By the time she died in December 2011, Kathlyn Gilliam’s reputation as a pioneering civil rights advocate had been tarnished somewhat by her role, cemented during 23 years on the DISD board of trustees, in establishing the race-obsessed bureaucracy that has long since stopped benefiting the district or its students…
Sometimes it seems like all we ever do here at Unfair Park is bitch about the dastardly and frivolous legislation our elected representatives concoct down at the capitol. But not every bill sends us lunging for the bottle. Take this measure, filed by Sen. Bob Deuell of Greenville, barring State…
This week, Dallas ISD’s Ross Avenue headquarters was hit with a flurry of teacher resignations, with 279 rank-and-file educators telling the district they were calling it quits. This minor exodus had nothing to do with teachers’ well-known frustration with Superintendent Mike Miles. This was policy. Yesterday was the cutoff for…
On Valentine’s Day, the University of Texas System regents named University of Alabama-Huntsville Provost Vistasp M. Karbhari as the lone finalist to succeed James Spanioloas as president of the University of Texas at Arlington. Less than a week later, though, regents have decided their decision needs a bit more discussion…
It was intended as a creative way of showing seventh grade history students at Schrade Middle School in Rowlett how cowboys would corral wayward steers during cattle drives. But somehow, astonishingly, the teacher’s decision to actually lasso his students ended badly. It went like this, according to a WFAA report…
In the wake of the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary, Dallas ISD police Chief Craig Miller wasted no time in dismissing the thought of arming teachers. In fact his recommendations for making DISD students safer, which he will present to the Board of Trustees at a briefing on Thursday, involve…
In the wake of the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School, the guns-in-schools debate in Texas has focused on teachers: whether to arm them; what training they should receive; whether it’s better to shoot or ask questions first; etc. But limiting the use of firearms on campus to trained, presumably…
In the predawn hours on Saturday, January 26, University of North Texas student Dustin Starks, 20, fell from the balcony of the Delta Sigma Phi fraternity house. He survived, but just barely. Nearly two weeks later, he remains at Parkland Hospital in serious condition. In the wake of the accident,…
When Mike Miles was hired last year as superintendent of Dallas ISD, he was rewarded handsomely. His base salary of $300,000 per year put him near the top of the list of the state’s highest-paid superintendents. Meet all the metrics for his possible $200,000 annual bonus, and his place at…
In 2009, science-respecting members of the State Board of Education succeeded in scrubbing the state’s science curriculum standards of a requirement to discuss the “weaknesses” of evolution, which would have opened the gates to less scientific theories, namely intelligent design and creationism. But it wasn’t a wholesale victory, as Kathy…
In Dallas, geography is destiny. That’s the unavoidable conclusion from a recent study by Stand for Children, a Texas nonprofit, which crunched incarceration and college-preparedness rates in Dallas, ZIP code by ZIP code. “It became immediately obvious that a small number of zip codes send a lot more inmates to…
Conventional wisdom and mountains of anecdotal evidence suggest that old people are really, comically bad at doing things: driving; operating those newfangled pocket telegraph thingamajigs; gauging other people’s interest in the details of their goiter surgery; continence. We can go on. This is low-hanging fruit. But researchers at the University…
Six years ago, SMU religious studies professor Mark Chancey teamed with the Texas Freedom Network to produce a report on the Bible classes that were proliferating in the state’s public school classrooms. Chancey’s not-very-surprising finding was that these classes were not so much even-handed, academically rigorous surveys of the text…
It seems like only yesterday that erstwhile DISD communications chief Jennifer Sprague blew into town alongside new superintendent Mike Miles. With a $185,000 a year salary, the 31-year-old Sprague’s name quickly became a synonym for “overpaid and under-qualified,” and after about six less-than-spectacular months on the job, she quietly left…
In the wake of last month’s shootings at Sandy Hook Elementary School and the subsequent proposal by local state Representative Jason Villalba to arm specially trained teachers, DISD spokesman Jon Dahlander dismissed the idea that Dallas teachers will soon be roaming the halls packing heat. He did leave the door…
A career in professional football does terrible things to the brain. Early-onset dementia; Alzheimer’s; memory loss; chronic pain — they’ve all been linked to the sport, which has prompted a few thousand former players and their family members are suing the NFL, saying it hid the dangers of the sport…
Julius Hill’s summer trip to Europe was miserable. The 13-year-old Greiner Middle School student was one of several students who signed up for a nine-day tour of Italy and Spain organized and led by his teacher Vicki Reed. While there, Reed reportedly singled him out, yelling and belittling him constantly,…
With the recent recession came a corresponding boom at two-year colleges as students sought to gain marketable job skills without shelling out big bucks to attend costlier four-year institutions. That boom is now over, and the numbers in Texas are bearing that out. Between fall 2011 and fall 2012, 2.7…
Allen is football crazy. For proof, look no further than the high school’s new, $60 million football stadium. For further proof, there’s the Allen Hawks, which Texas Monthly labels “the best 12-year-old football team in Texas.” There’s no objective way to prove that, of course, no state tournament like there…
On Friday evening, after schools had closed and most everything else was winding down for the holiday, the Morning News reported DISD communications chief Jennifer Sprague is resigning. Sprague’s abrupt departure is the surest sign yet that Superintendent Mike Miles’ administration is in crisis. She was one of his most…
When Minnie K. Patton wrote her will, she left a portion of her estate to the Dallas County Community College District Foundation to create a scholarship in her name. She’d grown up poor and uneducated in rural Oklahoma and wanted to give students the shot at upward mobility that she…
OK, business-community school reformers. I believe you mean well. But your guy is toast. You recruited a school superintendent who cannot and will not make it in the big city. You can get all stubborn about it and defend him to the last ditch. If I had to bet, I’d…
