Dallas News Blog

T.J. principal Edward Conger

​The Texas Tribune's Brian Thevenot has been studying the U.S. Department of Education's latest pile of funds slated for Texas schools -- $390 million aimed at rescuing the lowest performers -- and asks whether the program's good intentions will wreak havoc on schools doing their best to do better. Take, for instance, Thomas Jefferson High School -- easily, the best high school in the history of the Dallas Independent School District, especially when compared to, oh, W.T. White.

At T.J., the principal -- one Edward Conger, former Marine -- has been known to get very Joe Clark on his students: "If his students don't do their homework, it generates an immediate call home and a mandatory two-hour stay after school." (OK, so it's Joe Clark Lite.) Conger's also tough on teachers. And it's working to turn around T.J., writes Thevenot: "Just 18 months after Conger's arrival, the school has upped its overall ranking from 19th out of the 22 DISD high schools to sixth. In math, 72 percent of its students posted a passing rate on the TAKS test this year, compared to just 42 percent last year."

Still, the school -- which proudly displays a ginormous banner (I see it twice a day) advertising its achievements -- is considered "struggling." And if it wants a piece of the feds' pie, it'll have to do one of four things ... two of which involve axing the principal and most of the teachers. (The other two: going charter or going away altogether.) T.J. could use a few million, absolutely, but I wouldn't mess with the Marine.

​DeSoto resident Pamela Bradley, who once worked for the city of Dallas, feels cheated by the education system. She was raised to believe that education leads to better jobs, so she got a master's degree and started a Ph.D. program. But now Bradley finds herself in this disheartening position: Her annual salary is less than half of the ever-growing total in student loans she owes.

She's not alone. The Institute for College Access and Success (TICAS) works to make education more affordable for Americans through lobbying and education. They also run a Web site dedicated to disseminating information about a new federal program created to help people like Bradley who owe more than they make called "income based repayment."

President Obama touched on the program during Wednesday's State of the Union: "And let's tell another one million students that when they graduate, they will be required to pay only 10 percent of their income on student loans, and all of their debt will be forgiven after 20 years -- and forgiven after 10 years if they choose a career in public service, because in the United States of America, no one should go broke because they chose to go to college."

​This morning, The Wall Street Journal takes up the issue of newcomers filling up the Plano Independent School District -- specifically, "a flood of poor, minority students" whose entry into the district prompted the contentious fight over redistricting. The district voted on a feeder alignment plan on December 15, which didn't sit well with all at all. But, writes Ana Campoy, Plano's dust-up will serve as template for what's to come nationwide, as it's both a look at the future and a reminder of the past:

Plano's situation evokes the fights decades ago in cities around the nation, when school integration often resulted in the flight of whites to suburbs.

This time, the disputes often are set in the suburbs themselves, driven by a flood of new arrivals -- many from Latin America -- who have rapidly reshaped school populations in districts across the country. The influx is making the country more diverse, with white children expected to be a minority by the next decade. That has meant more such conflicts in the most exclusive public-school districts.

​Friend of Unfair Park The Big Guy just shot us an e-mail with the subject header "Mary Kay > Christopher Columbus." Also contained within his missive: a link to this Associated Press story about the brewing battle over State Board of Education's new social studies curriculum standards, for which the board began hearing public testimony today. Standards won't be finalized till March, but an early vote on amendments will be taken tomorrow.

So where does Mary Kay fit into this? Glad you asked:

"This is the first time the State Board of Education is going to get to vote on this, so you can't take anything for granted," said Jonathan Saenz, a lobbyist for the conservative Free Market Foundation. "I think it would be a tragedy if students talk about Martin Luther King Jr., while not being able to talk about the fact that he had a strong Christian faith. I'm hoping that's not the direction we're headed."

He'll also ask the board to reconsider mentioning makeup entrepreneur Mary Kay Ash of Addison, Texas, more often than Christopher Columbus in the curriculum standard. At present Ash is mentioned twice; Columbus once.

DISD trustee Carla Ranger

​As we mentioned Monday, the Dallas Independent School District board of trustees will discuss at tomorrow's meeting its contingency plans for Kimball, Roosevelt, Pinkston and Seagoville high schools should the Texas Education Agency deem them academically unacceptable for a fifth straight year. As DISD spokesman Jon Dahlander pointed out, the rating won't have to do with test scores, but with graduation rates. Trustee Carla Ranger takes up that issue on her blog, where she asks, Who's to blame for low completion rates? The answer:

Teachers can teach until they are all blue in the face, but this alone will not overcome the wholesale disintegration of the family structure and the absence of stable family life.

The dropout rate and all educational outcomes are greatly impacted by such realities.

Sure, blame the schools -- blame the teachers.

Label schools as failures based on narrowly focused tests and dropout rates that are caused by a lack of parental responsibility.

Even when students do manage to pass tests - still label the schools as failures anyhow because of a dropout rate caused by far broader social problems that schools cannot solve alone.

