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BATON ROUGE, La. (AP) — Hurricane Francine barreled early Wednesday toward Louisiana and is expected to make landfall in coming hours as forecasters raised threats of potentially deadly storm surge, widespread flooding and destructive winds on the northern U.S. Gulf coast.

Francine drew fuel from exceedingly warm Gulf of Mexico waters to jump from a tropical storm to a Category 1 hurricane on Tuesday night. The National Hurricane Center said Francine might even reach Category 2 strength with winds of 96 to 110 mph (155 to 175 kph) before crashing into a fragile coastal region that still hasn’t fully recovered from a series of devastating hurricanes since 2020.

Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry warned at midday Tuesday — when Francine was still a tropical storm — that residents around south Louisiana and in the heavily populated state capital of Baton Rouge and nearby New Orleans — should “batten down all the hatches” and finish last preparations before a 24-hour window to do so closed.

Once Francine makes landfall, Landry said, residents should stay in place rather than venture out into waterlogged roads and risk blocking first responders or utility crews working to repair power lines.

The governor said the Louisiana National Guard is being deployed to parishes that could be impacted by Francine. They are equipped with food, water, nearly 400 high-water vehicles, about 100 boats and 50 helicopters to respond to the storm, including possible search-and-rescue operations.

Francine was centered Wednesday morning about 245 miles (395 kilometers) southwest of Morgan City, Louisiana, and was moving northeast at 10 mph (17 kph) with maximum sustained winds of 90 mph (150 kmh), the Miami-based hurricane center said. Some additional strengthening is expected Wednesday morning and then Francine is expected to weaken quickly after it moves inland.

A hurricane warning was in effect along the Louisiana coast from Cameron eastward to Grand Isle, about 50 miles (80 kilometers) south of New Orleans, according to the center. A storm surge warning stretched from the Mississippi-Alabama border to the Alabama-Florida border Such a warning means there’s a chance of life-threatening flooding.

In downtown New Orleans, cars and trucks were lined up for blocks on Tuesday to collect sandbags from the parking lot of a local YMCA. CEO Erika Mann said Tuesday that 1,000 bags of sand had already been distributed by volunteers later in the day to people hoping to protect homes from possible flooding.

One resident picking up sandbags was Wayne Grant, 33, who moved to New Orleans last year and was nervous for his first potential hurricane in the city. The low-lying rental apartment he shares with his partner had already flooded out in a storm the year before and he was not taking any chances this time around.

“It was like a kick in the face, we’ve been trying to stay up on the weather ever since,” Grant said. “We’re super invested in the place, even though it’s not ours.”

Francine is the sixth named storm of the Atlantic hurricane season. There’s a danger of life-threatening storm surge as well as damaging hurricane-force winds, said Brad Reinhart, a senior hurricane specialist at the hurricane center.

There’s also the potential for 4 to 8 inches (10 to 20 centimeters) of rain with the possibility of 12 inches (30 centimeters) locally across much of Louisiana and Mississippi through Friday morning, Reinhart said.

The hurricane center said parts of Mississippi, Alabama and the Florida Panhandle were at risk of “considerable” flash and urban flooding starting Wednesday, followed by a threat of possible flooding later in the week into the lower Mississippi Valley and lower Tennessee Valley as the soggy remnants of Francine sweep inland.

Francine is taking aim at a Louisiana coastline that has yet to fully recover since hurricanes Laura and Delta decimated Lake Charles in 2020, followed a year later by Hurricane Ida.

A little over three years after Ida trashed his home in the Dulac community of coastal Louisiana’s Terrebonne Parish – and about a month after he finished rebuilding – Coy Verdin was preparing for another hurricane.

“We had to gut the whole house,” he recalled in a telephone interview, rattling off a memorized inventory of the work, including a new roof and new windows.

Verdin, 55, strongly considered moving farther inland, away from the home where he makes his living on nearby Bayou Grand Caillou. After rebuilding, he said he’s there to stay.

“As long as I can. It’s getting rough, though,” he said.

Francine’s storm surge on the Louisiana coast could reach as much as 10 feet (3 meters) from Cameron to Port Fourchon and into Vermilion Bay, forecasters said. They said landfall was likely somewhere between Sabine Pass — on the Texas-Louisiana line — and Morgan City, Louisiana, about 220 miles (350 kilometers) to the east.

