The change certainly was swift. In less than 48 hours last week, Dallas Independent School District trustees made a 180-degree turn in their position about the release of more of the notorious Peavy Tapes. At least, that was how it appeared from letters board lawyer Kim Askew sent to federal…

Samuel Abraham’s cell in the Dallas County Jail offers, as one would expect, few amenities. On one side of the small quarters where Abraham has lived since his arrest November 4 sits a narrow, hard bed. On the other, a stainless steel contraption doubles as a toilet and sink. But…

U.S. Attorney Paul Coggins–once referred to on these pages as “Publicity Paul”–usually seems more than happy to chat with reporters. Frequently, he sends them cards. He calls them with tips, and he has appeared at dozens of news conferences during his tenure to tout his office’s good works. But even…

It’s eight minutes before opening time on a chilly Sunday morning, and two suburban moms are huddled outside the locked doors of the LiL’ Things store in Plano, waiting for the signal to charge. The women peer through the doors of the 30,000-foot store, identifying their targets and paths of…

Think, for one wild moment, of the DISD board of trustees as the candy store in a twisted Halloween movie. Then place Don Venable, a 43-year-old paralegal, as the new kid who has just walked wide-eyed and hungry through its doors. The school board, of course, isn’t serving up any…

Few would detect it when they whiz past the Exxon gas station, the Boston Market outlet, the Albertson’s grocery, and the other merchants at the intersection of Campell and Coit roads. But a small war has erupted in the suburban Richardson shopping mall environs recently. It’s a kosher war. So…

Last week, federal prosecutors from the offices of U.S. Attorney Paul Coggins reversed their ever-shifting position on the heavily guarded Peavy Tapes. Earlier this year, those same prosecutors had agreed that Dan Carver Peavy, a former Dallas Independent School District trustee, could keep a copy of his tape-recorded conversations with…

On ordinary school days, Kerry Walls grips the wheel of his white squad car and patrols DISD’s hundreds of campuses. But on a Sunday afternoon in October 1996, Walls landed a much loftier assignment. He stepped into his role as chauffeur and ferried a trio of highly distinguished passengers downtown…

Among Dallas schools administrators these days, it seems no one is beyond reproach. Now even the DISD internal police are under investigation. Wesley Owens, the chief internal auditor at the Dallas Independent School District, confirmed that he expects to initiate a preliminary investigation this week into allegations that some $10,000…

For a moment before dawn last January 18, Heath Green toyed with the idea of playing hooky from work. Green, a 25-year-old pipefitter apprentice, considered not showing up at his job installing pipe for a subcontractor hired to help Texas Instruments, Inc. expand its semiconductor manufacturing facilities in North Dallas…

Just a few weeks ago, Matthew Harden, Jr. conducted his business in virtual anonymity. As DISD’s chief bean counter, Harden toiled in the shadows–as far from notoriety as he could possibly get. But that was before a brash, go-get-’em superintendent named Yvonne Gonzalez came on the scene. Now he’s become…

A teacher put it best in The Dallas Morning News: There’s the real Dallas Independent School District–where kids go to school and learn how to read, write, and do arithmetic–and there’s the surreal district. No doubt about which one has gotten the most media coverage during the last several days…

It was arguably the strangest school-year kickoff Dallas had ever seen.Forget all those bright-eyed, backpack-toting first graders bouncing onto their buses–that time-honored, Rockwellian image so dutifully trotted out by thousands of school districts nationwide was not quite what DISD superintendent Yvonne Gonzalez had in mind for the momentous launching of…

Rick Duffield is a quiet, understated man, not one to gloat. He claims he hasn’t even been inside a Target store recently. But if he had, Duffield certainly would feel a wee bit of glee at what he saw. Barney, the reigning champion of children’s television, is being supplanted on…

Lynda McDow concedes that her proposal to convert an old church into a public school could cause some flak, but that doesn’t bother the Dallas Independent School District trustee. “Yeah, it’ll be controversial,” McDow says of her plan, scheduled to go before the DISD board in late August. “But that’s…

Yvonne Gonzalez, whose short tenure as superintendent of Dallas schools has been a whirlwind of press conferences, spent much of last week insisting she had no idea that recent renovations to her office suite cost taxpayers $62,000. Gonzalez called a press conference, of course, to protest her ignorance after the…

When Dallas schools superintendent Yvonne Gonzalez started remodeling her office suite at the district’s downtown headquarters this spring, she justified the expense by pointing to her predecessors. Chad Woolery, whom Gonzalez succeeded as superintendent, had added wallpaper. And his predecessor, Marvin Edwards, had turned a closet into a toilet. But…

H. Ross Perot Jr. had just bought the Dallas Mavericks in May 1996 when the basketball team’s top executive quit. The son of Dallas’ most famous billionaire was in a bind. As he often does, Perot Jr. turned to his longtime chief lieutenant, Frank Zaccanelli, and put the fiery Italian…

Attorney Dennis Eichelbaum’s law firm is paid about $650,000 a year to serve as general counsel for the Dallas Independent School District, providing routine legal advice, handling lawsuits, and things of that nature. Not surprisingly, disgruntled citizens with a beef against the district sometimes name Eichelbaum personally as a defendant…

Federal investigators, an outside counsel, and an internal auditor are all conducting parallel probes into allegations of misconduct and overtime fraud at the Dallas Independent School District, so it’s no surprise that the long corridors of the district’s creaky old administration building literally reek of fear. “You can see the…

It would be easy to overlook the plain, black-and-white fliers stuffed haphazardly onto a display shelf at the headquarters of the Dallas Independent School District. “Are you aware of any wrongdoing?” the handbill asks. If so, tipsters are invited to call the superintendent’s hot line, which will gladly accept anonymous…

Ron Price readily admits that he has some learning to do. “I’m a rookie at this,” says the 30-year-old South Dallas youth organizer. He is making his first run for elected office this year, seeking a seat on the Dallas Independent School District Board. Perhaps it takes youthful naivete to…