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.

And while our kids are now back in school, the battle over what to teach them in social studies classes is heating up again.

It has made headlines over the years nationally.

But once again, this time there is a battle between Republicans, conservatives involving most outspoken activists who are accusing the Republican controlled state board of Education of trying to slip in things that they don't want.

Joining us right now is San Antonio, member of the state board of Education Marisa Perez, thank you very much for joining us.

First of all, where are we in this process?

And I understand it's possible that instead of adopting new curriculum by the end of the year, some want to delay that even into next year.

That's correct, Randi.

So, first of all, thank you so much for inviting me here today and for really uplifting this important topic.

So we are in the middle of our social studies while we're at the beginning the social studies standards process.

And there is a lot of push back.

So, yes, today we would have been looking at first reading, which means it would have been the very first draft of standards.

And at that point, we would have been able to make a lot of amendments based on public commentary and those sorts of things.

As a result, of some small group of very loud and well-funded individuals.

We postponed that first reading to a later date in order to have a discussion about our next steps.

And so today we're hearing from public forums and the public we're getting public testimony But the reality is the State Board of Education has a statutory requirement to complete this review process of our standards by the end of this calendar year.

And this is something you do every ten years.

It's not something that's unexpected or just right now.

Now, the legislature last session made it very clear they didn't want a critical race theory in or any parts thereof, which is controversial in itself, how you define it.

You know, in the eye of the beholder is critical race theory at this point.

But it's interesting to me that the state board of Education, as we understand it, had come up with over this time, agreed upon standards for K through 12 very long process.

That isn't conservative enough for some of these activists.

What are they objecting to exactly?

You're absolutely right, Randi.

So we we have in fact, you're referring to Senate Bill three, which regard which was, you know, for all intents and purposes, yes, the C and CRT bill and the Texas Education Agency, I have to applaud them.

They've done a very good job of guiding our work groups and providing them with what is expected out of that legislation.

And so our standards don't include anything about CRT.

In fact, they've really created standards that are less subjective than they were before.

And so I think we're at a point right now, one of the one of the concerns is that there's a misunderstanding about whether or not Texas history is being taught.

It's completely unfounded.

What we actually did was where students were learning Texas history in fourth grade and in seventh grade, we've actually now established a chronological order for how they get that information.

And they're receiving Texas history in fourth through seventh, I think even eighth grade, but.

Not in separate Texas history classes.

Not in separate Texas history classes.

It's now integrated in everything that we're doing.

And so across the board from practitioners, there are concerns our standards are not perfect, but perfect can't be the enemy of the good, right?

So we need to make sure that we get something in place.

How confident are you we're about out of time that this these new standards will be adopted before the end of the year, before a more conservative state board comes in and could try to change it and delay the whole thing.

Now, I if I'm being very transparent, I'm concerned it's not going to happen.

But I'd like to be hopefully optimistic that we find rationale and reason.

Right.

Especially as we want to honor the almost a year of work that we asked subject matter experts from across the state to help us with.

Right.

They've committed hundreds and hundreds of hours to providing us with guidance.

And to push this into the next year would render a, you know, hundreds of hours of work across many people obsolete.

And from my perspective, that's a complete disrespect to the people that we're asking to volunteer.

All right.

Well, thank you very much for explaining where we are.

Richard Perez, state board of Education, thanks for joining us.

Thank you.

One of San Antonio's oldest and most influential organizations is making some changes, hoping to become more influential if that is possible.

Joining us to talk about that, Richard Perez of the San Antonio Chamber of Commerce.

Thank you very much for coming in.

Thanks, Randi.

Great to see you.

First of all, tell us about what the changes that you're making.

The board, I don't think most people realize is this.

The board of the Chamber of Commerce had more than a hundred people on it to make policy decisions.

And I don't know how that was possible, but you're cutting that down to 15.

That's right.

That's right.

So, you know, this structure has been a structure that we've had at the chamber for many, many, many years, and it has worked.

