On Friday evening, after schools had closed and most everything else was winding down for the holiday, the Morning News reported DISD communications chief Jennifer Sprague is resigning. Sprague’s abrupt departure is the surest sign yet that Superintendent Mike Miles’ administration is in crisis. She was one of his most…
When Minnie K. Patton wrote her will, she left a portion of her estate to the Dallas County Community College District Foundation to create a scholarship in her name. She’d grown up poor and uneducated in rural Oklahoma and wanted to give students the shot at upward mobility that she…
OK, business-community school reformers. I believe you mean well. But your guy is toast. You recruited a school superintendent who cannot and will not make it in the big city. You can get all stubborn about it and defend him to the last ditch. If I had to bet, I’d…
Six months into his tenure at DISD, it’s now official: Superintendent Mike Miles is hellbent on squandering whatever good will he was granted upon his arrival. Case in point was his news conference Wednesday to more fully address findings in a recent internal audit concluding that he and top staff…
As we reported earlier, newly elected state Representative Jason Villalba announced his intention to file legislation allowing Texas school districts to arm trained faculty and staff members. “School marshals,” I think he calls them. In case you were wondering whether we might see ol’ Coach prowling the halls of a…
Several things emerged from the internal Dallas ISD audit the Morning News got its hands on earlier this week. One was that Superintendent Mike Miles didn’t hesitate to bend or break established protocol when he was assembling his leadership team. Another was that DISD really didn’t want the report to…
News has been bouncing around the right-wing blogosphere for a while now (and to trustees with Irving ISD) that some 70 percent of school districts in Texas are indoctrinating children with pro-Islam propaganda. WorldNetDaily, which if nothing else is free of left-wing bias, reports “students are learning the ‘fact’ that…
Donna Pulkrabek says she was pushed out of her job at UT Southwestern in May after reporting mistreatment of laboratory animals even though, as manager of the school’s Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee (IACUC), that was her job. According to a lawsuit filed by Pulkrabek, she had raised concerns…
Plotting a new course for Dallas ISD was never going to be a quick or easy thing. It’s a huge bureaucracy and one that’s laden with problems, some that are common to all large, diverse urban school districts, some that are DISD-specific, a legacy of administrations passed. So Superintendent MIke…
Mike. I’m talking to you. Your whole story now, your profile, is all about the Miles-high salaries. “DALLAS ISD SUPERINTENDENT DEFENDS HIGH SALARIES…” “DISD’S NEW COMMUNICATIONS CHIEF WILL MAKE $185,000…” Wrong. So wrong. One hundred and eighty degrees wrong. Think in terms of sack-cloth and begging bowls. That’s what you…
For more than two decades now, SMU’s men’s basketball program has languished in mediocrity. It saw moderate regular-season success during the Mike Dement era of the late ’90s and early ’00s but made the postseason only once, and that was a berth in the lowly NIT. Its last trip to…
Way back in January, over the objections of just about everyone affected, the Dallas ISD Board of Trustees tacked a mandatory 45 minutes onto every teacher’s workday. How the teachers used the time would be up to principals. Not surprisingly, the decision sparked considerable resentment among teachers who felt the…
There has been a lot of ink devoted over the past few days to Dallas ISD being named a finalist for $40 million in federal Race to the Top funds, which built to a crescendo yesterday when Education Secretary Arne Duncan came to town. That all sounds fantastic, but what…
Luther Campbell’s days as a member of 2 Live Crew, cutting wildly misogynistic tracks that shocked and appalled Tipper Gore and led to a famous Supreme Court victory for free speech, are behind him. He’s a father now, married to a lawyer, and he has a respectable job as a…
Earlier this year it came to light that DeVry, the Illinois-based tech school giant, wanted some students from its Caribbean medical school to complete their training in Texas. The plan was modest, a maximum of 20 students from DeVry’s American University of the Caribbean placed in Texas hospitals for third-…
Donna Pulkrabek’s job with UT Southwestern Medical Center was to ensure that the dogs, goats, pigs, sheep, rabbits, guinea pigs, frogs, rats and mice researchers use for medical experiments were treated humanely and in compliance with federal guidelines. When she allegedly discovered that wasn’t happening, she complained. According to her…
That guy you see up there is J.C. Drake, the police chief at North Lake College in Irving. Chief Drake is real worried about all the school shootings, so he decided to do something about it. He decided to offer a course, apparently to students and also staff, in how…
John Ellis Price, the man who has guided UNT-Dallas through its transformation from a tiny satellite campus into an accredited, standalone university, won’t be officially retired for another nine months. The school has been preparing for his departure for a while now, but only now has the search for a…
John Wiley Price is not a fan of DISD superintendent Mike Miles. He made that much clear when he appeared before the yesterday’s board briefing to chide Miles on his first few months with the district. “My problem is, this district seems to be in terror, and this is no…
It wasn’t so long ago that it seemed the relationship between DISD teachers and superintendent Mike Miles had gone sour. They bristled at Miles’ reformist rhetoric, with its implication that steering the district in the right direction will require the heads of a lot of long-time educators. They didn’t like…
Right now, the only way to get your kid into pre-K at DISD is to not speak English, not have a home, or be poor enough to qualify him for free or reduced lunch. This year, 8,991 students fitting those criteria have enrolled in DISD pre-K free of charge, a…
Last spring on the steps of the State Capitol, it was possible to buy a highly metaphorical cupcake, one that would cost you just $100 million. The “Billion Dollar Bake Sale” was put together by an outfit called Save Texas Schools, and it was meant to draw attention to the…
