Big weekend planned on the SMU campus, where Laura Bush will deliver the commencement address Saturday morning at Moody Coliseum to the some 2,000 Mustangs escaping the Hilltop. But in advance of the weekend shindig, there are tomorrow’s honorary degree recipients symposia featuring some fairly bold-faced names: Harold W. Attridge,…
Tonight, of course, is the Dallas Independent School District board of trustees’ called board meeting, at which the board will discuss and approve campus staffing formulas for the 2009-’10 school year; Schutze is attending, but of course. But at this very moment is the lengthy warm-up: a regular ol’ board…
Late into last night, there erupted at the bottom of Schutze’s Tuesday post — concerning the Dallas Independent School District board’s threat to needlessly gut the magnets and learning centers — a discussion about “commitments and covenants.” Those are what the district adopted in ’03 to get out from under…
Observer theater critic and Theater Jones’ing Elaine Liner passes along this photo, taken yesterday at the school where I spent a thousand Saturdays playing soccer as a kid. But, c’mon, that is how you pronounce it, no?…
As of this afternoon, we’ve got 50-plus good reasons why we run comments on Unfair Park. They’re affixed to Jim’s Friday-evening item concerning the potential fate of DISD’s magnet schools and learning centers. Jim and I marveled throughout the weekend at the quantity and quality of the comments, many of…
When last we left the Dallas Independent School District board of trustees yesterday, they had come back from their closed-door meeting and presented two options to deal with the Texas Attorney General’s opinion concerning the extension of terms from three to four years: special elections or appointments to fill the…
Dallas Independent School District spokesman Jon Dahlander just called Unfair Park back to explain the figure on Page 14 of the summary of staffing formulas at DISD campuses for the 2009-’10 school year being discussed by trustees today. And while it looks as though the Booker T. Washington High School…
As I noted, earlier Jim’s at 3700 Ross Avenue, where, at this very moment, the board of trustees is behind closed doors, no doubt arguing over the ramifications of the Texas Attorney General’s opinion that the trustees should not have extended their terms from three years to four last November…
Last week, the Texas Attorney General’s Office offered its opinion that the Dallas Independent School District’s board of trustees “was not authorized to change the length of its members’ terms of office” from three to four years last November. Which has prompted a called board meeting at 3:30 p.m. tomorrow,…
“Bummer.” That’s how Dallas Independent School District board trustee Edwin Flores initially responded yesterday when Unfair Park asked for comment concerning the Texas Attorney General’s opinion yesterday that the board “was not authorized to change the length of its members’ terms of office” from three to four years last November…
For weeks at the end of 2008, Dallas Independent School District trustee Carla Ranger insisted the DISD board of trustees’ decision to extend its term limits from three to four years was illegal. She posted to her blog items in which she wrote that the decision to do so “was…
Just got off the phone with Dallas Independent School District spokesman Jon Dahlander, who, moments ago, announced that the district is closing Daniel Webster Elementary from tomorrow till May 11 due to one confirmed case of the swine flu at that campus. (It will remain open throughout today to accomodate…
See our slideshow for more photos from Woodrow’s 80th.Out in front of Woodrow Wilson High School Saturday morning, Tom Hopkins sat on the back of his ’57 Corvette, watching the parade roll in. The 1968 graduate had the look of someone well trained in the art of leaning on his…
The home page for Diandra Leslie-Pelecky’s research group in the Department of Physics at The University of Texas at Dallas isn’t altogether exciting — though, late some nights, I will feel absolutely qualified to discuss the studying of nanostructured magnetic materials to understand their fundamental properties, as well as potential…
More than a few Woodrow Wilson High School Wildcats have sent reminders in recent days that Saturday marks the landmark’s 80th birthday: The day starts with a 10 a.m. parade from the Lakewood Shopping Plaza to the city-designated landmark and ends with a battle-of-the-bands shindig at Eddie Dean’s. And somewhere…
On Monday, we noted that the Royal Lane-based Institute for Creation Research filed a mammoth lawsuit in Dallas federal court in which it alleges that the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board violated its constitutional rights when denying its application to offer master’s degrees in science last year. Today, the ICR…
This morning, Dallas Independent School District board trustee Carla Ranger posted to her blog a letter from a district teacher who’s terrified that the DISD’s going to use the Classroom Effectiveness Index to clean house. This teacher must be among the some 700 who Tawnell Hobbs writes received letters from…
Yesterday, Tawnell Hobbs summarized the debate over the fate of the Dallas Independent School District’s learning centers, created by court order in the 1980s to “return disadvantaged, inner-city, minority students to their neighborhood schools and provide quality educational programs with supplementary funds,” as the district’s Web site puts it. District…
First Dallas Independent School District watchdog Allen Gwinn suggests he’s shuttin’ ‘er down — come 2010, maybe, “then it’s somebody else’s problem” — and now this: Kent Fischer, one of two education beat writers at The Dallas Morning News, just announced publicly the resignation he gave his bosses on Monday…
Allen Gwinn’s taken a sneak peek at the Dallas Independent School District board of trustees’ briefing agenda for Thursday, and one item in particular struck him as … well, interesting. Which is: Ratification of Authority to Execute Master Lease Agreement with Dell, Inc. for Sixty Months and Provide for Subsequent…
For those who missed it on Friday, SMU president R. Gerald Turner announced, via a statement posted on the university’s Web site, that the school’s endowment has taken a significant hit in recent months: “a total decline of 25% from July 1 – February 28,” he wrote in a letter…
Last night at Thomas C. Marsh Middle School, Dallas Independent School District Superintendent Michael Hinojosa and school board trustee Edwin Flores took their show back on the road and hosted yet another town hall meeting, following last month’s what-up-y’all at W.T. White High School. And, yet again, Hinojosa was affable…