DALLAS – The Dallas Morning News reports that people know how to play the lottery, but often don’t know where the money goes. Here’s a look at how many dollars spent on lottery tickets in Texas go toward education. The Texas Lottery has recorded financial growth since 1992, with more than $39 billion in revenue for education, veteran’s services and other state programs, according to the Texas Lottery. A portion of the lottery’s revenue is dedicated to the Foundation School Fund, which is vital for financing public education, according to the Texas Education Agency. The lottery was established with the intent of generating additional revenue for public services, particularly education and programs for veterans.

The lottery allocates just over $2 billion annually to Texas schools, which covers about five days of a typical 180-day school year. This is a decrease from over 10 days’ worth of funding more than 25 years ago, when the state lottery began operating at full capacity. Since 1992, the lottery has consistently contributed to the state’s revenue, exceeding the inflation rate. When the lottery was established, some politicians — though not all — promoted it as a significant benefit for education, even though its primary purpose was to serve as a small solution to a budget crisis. Nevertheless, the myth that the lottery would cover a substantial portion of the state’s education expenses continued to endure. How is the money distributed? The funds allocated to the Foundation School Fund play a crucial role in enhancing educational outcomes and resources, according to the TEA. The Texas Lottery’s sustained revenue growth and strategic allocation of funds not only highlight its financial health, but also the positive impact it has on the education sector. These investments are directed toward a range of services, from improving school infrastructure to supporting student programs, teacher salaries, technology enhancements and extracurricular activities.

HOUSTON – The Houston Chronicle reports CenterPoint Energy said it would have almost 3,500 distribution line workers positioned near Houston and ready to restore power should outages occur following Tropical Storm Francine, which could bring damaging winds and heavy rainfall to Southeast Texas Tuesday night and Wednesday. The Houston-area electric utility has identified 5,000 additional workers who could come to assist if the storm’s path or strength changes, Darin Carroll, CenterPoint’s senior vice president of electric business, said at a late Monday press briefing. Francine’s projected track had shifted east late Monday and was forecast to affect Louisiana more than Southeast Texas. Still, the storm’s path could change as it approaches, National Weather Service meteorologists said.

“We’re still preparing as if it’s going to hit Houston,” Carroll said. “We experienced some things with Beryl that we didn’t expect, where the storm maybe adjusted course just a little bit, and a lot of people have discussed that. We don’t want that to happen again” Of those 3,500 line workers, 1,850 are Houston-area contractors and CenterPoint employees. The other 1,625 workers are “on the way” from other utilities across the state and country, Carroll said. CenterPoint said it would also have 1,300 vegetation workers standing by this week, 600 from the Houston area and 700 from other utilities. Most of those released by other utilities to assist CenterPoint, referred to as “mutual aid” workers, will be on CenterPoint’s property by the end of Monday, Carroll said. Francine will be CenterPoint’s first big test since Hurricane Beryl, which left a record 2.26 million of the utility’s customers without power after it made landfall in Southeast Texas in July. Following an intense public outcry, CenterPoint became the target of two state investigations as lawmakers and regulators weigh various options – including one proposed by the company itself – to potentially reduce the utility’s anticipated profits.

AUSTIN (AP) – Upgrades to the system Texas uses to collect student, staff and financial data from school districts are causing serious concerns among school administrators and data specialists across the state who say the changes have led to thousands of unresolved errors that could potentially cause them to lose out on state funding.

Each of Texas’ more than 1,200 school districts is required to regularly submit data to the state, including information on attendance, enrollment, students who receive special education, children experiencing homelessness and the number of kids who have completed a college preparatory course. State officials use the information to determine whether schools are meeting performance standards and how much funding they receive each year.

Three years ago, the Texas Education Agency announced major changes to the reporting system. The goal was to make it easier for school districts and the state to share data and reduce the amount of manual labor required from school officials. Districts were supportive of the proposed changes.

Almost a dozen other states are using the same standard on which Texas based its system upgrade, said Eric Jansson, vice president of technology for Ed-Fi Alliance, the organization that created the standard. Texas is the largest state to implement the changes.

