet in width and cost between $400,000-$600,000, the news release states.

Community amenities include:

• 20 acres of open space and a pollinator garden
• Lakes and trails
• An outdoor amenity center

In 2026, the Texas Children’s Ambassadors Program will be allocating more funds to the Kangaroo Crew, the hospital system’s transport program. One way the hospital will be investing more in the program is by introducing its own helicopter at Texas Children’s North Austin Hospital which is set to arrive in early January.

How we got here: Assistant Clinical Director Kami Stone said the team spent months identifying a location to store the helicopter which would give them the quickest access to their patients at the North Austin hospital. The Kangaroo Crew spent an additional six months training and securing supplies to make sure they would be on track for the January launch date.

How it works: Stone said the helicopter will be used in situations where a patient is too sick to wait for the responders to arrive via ambulance and cases of “surgical and medical emergencies” in which a patient is stable but there is a high risk of something going bad.

• 9835 N. Lake Creek Parkway, Austin

The Texas power grid is expected to hold up this winter, officials with the Electric Reliability Council of Texas said Dec. 9. This is due in part to “tremendous supply growth on the ERCOT grid,” ERCOT CEO Pablo Vegas said, amid an influx of data centers coming to the state.

The overview: Since last winter, over 11,000 megawatts of generating capacity have been added to the ERCOT grid, Vegas said. That growth, which largely comes from battery storage and solar facilities, could be used to power about 2.8 million homes during periods of peak electric demand.

Zooming in: Under most weather conditions, there is a less than 2% chance of a grid emergency through February, ERCOT found.

However, Texas could be in trouble in the unlikely event that a repeat of Winter Storm Uri hits large parts of the state this winter, although ERCOT noted that the probability of such a severe storm happening again was "well under one percent." The February 2021 freeze devastated an unprepared power grid, resulting in nearly 250 deaths.