Mayor Tom Leppert To Texas Tribune: Education is City’s “Achilles’ Heel”

As a Friend of Unfair Park points out below, Mayor Tom Leppert speaks today to Emily Ramshaw, the former Morning News-er, now with the Texas Tribune. It’s only a brief audio interview — a little shorter than nine minutes — and he doesn’t say anything particularly shocking: Crime’s down, and things are looking up! He does, however, revisit one familiar theme: The Dallas Independent School District had better get its stuff together.

Leppert, the former CEO of Turner Construction, says despite the progress Dallas has made on crime, on green building, on revitalizing downtown, the city is falling way, way short on education. “The public schools, to be fair, they have made some improvements. But they’ve got to get a whole lot better.” he says. “[E]ducation is the one piece that really sits out there.”

But he says the city has made great strides reassuring voters that the corruption scandal, which has already netted several convictions, is long gone: “I think people have understood that and taken it to heart.” At the same time, he says, “there were some holes we had to fill” to prevent future ethical lapses.