SMU announced on Tuesday that George W. Bush, the 43rd president of the United States, is going to give its 2015 commencement address. It’s G-Dub’s second time to get the gig at the school — he regaled grads as governor in 1999 — a first for SMU. Given Bush’s track…
Even among the staunchest critics of Dallas ISD superintendent Mike Miles, trustee Joyce Foreman stands out in her relentless pursuit of his head. And lately, her anti-Miles advocacy has targeted the basic needs of schools and schoolchildren: She’s voted against things as mundane and necessary approving monthly financial statements and…
According to Leviticus, if a woman has an issue, and that “issue in her flesh be blood,” then she is unclean. She must present a priest with two turtle doves or young pigeons in order to make things right. At the Eagle Mountain‐Saginaw Independent School District, if an employee is…
When Prime Time wasn’t admitting to choking his employees or threatening to throw chairs at them and break their necks, he displayed a generous side. In Prime Prep’s final year, co-founder Deion Sanders donated $132,937 to the school. The former Cowboys star worked at the school in an official capacity…
They weren’t mentioned. Not once. No one, not the parents, not the teachers from other schools nor longtime critic and DISD trustee Joyce Foreman, asked DISD Superintendent Mike Miles about the “reptile’s nest” of instant messages sent between former members of the district’s human resources department at a parental forum…
At an age when most of us were preoccupied with hot-boxing our parents’ cars or eating Crayons (you ate crayons in high school too, right?!), the teenagers at Greenhill School in Addison are making us all look like slackers. “I kind of got into the whole social justice scene during…
Friday was the last day of school at Prime Prep Academy, according to state administrators assigned to pull the plug on the charter school founded by ex-Cowboy Deion Sanders. After two and a half years of legal fights, actual fights and assorted controversy, the Texas Education Agency finally said enough…
We so often associate Prime Prep Academy with its co-founder Deion Sanders that we often overlook all the little people who helped make the school such a dysfunctional place. If it wasn’t for Prime Prep’s school board, for instance, Sanders may have remained permanently fired from the school, removing the…
DISD schools: still not great, but not that bad if you look at other really big districts. So says a report issued by the Bush library and Mayor Mike Rawlings that compares achievement and disciplinary stats across the country’s biggest urban districts. The mission of the reports is described as…
From its beginning last fall, the narrative of the Great Highland Park Book Ban — and I think all spectators can agree that it’s been great — has been about sex. This is understandable. Almost all great book-ban fights are about sex — about when kids should be exposed to…
Monday’s news that Prime Prep Superintendent Ron Price is resigning at the end of January marked the beginning of the end (for real this time, we think) of Deion Sanders’ troubled charter school. His resignation was followed with an announcement from state officials that the Texas Education Agency is appointing…
There was a time, late last year, when someone actually tried to fire Deion Sanders from Prime Prep Academy, the charter school he co-founded. That brave someone was the school’s then-superintendent, an educator unrelated to Prime Time named Rachel King Sanders. At a school unofficially run by some of Deion…
In July, all of the TRUTH-haters in the media reported that Deion Sanders’ disaster of charter school was being “shut down.” But we were wrong. Prime Prep is still open and participating in sports. Not only that, Prime Prep has proudly become the only school in the country to equip…
Update: December 18, 3:28 p.m.: Governor Perry has announced that he will decline having the building named after him. “Upon deep reflection, I have informed the Board of Regents of my decision to politely decline this great honor. I do so because certain places on this campus, like our most…
Providing yet another reason for me to be thankful I never have to attend another day of primary school, The Dallas Morning News’ Matthew Haag enumerated a little of what’s on DISD’s controversial exams for elective courses in elementary school Thursday afternoon. They are tough. The list is littered with…
The Texas UIL’s system of determining high school athletic eligibility has meted out another dose of its strange justice. Gabrielle Gregory, a junior point guard at Irving MacArthur and a four-star recruit who’s made a verbal commitment to Kansas State, has been sidelined for the first weeks of the season…
It was never going to be easy for Kimball to win its fourth state basketball title in five years. The heart of last year’s team, 6-foot-7-inch small forward D’Angelo Allen, was gone for University of Missouri. Gone, too, was longtime Kimball Coach Royce “Snoop” Johnson, who was fired in the…
Boston is the smartest large city in the United States, according to a new study from New Geography. Dallas did not fare nearly as well. The numbers behind the rankings are straightforward. Weight is given to the number of college graduates in each of the Census Bureau’s Metropolitan Statistical Areas…
Duncanville ISD thought it was getting a great deal when, one year ago this month, it switched electric providers and signed on with the State Power Program through the state’s General Land Office. Just like that, Duncanville ISD’s price-per-kilowatt hour dropped almost 20 percent, from 7.3 cents to a maximum…
On Tuesday, the State Board of Education met for the final hearing on the adoption of new social studies textbooks. The board intended to cast the first vote on the textbooks, with the final vote scheduled for Friday. But after hours of impassioned testimony from both the right and the…
Last week, Highland Park ISD released its updated high school reading list. The list provided titles required for in-class reading, optional outside reading and the passive aggressive list of “approved” but not taught in the classroom reading. Students will have to get parental permission to read six books on the…
Vinita Hegwood, the Duncanville High School English teacher whose profane tweet aimed at “dumb duck ass crackers” went viral on conservative social media, has resigned, she announced Thursday afternoon. Hegwood was suspended without pay in anticipation of her being fired after her Friday night tweet went viral…
