Texas’ State Board of Education no longer has the stranglehold on textbooks it did a dozen years ago, when it forced an environmental science textbook to include skeptical language on global warming, or four years ago, when an attempt to slip creationist language into science books sparked a national uproar,…
It was a lovely idea, trading in the lumbering yellow school buses for minivans, sedans and Suburbans on routes with just a handful of students, thereby reducing fuel consumption and saving money. The problem with Dallas ISD’s recent adoption of the plan is twofold: Parents, through some mix of aesthetics…
Alif Laam Meem — or, for those who prefer fraternities to go by a Greek acronym, Alpha Lambda Mu — first blipped across the national radar this past spring when they attended Mayor Mike Rawlings’ anti-domestic-violence rally outside City Hall. A photo the group posted to Facebook showing members holding…
Stanford Hill’s glory days as a Dallas ISD basketball coach are now officially behind him. After winning a state title with Roosevelt in 2006, he moved to Skyline. During his tenure the team sunk from near dominance to mediocrity, posting a losing record in the 2012-13 season and barely sneaking…
When Mike Miles announced a month ago that his wife and son were headed back to Colorado Springs, the question of whether Miles himself would soon join them was unavoidable. It would at least have been understandable given the shellacking he’s endured over the past year and a half. But…
There are plenty of examples in Texas of some poor middle schooler getting a ticket for chewing gum at school, or nodding off in class, or wearing too much perfume, or something similarly outrageous. But to those pushing to reform the way school discipline is meted out in the state,…
Even when the USDA rolled out the new, healthier, Michelle Obama-approved version of the National School Lunch Program last year, there were grumblings. Kids complained that the new menu, which includes generous helpings of fruits and vegetables while capping meat, carbohydrates, and overall caloric intake, has “ruined school lunches” and…
Dallas ISD warned parents that it might not be a yellow school bus picking up their kids at their stops on the first day of school Monday morning. Smaller routes, like those serving magnets, would be served by a contractor, which promised to shuttle students in a van, SUVs or…
On Monday, the same day a big new elementary school re-opened in Jubilee Park, a woman who lives near the school called us from the hospital. She said her husband was recovering from a heart attack. “He’s been kind of a silent partner with this fight,” Norma Hernandez tells Unfair…
When a choked-up Anthony Tovar announced to a gathering of parents and supporters in April that he would resign as principal of Sunset High School — for real this time — he wouldn’t delve too deeply into why. He’d already done so in an earlier conversation with the Observer back…
Last night, WFAA’s Brett Shipp released the latest in what’s becoming a series of investigative pieces on the administration of Dallas ISD Superintendent Mike Miles. “For the third time in less that two months, a DISD internal investigation has uncovered alleged wrongdoing by a top district administrator,” the report begins…
Update at 3:31 p.m.: DISD spokesman Jon Dahlander called to tell us we — and Brett Shipp — got it all wrong. “This was not a Mike Miles decision,” he says. “This is a decision that was made by the operations department of our school district.” As for why: “It…
When Mike Miles arrived at Dallas ISD, he brought his family with him. He and his wife bought a house in Northwest Dallas, and his son enrolled at Marsh Middle School. Now the family’s having second thoughts. The Morning News’ Matthew Haag broke the news this morning: Miles informed his…
In 1991, Woodrow Wilson High School installed a new floor in the main hallway. At the center, they put a tile mosaic of a stylized wildcat head based on a design that had been used around the school for a decade. Twenty-one years later, Principal Kyle Rains Richardson received a…
The culture war for young Texan minds is kicking back into high gear. The State Board of Education sent 28 invites to experts around the state to review high school biology textbooks. About a dozen showed up in Austin this week for the final phase of the review. They’ll make…
One way or the other, it seems, the folks behind Prime Prep Academy, Deion Sanders’ taxpayer-funded charter school, are going to make some money off it. It’s just a matter of how — and how much. The “how” is a little clearer today, after Oprah Winfrey’s cable network announced plans…
Typically, a $219,700 contract aimed at boosting parent engagement would sail past Dallas ISD’s Board of Trustees with barely a murmur. It represents, after all, a vanishingly small speck of the district’s $1.2 billion budget, and its goal — getting parents involved in their children’s education — is hardly controversial…
San Antonio’s Northside ISD, which became the focus of national controversy when an intensely evangelical high school sophomore refused to wear her RFID-equipped student ID because it was the Mark of the Beast, is not the first school district to track students’ whereabouts using geolocation technology, nor will it be…
Every time we broach the subject of improving Dallas ISD, the chorus starts in before we get too far: It starts with the parents. District officials appear to agree. In a recent vote, the district earmarked $2.75 million for parent-education programs, including the expansion of an Israeli-born program that helps…
Prime Prep Academy, the sports-focused charter school founded by former Cowboy Deion Sanders, never quite found a home for its sports teams in its inaugural year, getting shut out of public-school play for having too many players living outside its boundaries and for poaching players from a local basketball power,…
Compile a list of Dallas ISD’s best elementary schools, the ones that convince affluent young parents to forsake the lure of private schools or the suburbs, and Lakewood Elementary will rank at or near the top. Spend a moment browsing through the Texas Tribune’s public schools explorer. Its students crush…
Dallas ISD’s Board of Trustees argued into the early morning hours before approving a $1.2 billion budget for the coming year. It includes a 2-percent raise for almost all employees, as well as funding for Superintendent Mike Miles’ year-old principal training academy, which some trustees wanted to defund. It was…
