The 2017-18 flu season, according to both experts and rising death tolls around North Texas, is one of the worst of the last two decades. In Dallas County alone, 54 people have died from the flu. As the flu season continues to take its toll on DFW, schools around the…
Dallas County Commissioners Court refused a request for cash from Dallas Mayor Mike Rawlings on Tuesday, turning down the mayor’s plea for $1.2 million to help the city make up the costs of the school crossing guard program that fell into Dallas’ lap after voters decided to disband Dallas County…
Mike Morath inherited one of the toughest jobs in Texas when Gov. Greg Abbott appointed him Texas education commissioner in 2015. At the time, he was a Dallas ISD trustee known for his reform work. Dallas Mayor Mike Rawlings and Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick praised Morath’s ability to lead…
Less than a month after U.S. Rep. Pete Session voted for the GOP’s sweeping overhaul of the federal tax system, the Dallas congressman pushed back Thursday on one of the bill’s most controversial provisions, asking his colleagues in the House to dump a provision that could cost U.S. university students…
If a former FBI agent now working as an investigator completes a months-long probe of a local unit of government and says in his final report that Larry Duncan, the top elected official and a well-known political figure in the city, may be guilty of bribery, is that not a…
Here’s a decent little window on the wars within our sprawling urban school district right now. The big news is stunning. The small news is infuriating. A couple of weeks ago Dallas school district executives gave the board of trustees a full hard-numbers briefing on outcomes from the district’s 3-year-old…
The University of Texas at Arlington is one bout away from scoring its first major championship in front of a roaring crowd in a Las Vegas stadium. The only things standing in its way are the best and the brightest from Louisiana State University and their offensive line of deadly assassins…
Dallas County voters cast ballots Tuesday to kill a school district — kill a school district — by a margin of almost 17 percentage points. What does that mean? All right, you and I know the backstory on this particular so-called school district — not a real school district, quarter-million-dollar…
Wednesday’s cold, rainy morning was busy as usual for Dallas ISD and all of its students who take buses to get to school. But the nine school districts that receive bus service from Dallas County Schools will have to find new transportation after voters’ Tuesday night decision to shut down…
In a little less than a week, Texas voters will head to the polls to cast their off-year ballots, filled with important if uninspiring items like bond elections and amendments to the state constitution. For Dallas County voters, perhaps the most contentious item on offer asks whether Dallas County Schools…
You and I will be asked to vote Nov. 7 on killing the Dallas County school district, or Dallas County Schools, as it calls itself. The proposition is to let DCS “continue,” or stay alive. To kill it, you have to vote against. In the drumbeat of bad stories over…
When the 2018-2019 school year kicks off next August, four Dallas elementary schools will sport new names, thanks to a vote by Dallas ISD Board of Trustees. Thursday night, the board voted 9-0 to require that schools named for Albert Sidney Johnston, Stonewall Jackson, William L. Cabell and Robert E. Lee,…
First thing you probably will have to do, if you even hope to understand what’s going on these days in the Dallas public school district, is turn most of your assumptions upside down. On Aug. 17, the three African-American members on the Dallas school board voted to kill two tax…
Eric Hauser, author of The Adventures of Pepe and Pede, won’t be keeping any of the meager profits reaped from his book. Hauser, a former Denton ISD assistant principal, released his book Aug. 1. Its themes and imagery — which include Pepe, a frog, and Pede, a centipede, draining the…
How times have changed.The worst threat posed to poor minority kids in Dallas once came from a callous white leadership. Now poor and minority kids get shafted by a callous black Southern Dallas leadership that cares more about preserving its good-old-boy political patronage system. You may not agree with me…
The story of the 1988 Carter High School Cowboys is tough to get right. There are so many moving parts — one of the most talented high school football teams in history, a school fighting for a new grading system that leads to an eligibility scandal and a group of…
Denton ISD removed Eric Hauser — the Rodriguez Middle School assistant principal who courted controversy last week after the release of his self-published children’s book, The Adventures of Pepe and Pede — from his post Monday afternoon. Hauser is being reassigned to an unannounced role with the district because of the…
If I utter one single encouraging word about charter schools, I get this instantaneous backlash from people, many of them friends, insisting that charter schools are part of an elitist plot to undermine and one day do away with public school education and, by the way, I am an idiot…
The school reform issue ought to split up conservatives as badly as it does liberals. But it doesn’t. I can’t figure that out. No matter which side looks at it, school reform turns on the same fundamental question: Can a poor, minority kid from a chaotic background be as smart…
Yesterday, Dana Goldstein, who covers a lot of things for The New York Times, including education, took note of Dallas schools in a story about reform efforts here, calling Dallas, “a national leader in trying to figure out how to encourage students of all backgrounds to willingly go to school…
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott ensured Thursday afternoon that Dallas County voters will have the final say on the fate of Dallas County Schools, the bureaucracy that doesn’t operate any schools but only provides bus service. The school district is a relic of a time when countywide districts, rather than city…
Lots of people I know wish they could do a celebratory victory dance in front of City Hall today over the outcomes in Saturday’s local runoff elections, especially the surprising defenestration of three City Council incumbents favored by the mayor and The Dallas Morning News. It’s amazing. I not only…
