Deion Sanders overlooked the crowd from his seat at a long table, positioned in front of the altar at Charity Church in East Fort Worth at last night’s town hall meeting for his latest venture, Prime Prep Academy, a charter school he says will have campuses in both Fort Worth…
The Dallas City Council council didn’t waste much time getting ’round to the most eagerly awaited showdown of the day: Item No. 53 on its agenda, which creates that nonprofit that would allow Uplift Education to some $85 million in low-interest-rate bonds. As city Chief Financial Officer Jeanne Chipperfield told…
Speaking of the Dallas Independent School District’s doings … No doubt you recall the ugly allegations that came out of Ebby Halliday Elementary School in the fall, stories of abuse and intimidation that resulted in principal Kamalia Cotton going to another campus (Phillis Wheatley Elementary School) while furious parents demanded…
On the other side is a missive I just received from Dallas Independent School District board member Edwin Flores, in which the longtime District 1 trustee announces that he will not seek another term. I asked Flores why not — if, maybe, this had something to do with the furor…
In May we hopped about this ad-adorned Dallas County Schools bus, one of many so decorated courtesy an ad agency specializing in school-bus advertising (hence the name of its website). As Dallas Independent School District spokesman Jon Dahlander explained at the time, the district contracts with Dallas County Schools to…
In November The News broke the news that Roslyn Carter, the principal at Tom Field Elementary, took teaching to the test a little too far — at least, according to Dallas Independent School District investigators. Acting on anonymous tips, the district says it discovered that Carter told her third-grade science,…
Edwin Flores said it a couple of weeks back: The Dallas Independent School District has a communications problem. Which is one way of putting it — the nice way of putting it. And so, following months’ worth of dust-ups and screw-ups involving school closures and longer teacher workdays and suspended…
Container Store co-founder Garrett Boone and the Star Employee Commission told the Dallas ISD trustees last month that the HR department was … how did they put it … well, let’s just go with completely, totally and utterly effed. (Look, my kid reads Unfair Park, all right?) And they offered…
This was a good day — such days do occur — to study democracy in action at Dallas City Hall. The city council engaged in a smart debate on a proposal to help a charter school organization sell bonds to build more charter schools. The mayor and council decided not…
Earlier today Rudy posted an explainer to the City Hall blog about those so-called “conduit bonds” Uplift Education hopes to sell with City Hall’s backing. But long story short, per a Los Angeles Times piece last year, they “allow private entities to tap into low-cost municipal bond financing for projects…
We started this morning by noting Brett Shipp’s piece from last night suggesting the Texas Education Agency is threatening to withhold Dallas ISD from close to $80 million in federal funds birthed by No Child Left Behind. The reason, says Commissioner of Education Robert Scott: Only 40 students out of…
The Texas Education Agency released its federally mandated, No Child Left Behind-backed Adequate Yearly Progress report back in August, at which point it was revealed that the Dallas Independent School District missed the mark for the third consecutive year — which interim superintendent Alan King blamed on the “annual ratcheting…
We first touched on this back in June — the possibility that the Dallas Independent School District might turn its schools and buses into billboards, because, hey, every penny counts these days. And while, oh, Morgan Spurlock might think it’s a terrible idea (“Are we going to live in a…
For the last few months I’ve been on my son’s school’s Site Based Decision Making Committee, as one of the Dad’s Club reps, and last week was our first discussion about something that’s been a topic of conversation at 3700 Ross for a good long while: the district’s in-the-works teacher…
One week ago tonight I was at Thomas C. Marsh Middle School for my son’s elementary-school talent show; those kids play the big room. We’re in the Matadors’ feeder pattern, and plenty of neighbors and friends send their kids to Marsh, which has made significant strides in recent years –…
Below is a missive just dispatched to Unfair Park: Dallas Independent School District trustee Edwin Flores’s “Open Letter of Apology” — to Central Elementary fourth-grade bilingual teacher Joseph Drake, who was put on leave after he sent Flores a fist-shaking letter concerning 45 minutes added to teachers’ workdays, and to…
Only yesterday we were wondering during a staff meeting whatever became of Roslyn Carter, the principal at Tom Field Elementary who, as The Dallas Morning News reported in November, phonied up science and social studies grades for her third-graders because, well, they never actually had science or social studies classes…
But a few hours ago, Rena Honea, president of AFT-Alliance, held a press conference and posted this petition demanding the Dallas Independent School District reinstate fourth-grade Central Elementary bilingual teacher Joseph Drake, who was put on leave late last week after he sent trustee Edwin Flores an angry email regarding…
In the end, of course, the commenter was right: They took it easy on Edwin Flores last night at E.L. DeGolyer Elementary — mighty easy. The audience was small, equal parts critics and cheerleaders; the faces, familiar — Michael MacNaughton, Bill Betzen, one-time school board candidate Kyle Renard, newly announced…
Anna’s attending tonight’s meeting of Deep Ellum property owners and city officials concerning Uplift Education’s latest charter school — which, Uplift CEO Yasmin Bhatia just told me, is very definitely going to take the former Baylor building on Elm Street. As Bhatia put it: “All systems go” for an August…
Edwin Flores’s appearance at E.L. DeGolyer Elementary has been on the schedule for quite a while; says the invite, the Dallas Independent School District trustee’s scheduled to speak about “the state of the district and superintendent search.” I expect that’s not all he’ll be asked to address.But where to begin?…
At the beginning of the Dallas ISD trustees’ long day’s journey into night, I dialed up the back-and-forth over the superintendent search, as the board at long last debated what makes a super super. That video’s archived here. And it was intriguing too, a peek into the thought processes of…