But we our new chairman of the board and I guess he's not new anymore.

Phil Green is the CEO of Frost Bank.

He comes from a corporate structure that is smaller.

His board is nine people, in fact.

And one of the things that he noticed immediately was how difficult it was to develop policy and to govern with a board so large.

And so it was his thoughtfulness that said, hey, why don't we relook at our governance structure and think about doing what every other business is doing now or has done, particularly in the COVID era, and that is make ourselves leaner and meaner and smarter.

And so he was the one we put together a task force that looked at structures of chambers all over the country and the largest ones in town.

And in fact, even some of the not for profits in the city like United Way, for example.

And they had a structure very similar to ours.

And they've gone to a much smaller structure.

And we're going to a 15 member structure that is focused that will be you know, the group that's going to help me navigate a little more nimble.

Some of the decisions that you've had to make in the past, that you had to make dozens of phone calls about to get a policy decision was, say, the redistricting of the downtown area, that it was going to be split, and business people didn't like that.

So the chamber stepped in, but it took a while and the bathroom bill back to the bathroom bill, you had to make more than 50 phone calls to get a quorum on a policy.

Right.

So how is this going to change that kind of policy making decisions?

Well, so now I'll have 15 folks that I will report to directly the chair and 14 other members.

So that is a very manageable number, number one.

Number two, that group of focused individuals are going to be suite seats, CEOs or C-suite individuals.

So that will help elevate the voice of the chamber.

And that's what we're talking about, being much more nimble and stronger as a business.

How about those other people that won't have that same influence on policy that they did, the dozens of others that are now going to be, I guess.

Investor Remember, we're going have an executive board and a board of investors.

And so we will meet with that Board of Investors Quarterly.

And that's all about receiving input from them so that we can then use that to navigate our way through the business cycle so their voice is not lost.

In fact, it will be in fact enhanced because we will now meet with them in a quarterly way in a much more non structured way than a board meeting to allow for better dialog.

Now some people see this as because the same San Antonio Chamber of Commerce there's so many chambers out there right now, so many other different groups as well, political, nonpolitical, that it's competing voices and that the chamber may have less influence than it did at one time because it was the V Chamber.

But now you have the San Antonio Hispanic Chamber, you have North Side North.

What do you tell them about your influence today compared to it's what started in 1894 as a business men's club in you know through the sixties seventies.

It was and still is to a degree obviously the voice of business.

But where is it now in that are you competing.

I can say very clearly that we're still at the top of the heap, there's no doubt about it.

But there are a lot of competing voices.

And so the challenge then is to be able to focus and enhance our voice so that we can have that clear voice that we have had.

But it's been drowned out over time and this is going to help elevate us.

So I am supremely confident that we are going to come out of this stronger and better and more thoughtfully and better poised to help influence what's happening at City Hall and throughout the state.

What is happening in coming up at the state level is the legislature.

And you're already you have priorities there.

What does the business community through the chamber want to see state lawmakers do this time?

Well, there are a couple of things that are very, very key to communities like San Antonio and cities throughout Texas.

One of them is there is an important tool that cities have used over time called Chapter 313 to allow for temporary tax abatements for large capital intensive projects to come to your community.

It abates a school district's taxes for up to ten years.

That is going away and the legislature didn't redo that again this last time they met almost two years ago.

And so the idea is to recreate that so that communities like San Antonio and other cities throughout Texas can have that tool to be able to attract large capital intensive.

Projects to other tax abatements, to city, county level, to other taxing districts, still have that tax abatement that they can give.

But the biggest chunk of the tax abatement and usually comes from school district.

So.

All right, what do you want to replace that?

What is going to replace that, if anything?

Well, there's a lot of debate about it, but the one thing that is certain is that the legislature has had a little heartburn with just the way the program worked.

And so they want to put in more safeguards to allow for, let's say, X companies come into your town and they decide, let's say they pull out after the eighth year and they've got a ten year abatement.