More than 300 districts participated in the pilot program during the last school year, according to the TEA. All school districts began using the new system this school year.

Before the upgrade, school districts would submit data directly to the TEA after working with a software vendor that would ensure the education agency didn’t have any problems interpreting the information.

Under the new arrangement, the software vendors are now responsible for transmitting the data to the state, a change that school officials say leaves them without a chance to fact-check the information before it goes out.

They also say a litany of errors and inaccuracies surfaced during the pilot program. In some instances, hundreds of student records — from enrollment figures to the number of students in certain programs — did not show up correctly.

A TEA spokesperson said the agency is confident districts will have ample time to resolve any errors between now and the first reporting deadline on Dec. 12. The agency also noted that districts have until Jan. 16 to resubmit any data needing corrections.

But districts say they have no idea how to solve some errors. Their concerns, shared in interviews with The Texas Tribune, have not been previously reported.

In an August letter to TEA Commissioner Mike Morath, Lewisville Independent School District Superintendent Lori Rapp requested that the agency delay the full transition to the new reporting system until all districts are able to submit “100% of all data elements” successfully.

Rapp said thousands of errors surfaced after the district’s software vendor submitted data to the new system during the pilot. Her staff spent “tons of hours” trying to figure out why the miscalculations had occurred, she said in an interview.

While Rapp’s staff had made some progress working with the new system since the pilot started, ”(w)e have not been able to fully send, promote, and validate our data to the point where a successful submission could have been made,” Rapp’s letter said.

After receiving the note, the TEA organized a virtual meeting with Lewisville ISD officials to discuss their concerns. Rapp said the state did not seem concerned about whether school districts were prepared to make the transition.

“Maybe because there’s no ramifications to them and the stakes aren’t as high, they don’t have a concern,” Rapp said. “But for districts, the stakes are extremely high, and it’s a gross oversight on their part if they are failing to recognize that.”

While the TEA says it has resolved more than a thousand tickets submitted by school officials reporting problems with the new system, officials from nearly a half-dozen districts told the Tribune the state has not explained what’s causing some of the errors or told them if they have been resolved.

School administrators and data specialists who participated in the pilot say the implications of adopting a system that still doesn’t have a clear process to correct mistakes are massive. An inaccurate assessment of the students enrolled in Texas public schools could mean school districts receive less funding from the state. Schools are funded based on students’ average daily attendance, and they receive additional dollars if they have children with specific needs, like students with disabilities or kids learning English as a second language.

Funding has been a major point of contention between Texas schools and state officials in recent years. Many districts entered the school year having to spend more money than they have, largely because of the state’s rising costs of living and a half-decade of no increases to the base-level funding they receive from the state. Public school leaders remain upset that last year’s legislative sessions ended with no significant raises despite the state having a record $32 billion surplus.

Texas’ school accountability system also relies on the data school districts submit to the state. Some parents rely on those performance metrics to make decisions on where to enroll their children. Poor performance can also lead to state intervention — like it happened when the state ousted Houston ISD’s locally elected school board and superintendent last year.

Full accountability ratings have not been released in five years due to litigation over changes to how districts are evaluated. Many have publicly released their unofficial ratings to share their progress with their communities.

School districts say they can’t afford to have mistakes in their student data.

“I think everybody understands the situation that public education is in right now,” said Frisco ISD Superintendent Mike Waldrip. “And there is no confidence by anyone that I’ve spoken with that that data is accurate or will be accurate when it comes time to submit it to the state.”

School districts that have piloted the new system say they understand errors are part of the process. They just wanted more time to troubleshoot them before it went live.

“We need more answers around not only supporting the system to be successful, but while we are making sure that it’s successful, how are we going to continue to assure that we’re not suffering consequences for a delay or inaccuracies in the data?” said Mark White, assistant superintendent of accountability for the Tomball Independent School District. “And none of those assurances have been received by districts.”

A TEA spokesperson said the agency did not see a need to expand the trial period because the pilot showed the channels through which it receives data from software vendors worked.

The TEA said it plans to continue working with districts to help resolve any errors well before the first reporting deadline. The agency said districts should reach out if they are still experiencing problems.

