Headlines

• Early voting starts Monday in the Austin City Council Place 4 run-off. See voting info and the Chronicle endorsement.

• Austin schoolteachers and staff appeared Tuesday before the Austin Independent School District board seeking a few more shillings in their modest paychecks, a request the board may punt to local voters in a "rollback" election in November.

• "Wacky" is the word most used to describe the State Board of Education's decision last week to pass a new English reading standard that social conservatives cooked up in the dark of night, catching some board members flat-footed when handed the "cut and paste" document a couple of hours before the vote.

• AISD board trustee Cheryl Bradley takes the lead this weekend at a rally opposing the closing of Johnston High School; see Happenings.

• Think globally; act locally. Austin's Asian community is redoubling its efforts to help hundreds of thousands of survivors of the May 12 earthquake, and subsequent aftershocks, in Southwest China.

• The state keeps digging a bigger hole for itself in its fight to retain custody of the children it removed from a breakaway Mormon sect compound; see "Those Mothers!"