Well, then we want to be able to claw back that money that is the state, because they didn't fulfill their their deal, their part of the deal, or they were going to create 500 jobs and let's say they only created 300.

Well, then let's have a mechanism to bring some of that tax back because they didn't fulfill the deal that we made with them that exists in the law now, but it wasn't as strong.

And so the idea is to make it very crystal clear and much easier for us to.

Make up for all of that.

Wish we had more time.

I know you're working on also there's something about a patch on your Blackhawk helicopters coming to San Antonio, possibly possibly.

But you're working on.

That's right.

It is.

With the Texas Air National Guard.

They need to move out of Ellington Field in Houston because of the real corrosive city of the climate there.

And they're looking for a new place and we're trying to give them a hand.

Corrosive climate in Houston.

Oh, I like you're right.

That's one way to promote San Antonio.

All right.

Thanks very much, Richard Perez of the San Antonio Chamber of Commerce.

We appreciate you coming in.

Thanks, Randi.

It's a pleasure to be here.

More than 30 million people now have a better idea of their ancestry with DNA tests, with companies like Ancestry.com and 23 and me.

Well, I'm working on a project now to document the surprising history of Brackenridge Park.

And this week, I have a kind of preview.

It is a quick look at how thousands of people are now discovering their indigenous roots deep in San Antonio's history.

I've done to when I was a teenager with my parents and and.

We started for the tradition Easter Sunday.

The whole family gets together and they come.

Oh, yeah.

This is traditional.

Camping at Brackenridge Park over Easter weekend is a tradition so many families have enjoyed here for decades.

Enjoying each other's company, having a great time.

And with each passing year, more people are having their DNA tested through companies like Ancestry.com or 23 and me.

And they're discovering that some of their own ancestors were Native Americans who may have lived right here along the San Antonio River hundreds, even thousands of years ago.

I did that.

What is that?

23 genetics.

And I'm like 56% Native American I was very surprised.

I expected most of that information to be from Mexico or but a lot of it was Native American.

So I was shocked.

I was very, very shocked.

But these days, scientists are not surprised that many here who identify as Mexican-American descended, at least in part, from some of the tribes of South Texas and northern Mexico together called Quill Texans, though it wasn't too long ago when even archeologists were taught that the native groups who lived in the San Antonio area for some 12,000 years mostly died out after the Spanish came through epidemics, or they left or were forcibly moved.

Like when I first started studying anthropology, the general rule of thumb was that all the Native Americans were gone.

Mainly they had, you know, disease or whatever.

But canines, who later was a city of San Antonio archeologist, quickly found out that wasn't true at all.

That early church and government records included the names and sometimes tribes of Native people, including women who often married Spanish soldiers.

And I started working in the archives with John Leo, and I started seeing those burial records and those death records and stuff.

And then so, you know, that has evolved over 4550 years.

We now realize that wasn't right at all.

You know, many of the citizens that live here today are descended from those Native Americans, you know, so you see things change through time, right?

We learn new things.

And in many are now learning about their possible native heritage at powwows like this one at Mission County Park during Fiesta, it brought together representatives of tribes from across North America.

And in her work overseeing archeological digs all over this area, Kay Hinds herself has also uncovered evidence that may yet prove some natives here were much more sophisticated or organized than experts thought.

Building permanent dwellings.

One of the most exciting things I think that that came to light when I was at the city was the the Mission Research Project.

Well, we found two sites down there and radiocarbon dates put one of those archaea.

So, you know, five, 6000 years ago, and one like prehistoric.

And we believe now they were they were actually houses that they had constructed.

It's what we call a hook hall that really kind of is a very new concern.

Out to many of us as archeologists that they actually were building and constructing homes thousands of years ago.

Now, it hasn't been it hasn't been proved up yet.

But we believe that is highly, highly probable.

And newly discovered evidence also brings a new perspective on the dozens of tribes that were here when the Spanish arrived more than 300 years ago, and who helped them build the first izakaya or irrigation ditch through different sources.

