Sheets, in an interview with The Texas Tribune, also promised to lower costs for farmers and work with federal officials to beat a parasitic fly heading toward Texas.

This Tuesday, Tribune reporters are watching two blockbuster senate primaries, an open attorney general seat, and more high-stakes, competitive races up and down the Texas ballot.

School boards had until March 1 to decide whether to establish a daily period for students and staff to pray or read religious texts.

A group of parents whose children died in the July 4 floods claim in a federal lawsuit that Camp Mystic’s emergency instructions directed kids to stay in cabins even though state law requires evacuation plans for camps.

Texans from Waco to Harlingen are raising concerns over how much energy and water data centers are poised to use. Local officials, some enticed by a tax boon, say they have little power to stop the rush.

By Carla McKeown/Breckenridge Texan

Last week, several members of the Rotary Club of Breckenridge visited South Elementary and presented a small gift to every third-grade student.

The kids were thrilled: “You mean we get to keep these?” “Can I take it home?” “Oh, my gosh!”

The gifts were simple — no screens; no batteries to charge; nothing to plug in; no lights, bells or whistles.

They were excited to get their very own copy of “A Student’s Dictionary,” an old-fashioned, printed-on-paper book. The students immediately wrote their names inside the front cover and then began to peruse the pages.

On Wednesday, Feb. 4, local Rotary Club members Sherry Strickland, Jessica Sutter, Mercedes Luna, Yuri Huntington and Monica Johnson handed out the dictionaries, while fellow Rotarian Les Strickland talked to the kids about the books.

“To call this just a dictionary is an understatement,” he said. “There’s words, but there’s so much other information in here. There’s sign language, information about the planets, the Constitution, the presidents.”

In each of the four third-grade classrooms, Les Strickland asked the students what they thought the longest word is. Many kids answered “Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious” from the movie “Mary Poppins.” Strickland acknowledged their good guesses and then pointed them to page 373 of their new dictionaries. There, they found the 1,909-letter word that is the chemical name for Tryptophan synthetase, an enzyme/protein containing 267 amino acids.

Strickland also helped the students figure out who was president the year they were born and encouraged them to explore the dictionaries for other interesting bits of information.

The Breckenridge Rotary Club purchases the dictionaries for third graders each year through Rotary International as part of Rotary’s literacy initiative.

Click here to see the Breckenridge Texan’s Photo Gallery from the Rotary Club’s dictionary distribution, including group pictures of each class.

Cutline, top photo: Rotary Club member Mercedes Luna hands out dictionaries in Angie Brown’s classroom on Wednesday, Feb. 4. The Rotary Club of Breckenridge gives copies of “A Student’s Dictionary” to local third-grade students each year as part of the organization’s focus on education. Click here to see more photos from Wednesday. (Photo by Tony Pilkington/Breckenridge Texan)

 

The post Breckenridge Rotary Club promotes literacy with dictionary giveaway at South Elementary first appeared on Breckenridge Texan.

Suzanne Bellsnyder used to work for Republicans in Austin. Now she’s challenging them to do better for rural Texas, where she lives and operates two newspapers and a growing Substack newsletter.

By Tony Pilkington/Breckenridge Texan

Stephens County Commissioners voted at their meeting on Monday, Jan. 12, to hire legal counsel to notify NextEra Energy that it is in violation of requirements governing the red warning lights at the La Casa wind farm, according to  David Fambro, commissioner for Precinct 1 in the southeast part of the county, where the wind farm is located. The vote took place following an executive session with Jake Lederle, the attorney hired by Stephens County to represent the County in the original wind farm negotiations.

The red warning lights mounted on the wind turbines are part of an Aircraft Detection Lighting System (ADLS), which is sensor-triggered. Under normal operation, the lights should activate only when an aircraft enters a specific area or range and remain off most of the time. However, speakers during the public comment section of the Monday’s meeting, local residents said the lights are currently blinking continuously.

