Dallas ISD Board Votes Not to Fire Rosemont Elementary Principal

The Dallas ISD School Board saved Anna Brining Monday afternoon. Brining, the principal at Rosemont Elementary school in North Oak Cliff, is popular with parents. When Dallas ISD Superintendent Mike Miles said he wasn't going to renew her contract at the end of the year, parents protested and some even thought Eric Cowan, Rosemont's board trustee, might join with the anti-Miles faction on the board and vote to fire the superintendent. Cowan didn't do that, but Monday he did vote with the anti-Miles contingent to save the jobs of three principals, including Brining, that Miles wanted to get rid off.

Cowan, Bernadette Nutall, Joyce Foreman, Elizabeth Jones and Lew Blackburn voted to keep Brining, Joy Morris at Wilmer-Hutchins Elementary and Dinnah Escanilla at North Dallas High.

Miles spoke out before the vote, saying his decision wasn't about the adults involved, but the kids who attend their schools.

"I haven't met a bad person yet," he said of the district's principals, "but I have met ones who cannot do the best job for our kids."

Miles went on the say that once the board acts as it did today, it's impossible to know where it would stop. Things could go wrong fast, he said.

The superintendent isn't without recourse. His contract allows him full discretion to place Brining, Morris and Escanilla at any school he chooses, or no school at all.