For the first semester in over 25 years, I am not a mother of anyone going to school in a school district. No more homework, lunch money, bus schedules or sports uniforms—when your kids make that transition out of high school and the school district, the first day of school is bittersweet. It all went so fast!

Despite me no longer having my children in a local district, I know that school financing and budgeting is more challenging than ever before. Community Impact Newspaper is proud to bring our readers our revamped annual Education Focus section in this edition, designed to make the information easier for readers to digest. The stories on Lake Travis ISD’s upcoming bond election (see Page 40) and local districts’ tax ratification elections (see Page 25) will provide an understanding of the need and the creative financing necessary to better fund our schools and their growth. With school statistics provided in an easy-to-read format, you can review recent STAAR results, feeder charts and Texas Education Agency accountability ratings for each campus—a new feature this year.

And with the devastation left behind by Hurricane Harvey, we wanted to share just a few of the efforts in our local communities that have been started to provide relief to survivors and their communities (see Page 18). It will take our #texasstrong neighbors a long time to come back from this disaster, but neighbors helping neighbors seems to be the lesson for today, and what better lesson is there for our school-aged kids to learn?