NextEra agreed to install the ADLS lighting system on the wind turbines as part of their tax abatement agreement with the county. In the Dec. 22, 2025, commissioners meeting, County Judge Michael Roach said that he had been assured that the system would be working — that is, that the lights would be off unless an aircraft was in the area — by Jan. 1 and that if it was not working, the County would send a letter to NextEra telling them that they are in violation of the agreement. In order to qualify for the County’s tax abatement, NextEra must be in compliance.

“We came out of Executive Session today (Jan. 12) and agreed to hire counsel to notify them they’re in violation of the ADLS,” Fambro said following the meeting. “So they should be receiving a letter… it’s on record that that’s what we did today.”

Fambro said the tax abatement agreement provides a limited window for compliance. “So from the date they receive the letter, they have 30 days to amend it, for them not to lose their abatement,” he said.

Asked whether any alternative agreement could be reached, Fambro said the issue must be fixed. “I don’t think there’s any agreement to come to, other than to fix it,” he said.

Concerns about the lighting system were raised earlier in the meeting during public comments from residents who live near the wind farm.

Steve Dempsey, who lives in the southeastern part of the county where the windmills are located, said the ADLS is intended to limit when the turbine lights are activated.

“The ADLS system is not working as it’s supposed to,” Dempsey said. “This last week, (the lights were blinking) all night long; they’ve been doing that for some time. I’d like to see the Commissioners Court address that with NextEra, tell them they’re in breach of contract.”

Dempsey said he read the contract between NextEra and Stephens County and couldn’t find any grace period for getting the ADLS system working. “According to this, the way I interpreted it, it should be working now, and it’s not,” he said.

Precinct 2 Commissioner Will Warren, who was presiding over the meeting because County Judge Michael Roach was absent, told Dempsey that he agreed, that they had something in the works, and that they would let them know later on.

In an interview after the meeting Dempsey reiterated what he said in the meeting, “It’s an ADLS system, commercial system, and it’s supposed to trigger a sensor for the lights, that they will come on when an aircraft is in a certain area, gets in a certain range, so they should be off the majority at the time,” Dempsey said. “But they’re constantly blinking.”

He said he has not received any information directly from NextEra on when the system will be operational.

“NextEra doesn’t talk to us,” he said. “They told me a long time ago, they’re through talking to me. So we have to go through the court to get any information.”

Zola George, another resident whose property is next to the wind turbines, spoke during public comments and described the impact of the lights on nearby homes.

“The turbines are towering and spinning, surrounding my home, and the only thing worse than that is the monotonous, constant blinking red lights I and the citizens of Stephens County see from dusk till dawn,” George said.

George thanked the commissioners for including the ADLS requirement as condition for the tax abatement granted to NextEra.

“Installing workable ADLS system was a very important condition and requirement for NextEra to have received the tax abatement you gave them,” he said. “Not surprisingly, they have failed to comply and have also given different stories as to when it is expected to be fully operational. … Please take immediate action to shut off those obnoxious red lights; your southeast Stephens County property values have suffered enough.”

Following the meeting, Fambro told the Breckenridge Texan that the county officials expected the aircraft detection lighting system to work from the beginning, even though the project is unusual.

“This is only the second ADLS system that has been done in the state of Texas, if I understand correctly,” he said. “So whenever we set everything up in the abatement process, what we said is we wanted ADLS. Our expectations were that ADLS would work (from) day one.”

However, Fambro said representatives from NextEra told him that the windmills have to be up and operational in order for them to be able to set up the ADLS. Additionally, he said that other states that have laws requiring ADLS have built-in grace periods ranging from 30 days to nine months, something the Stephens County officials were not aware of.

 

Cutline, top photo: Stephens County resident Steve Dempsey informs the county commissioners that the Aircraft Detection Lighting System that NextEra Energy agreed to install on the wind turbines in the southeastern part of the county are not operational. He said the contract between the county and NextEra does not provide any type of a grace period. (Photo by Tony Pilkington/Breckenridge Texan)

 

The post Stephens County moves to enforce wind farm lighting requirements following executive session first appeared on Breckenridge Texan.

