This morning, Dallas Independent School District board trustee Carla Ranger posted to her blog a letter from a district teacher who’s terrified that the DISD’s going to use the Classroom Effectiveness Index to clean house. This teacher must be among the some 700 who Tawnell Hobbs writes received letters from…
Yesterday, Tawnell Hobbs summarized the debate over the fate of the Dallas Independent School District’s learning centers, created by court order in the 1980s to “return disadvantaged, inner-city, minority students to their neighborhood schools and provide quality educational programs with supplementary funds,” as the district’s Web site puts it. District…
First Dallas Independent School District watchdog Allen Gwinn suggests he’s shuttin’ ‘er down — come 2010, maybe, “then it’s somebody else’s problem” — and now this: Kent Fischer, one of two education beat writers at The Dallas Morning News, just announced publicly the resignation he gave his bosses on Monday…
Allen Gwinn’s taken a sneak peek at the Dallas Independent School District board of trustees’ briefing agenda for Thursday, and one item in particular struck him as … well, interesting. Which is: Ratification of Authority to Execute Master Lease Agreement with Dell, Inc. for Sixty Months and Provide for Subsequent…
For those who missed it on Friday, SMU president R. Gerald Turner announced, via a statement posted on the university’s Web site, that the school’s endowment has taken a significant hit in recent months: “a total decline of 25% from July 1 – February 28,” he wrote in a letter…
Last night at Thomas C. Marsh Middle School, Dallas Independent School District Superintendent Michael Hinojosa and school board trustee Edwin Flores took their show back on the road and hosted yet another town hall meeting, following last month’s what-up-y’all at W.T. White High School. And, yet again, Hinojosa was affable…
Back in June, the Dallas Independent School District board of trustees voted not to name the district’s Ross Ave. HQ for former school board president Kathlyn Gilliam, despite the protesters at their front door. The polarizing Gilliam, who served on the school board from 1974 till she was replaced by…
Dallas Independent School District school board trustee Carla Ranger returned from the superintendent’s weekend “retreat” to post the rules concerning how the board fills a trustee’s seat (i.e., special election or appointment) should he or she leave before a term is up. Among the procedures: “If less than nine (9)…
Several neighbors and friends of the show attended yesterday’s public hearing of the Texas State Board of Education down in Austin in advance of today’s evolution vs. creationism vote — which ended in a 7-7 draw, meaning the board will not add, at the moment, language that requires public schools…
I was glancing at the Dallas Independent School District board of trustees’ meeting agenda for Thursday when I espied this intriguing item: Acceptance of Donation from United Way of Metropolitan Dallas in the Amount of $1,005,000 to Support Destination: Graduation. Seems awfully generous, which is why I called United Way…
A Friend of Unfair Park who teaches in the Dallas Independent School District directs our attention to school board trustee Carla Ranger’s blog, because we missed last night’s post concerning a proposal to trim teachers’ minimum contracts from two years to one. (The max, incidentally, appears to be five.) Writes…
Don McLeroy, a Republican dentist from Bryan, is the chair of the Texas State Board of Education. He’s also a book critic: Over the weekend, an indie book publisher posted his recommendation of Robert Bowie Johnson Jr.’s new book Sowing Atheism: The National Academy Of Sciences’ Sinister Scheme To Teach…
Till late last week, the formerly prolific Carla Ranger hadn’t posted to her blog for most of 2009. But the Dallas Independent School District board member has returned, and today she points our attention to state Rep. Yvonne Davis’s H.B. 3532 introduced late last week, which calls for “the abolition…
Reason senior editor Jacob Sullum, who has a daughter in kindergarten in the Dallas Independent School District, has a big ol’ problem with, at the very least, this part of President Barack Obama’s speech on education delivered earlier this week:That’s why I’m calling for us not only to expand effective…
Till Mayor Tom Leppert decides to talk for himself about his thinking about maybe one day possibly taking over the Dallas Independent School District we’ll see not sure for sure who knows, it’s all one big guessing game. Which doesn’t stop the Dallas mayor’s name from appearing in this morning’s…
John Wiley Price said recently he’d like the Dallas Independent School District to rename North Dallas High School in honor of Judge Harold Barefoot Sanders, among the school’s most famous grads. And if that doesn’t happen, well, Price has a number of other facilities from which to choose: The DISD…
It was the last question of the night: “What do you think of the mayor’s concept for taking over the Dallas Independent School District?” The audience, consisting of only a few folks scattered throughout the W.T. White High School auditorium last night, let out a collective giggle. DISD Superintendent Michael…
By now, perhaps, you’ve read that some $104,070,000 of the nearly $800 billion stimulus package will wind up in the pockets of the Dallas Independent School District. (If your kids aren’t in the DISD, you can see how your district fared in the sweepstakes by checking out this site; Plano,…
Dallas school board trustee Ron Price made it official at 3:44 p.m. on January 30, when he turned into the City Secretary’s Office paperwork announcing that he’s running for Carolyn Davis’s District 7 seat on the Dallas City Council. (Ex-City Manager Richard Knight Jr., now in the waste disposal business,…
On this (overhyped?) National Letter of Intent Signing Day, high schoolers all over the country chose which school they’d be suiting up for next. For some, it was as simple as faxing in a signed letter (a mighty challenge in its own right), but for the Dallas Independent School District’s…
A Friend of Unfair Park and fellow Dallas Independent School District parent directed my attention to the Web site of DISD trustee Lew Blackburn, which isn’t nearly as provocative as Carla Ranger’s — though, of late, she’s been sadly absent from the Internets save for mention of the 10th Anniversary…
Yesterday was the deadline for “interested parties” to send to the Office of the Attorney General of Texas briefs concerning the Dallas Independent School District board of trustee’s vote to extend their term limits from three to four years. Carla Ranger, of course, is the only trustee against the extension,…