This is wrongheaded reality.

What such reality accomplishes is the destruction of public education and the creation of data driven educational myths.

Megan Feldman

Mayor Tom Leppert, DISD trustee Edwin Flores and superintendent Michael Hinojosa at SMU in July

​This morning, during a speech at a Big Brothers Big Sisters benefit breakfast, Mayor Tom Leppert announced a few possible corporate relocations to Dallas -- among them, he said, a Fortune 200 company to which he clearly sent an iPhone. But that wasn't the breaking news that jumped out from the reporting.

First, there was this from Elizabeth Souder at the bottom of her brief recap:

Leppert added that Dallas ' "Achilles element" is the struggling education system. He said the public schools must improve, and Dallas needs a research university to meet the needs of corporations.

"All the things we've done in the city become moot if we don't improve our education system," he said.

Then, this from the Dallas Business Journal:

Dallas' biggest weakness is its education system, Leppert said, adding: "not only in the K through 12, but we also need to address it in higher learning."

It's been almost a year since word first leaked that Leppert was thinking about, just maybe, taking over the Dallas Independent School District. To some Friends of Unfair Park, today's remarks sent the signal that perhaps he hasn't completely abandoned the idea about which he never said another word. Hence my phone call to the mayor's chief of staff, Chris Heinbaugh, who is waiting by the phone to see if Dallas made the World Cup's latest round of cuts. I will see the mayor shortly at the Woodrow Super Bowl event, but till then, my questions for Heinbaugh (among them, "Why was the mayor calling out DISD?") and his answers, follow.

​Courthouse News this morning brings us The Case of the For-Profit Vocational School vs. The Personal-Injury Law Firm. The former is Rhodes Colleges, a California-based chain of campuses that offers courses in everything from criminal justice to HVAC repair (maybe you've seen the ads?). Locally, Rhodes has three DFW locations (under its Everest College brand name), including one near Mockingbird Station. Then there's Van Wey & Johnson just south on Central Expressway on Monticello Avenue, which says on its Web site that Everest engages in "educational fraud" and claims to "have represented hundreds of students in confronting educational fraud at Everest College and other for-profit educational institutions."

According to Rhodes, attorneys at the firm, including namesake Julie Johnson, have gone even further: "Johnson paid a recruiter to stand just off of School property and to pass out business cards and materials to students leaving class," alleges last week's filing, which accuses Johnson of "publicly defaming the School and luring students with enticing and false promises of tuition recovery and other cash rewards."

According to the Google Machine, Rhodes and Everest are actually subsidiary schools of Corinthian Colleges, which, in 2007, was the subject of a lengthy investigation by the California Office of the Attorney General. The AG's office filed suit against Corinthian alleging unlawful business practices, including promising more than it delivers, and Corinthian settled by offering to dole out $5.8 million to students.

​On Thursday, the Dallas Independent School District's board of trustees will have their "second reading" of contingency plans for four high schools at risk of being labeled academically unacceptable by the Texas Education Agency for a fifth straight year. The at-risk campuses are Kimball, Pinkston, Roosevelt and Seagoville, and, exactly one month ago, district officials laid out a few possible scenarios for the campuses should the TEA decide to step in. Wrote Tawnell Hobbs, "The introduced plans for each campus would include removing 75 percent of teachers and reassigning at least 50 percent of the students"; three days later she noted in an update that DISD was also "considering having the four schools act as satellites magnets to Townview," but that district officials hadn't yet told Townview parents.

As trustee Carla Ranger notes on her blog, there's a meeting tomorrow at 6:30 p.m. at Kimball to discuss the plans with "parents and concerned community stakeholders"; Roosevelt hosted one last week, and others are planned in coming days for Pinkston and Seagoville. But DISD spokesman Jon Dahlander tells Unfair Park today DISD Superintendent Michael Hinojosa remains hopeful that TEA Commissioner Robert Scott will give the district a pass and not intervene. That's because the four schools aren't academically unacceptable; in fact, they're at risk solely because of their graduation rates.

"And that is, in part, a little bit out of a schools' hands," Dahlander says. "But it is the requirement, so obviously there is additional effort being made at each one of those campuses. Dr. Hinojosa has spoken with the TEA commissioner to say these schools have met the academic requirement, but would you require a school to be reconstituted and shut down based on school completion rate?"

A TEA spokesperson tells Unfair Park this morning that Scott hasn't made a decision concerning Hinojosa's request and won't rule until those graduation rates for the 2008-'09 school year become available.

World Classroom

One of Mark Birnbaum's cameras filming kids from Lincoln High in China for the film Once in a Lifetime

​And, speaking of Mark Birnbaum ...