By Carla McKeown/Breckenridge Texan

Breckenridge Junior High students gathered on the blacktop behind the school cafeteria Tuesday morning for a chance to glimpse how alcohol can impair their vision, coordination, motor skills and other abilities during a program hosted by the Stephens County Agrilife Extension Service.

Donning “drunk goggles,” the sixth, seventh and eighth grade students attempted to walk a straight line, toss bean bags at a target, and navigate around small objects on the ground.

As they took a look through the eyewear specifically designed to simulate being at the blood alcohol content level for being legally drunk (.08%), most of the students reacted immediately: “Why is my body doing this?” “What the heck?” “Oh, gosh!”

Although the overall atmosphere during the drunk goggles program was lighthearted, with students struggling to walk straight or even give a “high five” to the presenters, most of the students walked away from the activity surprised by how much they were affected by the simulation.

The program was facilitated by Stephens County Extension Agent Sumer Russell; Edward Jimenez, a program coordinator with the Texas A&M Agrilife Extension’s Watch UR BAC (Blood Alcohol Concentration) campaign that teaches Texans about the dangers of misusing alcohol and other drugs; and JerriAnn Cornett, with the Extension service’s Disaster Assessment and Recovery program.

In addition to offering the kids a look through the goggles, the program also included a presentation in Bailey Auditorium about the dangers of illegal drugs, alcohol and vaping, focusing on impaired driving.

Jimenez said that junior high is a good age to start talking to kids about the dangers of abusing alcohol and drugs. “There’s a lot of curiosity with kids this age,” Jimenez said. “If we get a chance to tell them and to show them how drugs and alcohol affect them, you know, hopefully it makes them think. When those opportunities, when those temptations, or whatever you want to call them, present themselves to them and they (turn down offers of drugs or alcohol and) say,’I’m good. I’m good.’ And that’s the one thing we want them to say, ‘I’m good,’ because they know better.”

Jimenez said part of the program is giving the young people the words they need to turn down alcohol or drugs if they are offered such substances from their friends or others.

“Sometimes they don’t know what to what to say. They ask us, ‘How do I respond to this?’” he said.

Jimenez said he tells the students that there are many ways to say “no.”

Some of the examples of what they can said when offered, for example, an alcoholic drink, include:

• I’m good with what I have; I don’t need that.
• I have practice. I don’t want to do that.
• I’m in band. I don’t want to mess with that.

“We give them the tools to be able to take care of themselves, because they don’t know, they don’t really understand,” Jimenez said.  “Everything is new, everything’s fancy, everything’s cool. But we give them that idea that this is what it’s like, this is how it can affect you.”

But, the program isn’t just fun and games — tossing a bean bag while wearing “drunk goggles” — or a boring lecture with facts and statistics.

Jimenez brings a personal element to the anti-drinking and driving campaign. In 2006, he was driving his son and some neighbor children home from a swimming pool when they were hit by a drunk driver. Jimenez’s 7-year-old son and a 14-year-old neighbor were killed in the crash.

So, he shares that personal experience with the students to give them a first-hand account of how dangerous drinking and driving can be.

But, his interest in the topic goes back as far as high school, when one of his school projects was an anti-drunk driving commercial that he presented to the school.

AgriLife Extension will continue working with Breckenridge schools to bring related programs to the students, including the “When Sean Speaks” program later in the school year.

For more information about the Watch UR BAC program, click here to visit the program’s website. The program also has a Facebook page.

Cutline, top photo: Breckenridge Junior High students attempt to walk a straight line while wearing “drunk goggles” during a recent program at the school. Edward Jimenez, left, a program coordinator with the Texas A&M Agrilife Extension’s Watch UR BAC campaign, talked to the students about some of the effects of drinking alcohol and about the dangers of drinking and driving. (Photo by Tony Pilkington/Breckenridge Texan)

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South Texas builders said a growing number of ICE arrests at construction sites have made it difficult for work to continue.