When the Riverbats Come to Town
By Chloe Wilkinson, co-founder of ACC Student Democrats, with Staci Young, PfADC member and Democratic Precinct Chair.
I moved to Austin when I was 23 years old. At that time, I had no college degree but had worked as a Campaign Field Director for my hometown’s Democratic County Party in East Tennessee and as an unpaid Campaign Manager in the TN 3rd Congressional District. In my hometown, only about 40 percent of kids would obtain a college degree; I mean, heck, even graduating high school wasn’t a guarantee. My father was a lineman for AT&T and a part of the union. I grew up in a house where my father would go out of his way to make sure we had everything we needed as kids; this often meant working 80-hour weeks, missing holidays and birthdays. At the time, I didn’t appreciate what he sacrificed and wouldn’t until I had experienced the struggle of navigating a city where over two-thirds of the population had a college degree. Despite having a large pool of experience, I often found myself passed over for college graduates, and it was time to face the facts: experience alone wouldn’t cut it anymore. At 25, I officially enrolled at ACC as a part-time student, where I pursued a degree in Government. Very quickly, new opportunities began to open up for me after co-founding ACC Student Democrats. First, I was hired as the Deputy Field Director for Kirk Watson, then a Legislative Aide for Rep Charlene Ward, and now I am even balancing 2 roles as an Assistant Campaign Manager and a Union Organizer. That’s why today I want to talk about the benefits of investing in your local Riverbats.
It is experiences like this that make access to higher education so critical to a community. This is more than seniors, this is every person that wasn’t given the chance to upskill or reskill. For every person that wants something better for themselves, no matter their age or circumstance. Pflugerville is a community ready to make a better life for themselves and their neighbors. I can throw stats at you - the average age of an ACC student is 26 or 85% of ACC graduates stay local or ACC generates $2.6 B in economic impact. I can brag about the workforce partnerships they have with Tesla and Samsung or that they have award winning manufacturing training. But none of that matters if we don’t want better for ourselves and our neighbors. For our future nurses, welders, plumbers, cosmetologists, and future college graduates.
I can address the elephant in the room - affordability. Folks are concerned about the cost on their pocketbooks, and who can blame them? Everything from groceries to gas is more expensive than it was 3 years ago, but I can attest that Community College is a service that will pay dividends in the long term. The opposition would want you to believe that it is a bad deal but the math does not math. They claim the current number of PfISD students would not match the cost to residents. This claim makes 2 false assumptions: first, that this only benefits high school students, which is FALSE. The second assumption is that enrollment would not see a significant increase because of the college’s free tuition, yet in many cases there is 25-30% immediate increase in enrollment when communities vote for the facilities they deserve.
The benefits don’t end at free and reduced tuition, as ACC is often cited as the number one transfer school in America and for good reason. First, the college invested heavily in career development pipelines, and I've had the pleasure of meeting employers from a variety of industries who prefer to hire directly from ACC because they believe community college students have a very strong work ethic. Even local governments have come to see the benefits of ACC as a career development school; back in 2024, the City of Austin, in partnership with ACC, local construction contractors, and unions, opened the Infrastructure Academy, which strives to fill vacancies in Austin’s growing construction industry. It is on this point that I believe the City of Pflugerville could leverage ACC as a tool to help address some of the current issues facing the community, such as the recent water crisis or the rising cost of utilities. ACC also produces multiple Ivy League transfer students each year; in fact, last spring, 3 ACC honor students transferred to Yale.
For me, ACC is not some theoretical; it is the school that helped me secure opportunities in Austin. It is why, despite living in central Austin, I have knocked on doors in the suburbs of Lockhart and Pflugerville in support of ACC expansion. I am one of those Riverbats that will be your future nurse or tradesman or small business owner because of the skills and award winning education that we receive. It’s also why I write to you, the members of Pflugerville Area Democrats, to support the Austin Community College District Annexation Proposition.