Tammy Eagans, who oversees the student data reporting process for Leon ISD, said the agency was helpful throughout the pilot year whenever the school district had problems submitting information. She added that the task of switching to the new system may not pose the same problems for her small district of fewer than 800 students as it might for larger districts with thousands of children.

Still, she said she is “not 100% confident” that the system as it’s being rolled out works as intended. Extending the pilot “would not have been a bad idea,” Eagans said. But she is also hopeful that the education agency will be understanding of districts’ concerns and not blame them for errors out of their control.

The upcoming reporting deadline “just kind of puts a little extra pressure on us,” said Eagans, adding that she’s “a little nervous, a little apprehensive, but hoping that it goes smoother than I think it will.”

Other school officials say the pilot was unsuccessful, and if adopting the new system requires more time, the state should be willing to cooperate. The looming fall reporting deadline is “the most important” submission of the school year, said Tomball ISD Superintendent Martha Salazar-Zamora.

“If the data is inaccurate, then we live with that inaccuracy throughout the entire year,” she said. “So it has a lot of relevance on many levels.”

Mary Mitchem, a former TEA employee, said she started worrying about the system’s readiness shortly after she was hired in June to make sure the system met the needs of its users. Mitchem said she left the agency last month after a dispute over a leave of absence request.

Within days of being hired, she said it appeared that no one had done the work to ensure the data coming from software vendors accurately translated into the education agency’s system. Having worked on other major data projects throughout her career, she said she was also surprised that, two months before the pilot was set to conclude, no one had audited or tested the system.

“You’re converting a state accounting system, and you have to make sure it balances — you have to,” said Mitchem.

Mitchem sounded the alarm up the chain of command, but a supervisor told her that anything beyond making sure the data was flowing into the new system was the responsibility of the software vendors and school districts.

“It just blew my mind,” Mitchem said.

In early August, she sent an email to Morath saying, “You will be in litigation if you don’t help fix it, and it will be with the largest districts in the state of Texas.”

AUSTIN – The Austin American-Statesman reports that Texas Department of Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller told WFAA on “Inside Texas Politics” that the state is running out of water and lawmakers need to react soon. “We lose about a farm a week in Texas, but it’s 700 years before we run out of land,” Miller said. The limiting factor is water. We’re out of water, especially in the Rio Grande Valley.” Is there a solution? Texas has experienced recurring droughts over the past decade, especially in 2023, with higher temperatures and lower rainfall. The state’s semi-arid regions are particularly vulnerable to prolonged dry spells, which deplete surface water sources such as rivers, lakes, and reservoirs. Hotter weather also increases evaporation from water bodies, further reducing supplies.

Texas has one of the fastest-growing populations in the U.S., especially in cities like Austin, Dallas, and Houston. Rapid urbanization increases demand for water, putting pressure on the state’s water supplies and infrastructure. Texas is a major agricultural state, with crops like cotton, rice, and livestock requiring significant amounts of water for irrigation. Additionally, the state’s oil and gas industry (including fracking) consumes large quantities of water, contributing to overall scarcity. Many regions in Texas rely on groundwater for drinking water, irrigation, and industrial uses. Aquifers are being overdrawn faster than they can be replenished, leading to long-term depletion. Texas’ water infrastructure, such as dams, pipelines, and reservoirs, is aging and often not equipped to handle modern water management challenges. Leakage and inefficiencies exacerbate the problem. These factors are converging to create a situation where Texas’ water resources are increasingly strained, raising concerns for future water availability.

BATON ROUGE, La. (AP) — Tropical Storm Francine churned in the Gulf of Mexico with increasing strength and was expected to reach hurricane status on Tuesday before making landfall in Louisiana.

A hurricane warning was in effect along the Louisiana coast from the border with Texas eastward to Grand Isle, about 50 miles (80 kilometers) south of New Orleans, and a tropical storm warning extended eastward from there to the mouth of the Pearl River, according to the National Hurricane Center. A storm surge warning stretched from just east of Houston to the mouth of the Mississippi River south of New Orleans. Such a warning means there’s a chance of life-threatening flooding.

Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry urged residents “not to panic, but be prepared” and heed evacuation warnings. Forecasters said Francine’s landfall in south Louisiana was expected Wednesday afternoon as a Category 2 hurricane with winds of 96 to 110 mph (155 to 175 kph).