I was able to track down 55 different indigenous groups.

We used to build the irrigation ditch and that 55 are from the birth records.

Marriage records and death records of the Alamo itself.

Doctor Ricardo Romo, former president of UTSA, is also a historian and helped write what's called a Cultural Landscape Report of Brackenridge Park.

Part of it emphasized the importance of those tribes, including Pi and Pacoima and so many more though often the records didn't bother to recognize people as more than simply Indios.

Indians know what those are for fathers.

Those are the founders, the founders of San Antonio or not, the two priests and the 18 soldiers they were stationed here.

The founders of San Antonio are indigenous.

Who built the first?

They're the builders at the first 50 years, which makes San Antonio successful.

So I'm working on somebody's story right now.

Ramon Vasquez is president of the group called American Indians of Texas at the Spanish Colonial Missions, founded more than 30 years ago.

They do a lot of work in the community with parenting classes, wellness and cultural programs advocating for Native Americans and research.

They can use the DNA evidence in your Ancestry.com profile to compare with the information they have.

But the waiting list for that work is multiplying.

Yet another 100 applications is waiting.

I haven't even gotten to yet.

We have a DNA databank that we use.

So Ancestry now it's expanding its regions for indigenous blood northeast to Mexico and South Texas.

And now it's got a it's created a new subcategory in the South Texas that says San Antonio, which means that more and more people have showing interest and that their indigenous bloodline has roots in in this area.

And more than just DNA evidence is now available to help people confirm any possible link to Mission Indians of this area.

One of the best things the Spaniards did was they documented everything.

And so I can go through the documents now, which before you have to go and travel to these places in Mexico or they or Spain, different churches that held these records.

And now because of technology, everything's online, even our own records of the missions of San Antonio have been uploaded onto Ancestry.com.

And now you can find, you know, the actual photocopy of the actual record itself.

And we've guesstimated that they are probably a hundred thousand descendants of the mission of the families that came out of the missions of San Antonio alone.

That doesn't mean that they recognize themselves as that.

I wouldn't be surprised if more people, when they do these genetic they're very easy to do.

But it's not until you do it, you realize, you know what's there.

What we're seeing is that DNA is confirming those numbers if there's any takeaway, I think people should start thinking about the influence of the American Indians that occupied this land for 10,000 years.

Had of the success of the early settlers then that we are still relevant.

The work that we do, we call it reversing extinction.

It's nice to know that, you know, you're walking along where some of the people that whether you came from them or not, you walk through here.

Now that group is called the American Indians in Texas at the Spanish colonial missions.

Well, it's getting ready to move into a new building here this fall.

And they tell me they hope to put more of their culture and their research on display and make their archives available to the public.

On Reporters Roundtable this week, we are talking about the water situation here in San Antonio and this whole area as we are coming, we hope, out of the drought.

At least we're getting a little bit of rain at Arnold, the managing editor of the San Antonio Business Journal.

You have had our having right now a whole series on water, the San Antonio area, the drought, the effects, the business effects.

Where are we right now?

In terms of the unprecedented lack of rain, the heat and what it's doing to our water?

Well, we're still under a serious drought condition, despite the fact that we've been getting a little bit of storms and there's a little relief here for for some of us in the region, the drought is still very much real and it's still very much a challenge, particularly for those around the region.

You know, South has done a very good job of setting up the metro San Antonio area to sustain it through drought.

But a lot of our neighbors in Medina County further north, we've seen wildfires, we've seen drought, we've seen low lakes all over the place and big damage to the agricultural business.

Around the region.

If we didn't have the new Vista Ridge project, the pipeline coming down from central Texas with extra water, the aquifer would be at such a level we'd be in we're in stage two now and it looks like we'll stay that way for a while.

And now what does this mean in terms of compare us to the west right now where all the headlines are right, the Colorado River drought, they're affecting farmers, everyone fighting each other over water.

So I think they represent a real cautionary tale for us right now.

