Show me a silver lining, I will find you a cloud. From 2014 to last year, the Dallas public school system became a state leader and role model for its ability to turn around failing schools. That’s the silver lining. The cloud is what happened next. As soon as the…
The Dallas Morning News editorial page is schizzy. Most of the time, it’s pretty smart, even measured and thoughtful, at least on local non-partisan issues. But every fifth Thursday or something, a whole different crazy newspaper appears on my lawn. Right toe forward, hands on the hips of its checkered…
The Dallas County Community College District will seek approval from its accreditor later this year to merge its seven schools into one in an effort to help more students graduate. Joe May, the district chancellor, said he was motivated to pursue the change after realizing that thousands of students were being…
Baylor University’s athletic department is having a banner winter. Its football team, two years removed from a 1-11 season, finished 11-3 and made appearances in both the Big 12 Championship Game and the Sugar Bowl. Its men’s basketball team is No. 1 in the country, according to the Associated Press…
Last week, a day before candidate filing opened for the upcoming school board election, East Dallas/Love Field Dallas board member Miguel Solis announced he will not seek reelection. His public statement maintained a certain aura of mystery. He didn’t announce new plans. It was sort of like, “And now my…
We struggle, strive, scrape our shins and freeze our toes to see what’s on top of the cliff of urban poverty. Once up there, we all see the same thing. And we all shrug and say, “I am not seeing this.” What we don’t want to see is race. More…
A former University of Texas at Arlington student is suing the university’s chapter of the Sigma Chi fraternity, saying fraternity members forced him to drink Jack Daniel’s Tennessee Honey until he blacked out during a hazing ritual. Plaintiff Roc Riner suffered serious injuries and received treatment for alcohol poisoning at…
Thousands of people, as we’ve reported and a few Texas politicians have lamented, come to North Texas from California every year. On arrival, they have to deal with the heat, higher property taxes and a political climate they may or may not welcome, but they get not having a state…
In 2016, when students at South Oak Cliff High School staged a walkout to protest the shabby conditions at the aging campus, Tyesha Brown was right there with them. Brown, then a freshman, didn’t want the school remodeled. Like many students at the time, she wanted it torn down and…
A national civil rights group is asking a Texas court to rule against an anti-affirmative action organization that’s seeking to have the University of Texas’ admissions policy declared unlawful. The Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, a Washington-based nonprofit, filed a petition in intervention last week in Students for…
A group of 16 law professors from Texas universities were among hundreds of legal scholars who signed an open letter stating President Donald Trump has “engaged in impeachable conduct.” The letter, which was addressed to Congress, was posted Friday on Medium. In the letter, the legal experts say they take…
In a casual conversation about suburban public schools and ethnic diversity recently, I noticed that the person with whom I was chatting did not believe the presence of Asian American students in a school system should be counted toward diversity. In fact, she sort of felt it worked the other…
For decades, American colleges and universities have seen attracting students from overseas as a benefit for both sides — those students bring diverse viewpoints and backgrounds, as well as tuition dollars, to American schools. In return, they go home with an education and work experience that could put them ahead…
In 2017, art teacher Stacy Bailey spent the first day of class introducing herself to her students at Charlotte Anderson Elementary School in Arlington. She flipped through a slideshow of pictures of her family, which included a photo of Bailey and her fiancée making fish faces while dressed as Finding…
It’s too soon to say for sure, but at least so far it doesn’t look as if impeachment will push the 2020 presidential vote tally very far in either direction. But impeachment still seems to push every other story off the table, including one, school reform, that may offer a…
In a neighborhood with problems, the last thing anybody needed was a big, bad abandoned building. Something like that is a scary billboard warning people away. All the more appalling for the owner of it to have been the public school system, whose No. 1 priority ought to have been…
We must knock wood and throw salt over our shoulders. Don’t say anything to mess it up. But the Dallas public school system, already an unheralded center of innovation, may also be emerging as an unheralded beacon of stability. And the unheralded part — no New York Times stories, no 60 Minutes…
University of North Texas officials are condemning a university system attorney’s use of a racial slur during a campus forum on First Amendment protections Thursday evening. Caitlin Sewell, assistant general council for the UNT System, used the word as an example of protected speech during a panel discussion titled “When…
A Baylor University professor is apologizing to students this week after a guest speaker in his class promoted conversion therapy during his presentation. During a Tuesday session of professor Lewis Lummer’s American Sign Language III class, the Rev. Jari Saavalainen, pastor of a deaf church near Chicago, gave a guest…
On the first day back in class after a tornado tore through North Dallas and left her school in shambles, the list of things algebra teacher Kristen Dale’s classroom didn’t have was quite a bit longer than the list of things it did. It had about a half-dozen circular tables,…
At a little after 9 a.m. Wednesday, Kristen Dale was walking the halls of Thomas Edison Middle Learning Center in West Dallas, stopping groups of kids as they passed. Where are you headed? Do you know where you’re going? she asked. Some of them, being teenagers, tried to blow her…
Something important in local education has happened over the last few days, a story that has already slipped beneath the wave of tornado news. It is worth noting as both a harbinger of progress and a very depressing reminder why progress comes hard. Dallas school Superintendent Michael Hinojosa has announced…