“We do not want people to wait to the last minute to get on the road and then run out of fuel,” Landry said. “We put a lot of information throughout the summer, throughout hurricane season, so that people can be prepared. The more prepared we are, the easier it is for us.”

It’s the sixth named storm of the Atlantic hurricane season. There’s a danger of life-threatening storm surge associated with this storm as well as damaging, life-threatening hurricane-force winds, Brad Reinhart, a senior hurricane specialist at the National Hurricane Center, said Tuesday morning.

There’s also the potential for 4 to 8 inches (10 to 20 centimeters) of rain with the possibility of 12 inches (30 centimeters) locally across much of Louisiana and Mississippi through Friday morning, Reinhart said. That heavy rainfall could also cause considerable flash and urban flooding.

Francine is taking aim at a Louisiana coastline that has yet to fully recover since hurricanes Laura and Delta decimated Lake Charles in 2020, followed a year later by Hurricane Ida. Over the weekend, a 22-story building in Lake Charles that had become a symbol of storm destruction was imploded after sitting vacant for nearly four years, its windows shattered and covered in shredded tarps.

Francine’s storm surge on the Louisiana coast could reach as much as 10 feet (3 meters) from Cameron to Port Fourchon and into Vermilion Bay, forecasters said.

“It’s a potential for significantly dangerous, life-threatening inundation,” said Michael Brennan, director of the hurricane center, adding it could also send “dangerous, damaging winds quite far inland.”

He said landfall was likely somewhere between Sabine Pass — on the Texas-Louisiana line — and Morgan City, Louisiana, about 220 miles (350 kilometers) to the east.

Louisiana officials urged residents to immediately prepare while “conditions still allow,” said Mike Steele, spokesperson for the Governor’s Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness.

“We always talk about how anytime something gets into the Gulf, things can change quickly, and this is a perfect example of that,” Steele said.

Residents of Baton Rouge, Louisiana’s capital, began forming long lines as people filled gas tanks and stocked up on groceries. Others filled sandbags at city-operated locations to protect homes from possible flooding.

“It’s crucial that all of us take this storm very seriously and begin our preparations immediately,” Baton Rouge Mayor-President Sharon Weston Broome said, urging residents to stock up on three days of food, water and essentials.

A mandatory evacuation was ordered for seven remote coastal communities by the Cameron Parish Office of Homeland Security & Emergency Preparedness. They include Holly Beach, a laid-back stretch dubbed Louisiana’s “Cajun Riviera,” where many homes sit on stilts. The storm-battered town has been a low-cost paradise for oil industry workers, families and retirees, rebuilt multiple times after past hurricanes.

In Grand Isle, Louisiana’s last inhabited barrier island, Mayor David Camardelle recommended residents evacuate and ordered a mandatory evacuation for those in recreational vehicles. Hurricane Ida decimated the city three years ago, destroying 700 homes.

Officials warn that flooding, along with high winds and power outages, is likely in the area beginning Tuesday afternoon through Thursday.

In New Orleans, Mayor LaToya Cantrell urged residents to prepare to shelter in place. “Now is the time to finalize your storm plans and prepare, not only for your families but looking out for your neighbors,” she said.

City officials said they were expecting up to 6 inches (15 centimeters) inches of rain, gusty winds and “isolated tornado activity” with the most intense weather likely to reach New Orleans on Wednesday and Thursday.

The hurricane center said Francine was last about 125 miles (200 kilometers) southeast of the mouth of the Rio Grande, and about 395 miles (540 kilometers) south-southwest of Cameron, with top sustained winds of about 65 miles per hour (100 kilometers per hour). It was moving north at 5 mph (7 kph).

As rain fell Monday in northern Mexico, more than a dozen neighborhoods in Matamoros — across the border from Brownsville, Texas — flooded, forcing schools to close Monday and Tuesday. Marco Antonio Hernandez Acosta, manager of the Matamoros Water and Drainage Board, said they were waiting for Mexico’s federal government to provide pumps to drain affected areas.

The storm was expected to be just offshore of the coasts of northeastern Mexico and southern Texas through Tuesday before making landfall Wednesday in Louisiana.