Back to the Dallas Independent School District trustees’ to-do list for Thursday …Like I said, lots of interesting stuff there, beginning at the top of the briefing agenda: “Discussion of 2010-2011 Repurposing Plans for Academically Unacceptable (AU4) Schools.” That AU4 refers to schools that have been on the academically unacceptable…
Lots of interesting items to be found on the Dallas Independent School District board of trustees’ briefing agenda for Thursday, and we’ll get to ’em in short order — which is to say, in the order the phone calls are returned on the myriad subjects of interest. But let’s begin…
Tony Fiorillo curates the Dallas Museum of Nature and Science’s paleontology collection, and he’s spent every summer since 1998 in Alaska, studying dinosaurs’ tracks and bones. It wasn’t till last year that he seriously considered all their crap. Fiorillo’s also an adjunct professor at SMU, and his work’s been featured…
A fellow Thomas Jefferson High School grad forwards along this brief interview KERA-FM’s Bill Zeeble did with former Dallas Independent School District Superintendent Linus Wright, who’s now one of Governor Rick Perry’s appointees to the Teacher Retirement System of Texas’s board of trustees. In the clip, Wright suggests that when…
A subscription-only piece in the Bond Buyer this morning directs our attention to S.B. 272, which was introduced December 17 by state Sen. Judith Zaffirini, a D from Laredo. The proposed legislation would authorize the issuance of $3.2 billion in tuition-backed revenue bonds to fund what Zaffirini calls in a…
Here you’ll find a list of how many slots are available at each of the Dallas Independent School District’s elementary vanguards, middle-school academies and magnet high schools for the 2011-’21 school year. Might wanna glance at it, hard, if you’re trying to get the wee one into one of the…
While they were busy voting not to extend their term lengths last Thursday, the Dallas Independent School District board of trustees also made the call to extend the district’s partnership with Teach for America, on the heels of the glowing review they heard of TFA’s first year-and-a-half here so far…
Back in August we sneak-peeked the Dallas Independent School District’s new-n-improved school menus, which offer a few more healthier alternatives than in recent years. But the district has long said this is just the beginning of the beginning, pointing to the passage of the $4.5-billion Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act of…
Texas Comptroller Susan Combs was at the University of Texas at Dallas today, where she unveiled the state’s Financial Allocation Study for Texas website, which measures how well the state’s school district’s spend their dough. Dallas ISD only got two stars out of a possible five on the overall chart,…
And his name is Alan King. My mom’ll be thrilled — she’s a big fan of the late comic. Ah, wait. Wrong one, of course. No, this is the current deputy superintendent of the Lewisville Independent School District, who replaces the headin’-back-to-Austin Larry Throm. Before he was up in Lewisville,…
Before the first bell rings this morning, this inspirational moment … Perhaps you recall: Back in October, 16-year-old Amy Chyao, a junior at Plano’s Williams High School, was among the whiz kids invited to the White House to show-and-tell their science projects to President Obama. Chyao’s science project involved eradicating…
Speaking of historic landmarks …For more than a year, the Dallas Independent School District has been fighting the Landmark Commission to keep Adamson High School from being designated as a city landmark — so much so that in September ’09, the board passed a resolution that said, in part, “any…
We already know where Dallas Independent School District trustee Carla Ranger stands on extending DISD trustees’ terms from three years to four. (She’s very against it.) But moments ago, as the board finally got ’round to discussing the subject, District 9 trustee Bernadette Nutall made her case against extending the…
Last week we noted: Tomorrow at 5:30 p.m. at Dallas Independent School District HQ, the school board’s set to hear how the public feels about extending trustees’ terms from three to four years. You got something to say on the subject, now’s the time to sign up — deadline’s 5…
It’s déjà vu all over again as, once more, the Dallas Independent School District board of trustees is set to take up the issue of giving a raise to its chief academic officer. That’s only the third time in less than two years this issue’s come up. Perhaps you call…
Four months back, Dallas Independent School District trustee Carla Ranger directed our attention to a a study by UT-Austin Assistant Professor of Educational Policy and Planning Julian Vasquez Heilig that questioned whether Highland Park High School grad Wendy Kopp’s Teach for America was the success story it claims. Ranger also…
Remember two years ago, when there was all that ruckus over Dallas Independent School District trustees trying to extend their terms — from three years to four? But a single trustee said: No way, no how. (Right — it was Carla Ranger.) And remember how, in April 2009, Texas Attorney…
When we first looked at the Dallas Independent School District’s proposed anti-bullying policy one month ago, it was a brief two-page document intended, as trustee Edwin Flores said at the time, to be more “comprehensive” than the existing student code of conduct. But for some, the so-called “Freedom of Bullying”…
The Dallas Bar Association’s eighth annual Community Symposium for Justice in Education is ongoing today at the Belo Mansion, but a break for lunch offered a chance for Dallas Independent School District Superintendent Michael Hinojosa to share his thoughts on the state of things. The reason the district was in…
Nate Newton has lost almost 200 pounds. His son, Tre, has lost his interest in playing football. Tre, a running back at Texas, decided this week to give up football in part because of numerous concussions. The sophomore missed last week’s loss to Oklahoma State after sustaining a concussion in a loss…
Bike-riding the few blocks to F.P. Caillet Elementary back in the day was certainly no big deal — it certainly wasn’t revolutionary, it certainly wasn’t news. It’s how we got to school. Flash-forward three decades, and our neighborhood — same one in which I grew up — stages a Bike…
Back in February, we took a long, hard look at the 107-year-old Davy Crockett School on Carroll Avenue, a designated city historic landmark since 1993. Long story short: The Dallas Independent School District shipped its students to Ignacio Zaragoza Elementary in ’89, repurposed the building as administrative offices, and, about…
