Light the Corners

Light the corners:Remember the good ol' days at the Dallas Independent School District? Crooked Yvonne Gonzalez riding a big bulldozer and writing mash notes to top administrators. Threats of blood in the streets. Guns. Shouting.

If you were a parent or, God forbid, a student back in the '90s, maybe you don't see those as the good old days. To media folk, however, going to DISD headquarters back then was like grabbing a rod and heading off to an overstocked barrel of catfish. Now, DISD is sort of boring--just like a public school district.

Still, we at the Dallas Observer will occasionally send staffers over to Ross Avenue to sit through a school board meeting, just to see if anything remotely interesting is going on. (It's also a fun way for editors to screw with reporters.) Last week's victim was staffer Matt Pulle.

So what's new at DISD? Seems they're still kind of bloody-minded over there. At a hearing on attendance zone changes, some South Oak Cliff parents warned of danger ahead if the district proceeds with plans to ship some South Oak Cliff kids to rival Roosevelt High. "As the Scripture says, the blood will be on your hands," one parent told the board.

"If you put certain communities together who do not get along, you're going to have some fights," trustee Ron Price warned, which, coming from a DISD board member, ranks in the top 10 great ironic understatements of all time.

Pulle reports that much of the back-and-forth was over how hands-on trustees should be in managing the district. Perhaps not surprisingly, newly re-elected trustee Edwin Flores opposed board micromanagement--something the trustees were told to stop roughly 99 kabillion times back in the tumultuous '90s. Also perhaps not surprisingly, the board was split--chiefly along racial lines--over exactly where the trustees' duties to represent voters ends and micromanaging begins.

So that's it then. The once-entertaining DISD is now reduced to debating the merits of Jacksonian democracy vs. professional management, with only scant, Scripture-based mentions of blood. Buzz supposes Superintendent Michael Hinojosa should be congratulated. In fact, he should be rewarded. Say, Michael, why dontcha go buy yourself some furniture on the district's dime as a reward? Trust us, no one will mind.