News & Notes: Test Scores, Grocery Stores, Modano a Red Wing? and a Peek at the Plans for the Continental Building

A few items of interest with which to belatedly kick off your work week (lucky):

On Thursday we noted that Dallas Independent School Board trustee Carla Ranger has found a new obsession: banishing the minimum-grade policy that disallows teachers from handing out grades lower than 50. This morning, she continues her crusade by publishing a letter Texas Education Agency Commissioner Robert Scott sent to school-district administrators in October 2009, in which he wrote that school district grading policies "may not require a classroom teacher to assign a minimum grade for an assignment without regard to the student's quality of work."

Between that and a judge's ruling last week, writes Ranger, "this means that Dallas ISD has now operated with a minimum grading system that has violated the 2009 state law for all of the last school year and the same policy will continue in 2010-2011 -- unless the Board of Trustees acts at the August Board meeting to remove all minimum 50 grade requirements from Board Policy EIA (Local)." This should get interesting ...

GlobeSt.com takes a look at the proliferation of grocery stores in the DFW -- from that Natural Grocers going into the old Whole Foods in Preston Forest to a Sprouts Farmers Market in Fort Worth to an Aldi on every block. The reason for the spread? Simple. "Population growth translates into opportunity: more mouths to feed." ...

Mike Modano's taking in a Detroit Tigers game today ... in Detroit. "We badly want him," Red Wings senior vice president Jimmy Devellano tells the Free Press in advance of Mo's trip up north. Which won't be quite as bad as seeing Tony Dorsett in a Broncos jersey in '88. But, still ...

And, finally, the city's Landmark Commission gets a look at Forest City's plans for the Continental Building downtown. You can sneak a peak, sans drawings, right here. Couple of things to note: Forest City wants to replace all the "historic" windows with ones that actually, you know, open. And: "new patio/amenity area." Also on the agenda: a glimpse at those Fair Park Band Shell seat-number tags. I am strangely excited by this development.