We're in much better position than they are.

So this has done a great job, as you mentioned, of diversifying our water sources.

The the Agua Vista Center, for example, brings it now 20% of size overall water and half now comes from the Edwards Aquifer.

And that number would have been closer to 70% just a few years ago.

So I've done a great job of diversifying their sources, trying to set these things up for long term sustainability.

But what you see is a worrying possibility of the future of what's happening in the Southwest a lot of the cities in the Southwest, Phenix, for example, in the Sunbelt in the Southwest are communities that San Antonio is competing with for economic positions, for jobs, for new manufacturing facilities, for new corporate headquarters.

And the fact that we have a sustainable and solid water source right now.

For decades anyways, for.

Decades anyway.

2075, according to sources.

That has been an advantage for us.

Certainly businesses look for assurances for water access when they move to town or want to come to town.

Right now, we're doing well.

And but what the point of the piece that we are going to be publishing later this week is we've got to protect that.

And the business community and the greater public has yet to really wrap their arms around real conservation efforts.

How about the desalination plant down in Corpus that you've been talking about?

We've we've read about it off and on.

Where are they in the plans for that right now and whether that water would come to San Antonio or not?

Right.

I mean, it's still a question about whether or not it would come to San Antonio as far as the project is in Corpus Standing now, it should be beginning underway sometime next year.

They've made it through environmental regulatory approval.

So it looks like it's going to get the green light hasn't started construction yet.

The real question is, is will stores want to engage with the desalination plant as another source of water?

It could.

Sean Strawbridge down there at the Port told us very specifically that they're going to be approaching size about becoming a customer, how much, what the capacity is and whether or not, say, frackers in Eagle Ford between here and Corpus would want a slice of that is still yet to be determined.

People might wonder, OK, well, will my water bills go up?

And if we're good without that for decades, why should stores get into that?

Well, that's part of the issue.

You and you know, and we've talked about it over and over again, how much growth there is in the city, right?

More people, more businesses, more activity.

And not only that, within San Antonio, but all the communities that surround San Antonio.

So think of it this way.

Come our county uses a Trinity Aquifer that is not connected to the Edwards, but they don't there's no big fence between these aquifers.

There's spillover all the time.

The lower the Trinity gets, the more the aquifer of Edwards will also be affected.

So at the end of the day, we have to work at this as a regional player, and that's not yet happened.

How tough is it then, if people know that we have water until 20, 75 or think we do to get them to conserve even amid the drought, what do you tell people?

Right.

What are they telling people?

Exactly.

So we first got I think we all saw signs basically say no more warnings.

We're going to just start issuing fines, which is a good start.

I think San Antonio is as someone who's moved here just five years ago, it is pretty remarkable how connected and understanding the city is with its water level.

It's always on the evening news.

What the meteorologist report is where our aquifer our where we stand.

That's something I wasn't used to in the southeast that has contributed to sources ability to to set up a solid plan for the future.

At the end of the day, though, we're going to have to be more thoughtful going forward if we're going to maintain that example of being successful.

I just don't yet see urgency.

That's the concern that like.

There was when it was 100% aquifer and that's why you put the aquifer level on TV and if it's going down, you're going to be in trouble.

So top ten water users in San Antonio are also looking at that and you said Toyota is among them, but they have reduced their water over the years.

Really impressive things to see on that list is Toyota, who has not really had much decline in its production, but has been more and more efficient as years has gone on.

I'm sure that's been with, you know, renovating their lines, helping to do this, maybe reuse, water, reuse, those kinds of things.

But they have definitely been a strong player in improving their efficiency.

Other folks, there's not much they're going to be doing right now.

Fiesta Texas is a big user.

SeaWorld's a big user.

I don't know that we're going to be seeing a ton of changes from them in the short term.

So we're just going to learn to live with it.

All right.

Well, thank you very much, Ed Arnold.

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

You can see this show again or previous shows.

You can also download the podcast at KLRN.org, and we'll see you next time.

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