In 1991, Woodrow Wilson High School installed a new floor in the main hallway. At the center, they put a tile mosaic of a stylized wildcat head based on a design that had been used around the school for a decade. Twenty-one years later, Principal Kyle Rains Richardson received a…
The culture war for young Texan minds is kicking back into high gear. The State Board of Education sent 28 invites to experts around the state to review high school biology textbooks. About a dozen showed up in Austin this week for the final phase of the review. They’ll make…
One way or the other, it seems, the folks behind Prime Prep Academy, Deion Sanders’ taxpayer-funded charter school, are going to make some money off it. It’s just a matter of how — and how much. The “how” is a little clearer today, after Oprah Winfrey’s cable network announced plans…
Typically, a $219,700 contract aimed at boosting parent engagement would sail past Dallas ISD’s Board of Trustees with barely a murmur. It represents, after all, a vanishingly small speck of the district’s $1.2 billion budget, and its goal — getting parents involved in their children’s education — is hardly controversial…
San Antonio’s Northside ISD, which became the focus of national controversy when an intensely evangelical high school sophomore refused to wear her RFID-equipped student ID because it was the Mark of the Beast, is not the first school district to track students’ whereabouts using geolocation technology, nor will it be…
Every time we broach the subject of improving Dallas ISD, the chorus starts in before we get too far: It starts with the parents. District officials appear to agree. In a recent vote, the district earmarked $2.75 million for parent-education programs, including the expansion of an Israeli-born program that helps…
Prime Prep Academy, the sports-focused charter school founded by former Cowboy Deion Sanders, never quite found a home for its sports teams in its inaugural year, getting shut out of public-school play for having too many players living outside its boundaries and for poaching players from a local basketball power,…
Compile a list of Dallas ISD’s best elementary schools, the ones that convince affluent young parents to forsake the lure of private schools or the suburbs, and Lakewood Elementary will rank at or near the top. Spend a moment browsing through the Texas Tribune’s public schools explorer. Its students crush…
Dallas ISD’s Board of Trustees argued into the early morning hours before approving a $1.2 billion budget for the coming year. It includes a 2-percent raise for almost all employees, as well as funding for Superintendent Mike Miles’ year-old principal training academy, which some trustees wanted to defund. It was…
It was clear from the moment Joshua ISD officials cut the mic on Remington Reimer’s Jesus-referencing valedictory speech that his case would be trotted out as an example of a Christian being persecuted for expressing his religious beliefs. Doubly so once Plano’s Liberty Institute got involved. It wasn’t so clear-cut,…
The announcement dispatched by Dallas ISD a few minutes ago about the restructuring of Superintendent Mike Miles’ top staff describes it as “a reorganization of the district’s academic operations” that will give four current mid-level administrators a chance to prove themselves at the top. Miles is quoted as saying he’s…
Human sexuality is a complex beast, its expression influenced by an intricate tangle of psychology, biology, emotion and social norms, all tempered by personal experience. Sexual behavior is certainly much too complicated to be boiled down to a single factor. Unless you’re a college-age girl whose father wasn’t around when…
A new report put out by the research advocacy group Children At Risk has compiled statistics to show that hundreds of thousands of North Texas children are living in poverty and facing food insecurity. The Future of North Texas’ Children examines 10 topics affecting North Texas children, including poverty, hunger,…
Dallas County established its truancy courts a decade ago with the hope that a specialized judicial system would better address the root causes of chronic absenteeism (mental health problems, family issues, etc.) than school discipline or adult courts. County Judge Clay Jenkins has declared the program a success, saying they…
When Joshua ISD officials cut off Remington Reimer’s valedictory speech, we thought it unlikely that it had anything to do with his mention of God. After all, district officials didn’t seem concerned later in the ceremony when another student delivered a prayer, punctuated by a lengthy recitation of scripture and…
More than a year after its fight became public, Dallas ISD is still struggling to cut ties with unscrupulous tutoring companies it’s required to contract with under federal law. A report set to be delivered Thursday to the board of trustees details the Texas Education Agency’s findings against two firms,…
Remington Reimer’s classmates at Joshua High School called him “Spock” — less, it seems, due to any lack of human emotion than because he’s whip-smart. The Cleburne Times-Review referred to him recently as the “most gifted, academically excellent student that Joshua High School has ever produced,” which would explain how…
Taking a charge in basketball is an art, and it has been for a long time. A not-insignificant portion of high school basketball practices — at least as of a decade ago — are dedicated to training players on coming to an abrupt stop, setting one’s feet just so, and…
Update at 2:57: Dallas ISD spokesman Jon Dahlander wrote to clarify that Morath was not actually delivering a commencement address. (For that, you can watch the entire ceremony DISDBlog firmly in the latter category. Morath is their fork-tongued punching bag.” target=”_blank”>here.) “All elected trustees are asked to participate in graduation…
The news broke, as tends to happen in these cases, on Twitter. Omfg that just shows you Irving teachers don’t pay any attention to not review that they changed a girl’s name to UGLY HOE— Haleigh ❁ (@sleepyhaleigh) May 29, 2013 And sure enough, thumb through Irving High School’s brand-new…
In terms of the way we treat school superintendents in Dallas, we’re kind of like the spoiled rich lady who fires her housekeepers one after another, then asks, “What on earth is wrong with the housekeepers of this world?” I can’t even count how many times in the last month…
Type Jerome Oberlton’s name into Google, and one of the first things to pop up is a Baltimore Sun article detailing all the places he used the local school district’s credit cards. These included businesses like Bath & Body Works and Ross, which would seem to provide little of use…
