But a few hours ago, Rena Honea, president of AFT-Alliance, held a press conference and posted this petition demanding the Dallas Independent School District reinstate fourth-grade Central Elementary bilingual teacher Joseph Drake, who was put on leave late last week after he sent trustee Edwin Flores an angry email regarding…
In the end, of course, the commenter was right: They took it easy on Edwin Flores last night at E.L. DeGolyer Elementary — mighty easy. The audience was small, equal parts critics and cheerleaders; the faces, familiar — Michael MacNaughton, Bill Betzen, one-time school board candidate Kyle Renard, newly announced…
Anna’s attending tonight’s meeting of Deep Ellum property owners and city officials concerning Uplift Education’s latest charter school — which, Uplift CEO Yasmin Bhatia just told me, is very definitely going to take the former Baylor building on Elm Street. As Bhatia put it: “All systems go” for an August…
Edwin Flores’s appearance at E.L. DeGolyer Elementary has been on the schedule for quite a while; says the invite, the Dallas Independent School District trustee’s scheduled to speak about “the state of the district and superintendent search.” I expect that’s not all he’ll be asked to address.But where to begin?…
At the beginning of the Dallas ISD trustees’ long day’s journey into night, I dialed up the back-and-forth over the superintendent search, as the board at long last debated what makes a super super. That video’s archived here. And it was intriguing too, a peek into the thought processes of…
They argued, they reasoned, they pleaded, they threatened, they chanted, they cried. But in the end, it just didn’t matter. It never really did. It’s over, and it was never in doubt. Under budget pressure, and after a final, five-hour session, the Dallas Independent School District’s board of trustees voted…
There’s every chance today’s meeting of the Dallas Independent School District’s board of trustees could last till the wee small hours of tomorrow morning. Because in addition to all the previously mentioned public hearings and hot-button items scheduled for today — everything from school consolidations to longer workday hours for…
Lawrence Smith has what you might call a bit of a beef with Cowboys great Deion Sanders. And he just took that beef — what’s that phrase? Ah yes. Priiiime tiiiime. A few years back, Smith went into business with Sanders and a businessman named D.L. Wallace on a high-school…
Tomorrow is C-Day, the day we find out if the Dallas Independent School District will consolidate nine elementary schools and two middle schools in order to grapple with its looming $38-million budget gap. Months of public hearings, protests in front of 3700 Ross and staking signs in front of schools…
Throughout the week the in-box has been filling up with complaints from Dallas Independent School District teachers who insist they were given no advance warning that trustees would be voting tomorrow on extending their workday hours from seven hours and 45 minutes to eight and a half hour. Writes one:…
In the ever-lasting debate over whether and how and how well our teachers are living up to their charge — that charge, of course, being simply to save their country from a slow, seamless descent into collective idiocy — a lot of buzzwords get buzzed: evaluations, testing, metrics, merit pay,…
Just eight months ago, Lawrence Billy Jones III was a senior at Garland High School. He’s a UNT freshman now, double-majoring in political science and criminal justice. He just turned 19. And for reasons we really can’t figure, he’s running for office. Specifically, he’s gunning for a seat on the…
Just got off the phone with tax attorney Mark Melton, who, as you’ll recall, is co-chairing EducateDallas, that political action committee with ties to the Dallas Regional Chamber. I had questions following receipt of a release this afternoon that says the PAC is endorsing two candidates for the Dallas Independent…
Word got out that Michael Hinojosa was leaving the Dallas Independent School District ’round the exact same time Melody Johnson announced she was resigning as Fort Worth’s superintendent. Which means both school districts have known for eight months that they need new leaders. But several fellow DISD parents have asked…
Late Thursday afternoon, and only because interim super Alan King had a flight to catch, the Dallas Independent School District trustees finally got around to discussing the 2012-13 budget and consolidating — which is to say, closing — those 11 campuses in order to save a guesstimated $11.5 million next…
Still watching that Dallas Independent School District trustee meeting; it’s torture, man, torture. (Four hours after kick-off, we still haven’t gotten ’round to the budget or campus consolidations.) Like, here: The board has spent the last 40 minutes talking about next school year’s calendar. Shouldn’t have taken that long. Except…
Just returned from a funeral to find the Dallas Independent School District board discussing 21 ways to get better candidates down to 3700 Ross and how to restructure human resources — which, I know, sounds boring on the surface. But this is the so-called Star Employee Commission’s report to the…
The Dallas Independent School District board has much on its plate at today’s briefing, the first of the new year: that look-see at the coming year’s budget, a report on efforts to close 11 schools to save $11 million, a peek at how that under-construction teacher evaluation system is coming…
One week ago today, during council’s chat about the coming bond program, the subject of the UNT Dallas College of Law came up: Angela Hunt wanted to know when the university would take over the old Municipal Building, at which point City Manager Mary Suhm reminded the council, “They’re a…
Last month the Dallas Independent School District officially dedicated George Herbert Walker Bush Elementary, the Addison campus funded by the 2008 bond program. The affair was populated by pols, Ross Ave. administrators and educators, but at the 3:37 mark of the video just posted by the district the man for…
For several weeks we’ve known how 3700 Ross intends to deal with a budget shortfall in the coming school year — by closing schools (guesstimated to save $11.5 million) and jumping kindergarten to fourth-grade teacher-student ratios from 22:1 to 24:1 per classroom (which could result in the loss of 300…
Saw this when I got home last night — an invite to attend a Grand Prairie Independent School District open house January 21 at the South Grand Prairie High School Coliseum. The postcard thinks that maybe my Dallas ISD-attending child would want to attend, say, the Garner Fine Arts Academy…