When last I spoke with the Dallas-based doc maker, he was out and about filming Mayor Tom Leppert and other council members for a short promoting the new convention center hotel. He hasn't seen the finished film yet -- he was but a shooter on that project -- but we anxiously anticipate that bit of footage. Till then, then, in addition to Dig Deep, he's also posted a trailer for his documentary Once in a Lifetime, which debuted at the Hot Springs Documentary Film Festival last October and chronicles eight Lincoln High School students' journey to China a few years ago. A rough cut played the Dallas Video Festival a few years ago, but the final version has yet to play Dallas and has no screening date scheduled at present. Perhaps an Unfair Park-sponsored screening?

Till we make that happen, a brief bit of background on the trailer you'll find after the jump: These are annual adventures begun a decade ago by former Lincoln teacher Shirley Pickton and current Lincoln science instructor Darren Carollo, who billed the program as The World Classroom. In the past 10 years they've been, among other places, to Italy, Alaska and even lived amongst the Amish in Ohio. Birnbaum documented the Alaska sojourn in the film Polar Opposites, a KERA co-production that debuted at DVF in '03, and the China trip for Once in a Lifetime. And he's in the midst of editing the Amish film, which he'd like to finish before heading to Cairo with the students next month.

"These kids experience an extraordinary adventure," Birnbaum tells Unfair Park today from KERA, for whom he's wrapping up a short film about the Trinity River Audubon Center. "It's about culture shock and having kids go into these extreme cultural situations and find their feet and become aware and become leaders."

​Right before Christmas, Dallas Independent School District board president Adam Medrano told Unfair Park he is "not sure what can be done at this point" to save the Oak Cliff Christian Church, which DISD purchased in the fall to make way for some piece of the new Adamson High School campus. (Tentative plans have the building being razed for athletic fields or tennis courts.) Medrano also said he's "gotten reports that it's in terrible condition," which is why Oak Cliff Conservation League president Michael Amonett, who's trying to save the building, sent us photos last night of the church's interior. Amonett says they were sent to him anonymously, but "they show the current interior of Oak Cliff Christian and demonstrate it isn't in 'terrible condition.'"

There are a handful more after the jump. Take a peek while we assemble a slide show.Here's a slide show of all the pics Amonett sent over.

R. Gerald Turner

​An op-ed, co-written by SMU President R. Gerald Turner, has been circulating through the nation's newspapers in recent days; here's yesterday's pit stop in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, in which Turner and William Kirwan, chancellor of the University of Maryland system, argue that college athletics' business model is "on a path toward meltdown." Why come? Athletics cost too much and return too little, simple as that, and it's only getting worse:

A recent NCAA report noted that even football-generated revenue does not cover the operating cost of the football team at 44 percent of the institutions playing major-college football. Such figures would be worse if the millions in debt for stadium improvements and other facility enhancements were included. These are hardly profit centers at most institutions.

Now, consider all this in an environment where athletics costs are escalating at all but a few institutions while academic budgets are being cut and student fees and tuition are being raised. NCAA data show that the rate of increase in athletics spending in Division I programs is three to four times greater than the rate of increase for academic budgets. That is neither acceptable nor sustainable.

Turner, who co-chairs the 20-year-old Knight Commission on Intercollegiate Athletics, has been saying the same thing for years. But his recent remarks come on the heels of an October report from the Knight Commission that documents the disparities in programs and predicts doom and gloom in the near future: "There is a concern among athletic administrators that costs will continue to rise, but there are no more pots of gold to find."

​Early this morning, a Friend of Unfair Park forwarded along an update from the Old Oak Cliff Conservation League: "A Glimmer of Hope for Oak Cliff Christian Church." That, of course, is a reference to the 1905 building recently acquired by the Dallas Independent School District for the Adamson High School expansion. One week ago today, the district got a demolition permit for the structure, which means its demise is, for the most part, imminent.

But today the OOCCL posted a brief note -- "DISD Board President Adam Medrano is seeking input regarding this matter from other school board members" -- to which it now clings in the hopes that the district will hold off on razing the Charles Bulger-designed church, more or less the twin sibling of the McKinney Avenue Baptist Church demolished in January 2008. Medrano, when reached by Unfair Park moments ago, does not sound as optimistic.

DISD board president Adam Medrano

​"I do feel and understand the concerns of the preservationist," he says. "But when I signed up for the board, I signed up to make the best decisions for the children, and that's what I've done every time. I am not sure what can be done at this point."

He says he's spoken with a few board members ("not all of them"), but the one who carries the most clout, as far as Medrano is concerned, is Jerome Garza, who reps that district. And Garza, who could not be reached by Unfair Park today, has told his colleagues that new facilities are needed for Adamson, more so than a vacant church. "As far as I recall in our meeting two months ago [when the board voted to acquire the property], Jerome talked to us about the community and what they wanted," Medrano says. "And we usually go with the trustee in that district."

​If you like a Santa Rampage or a Santa Ride, don't forgot: You'll love an Unsilent Night, which makes its downtown Dallas bow tomorrow night. The NYC and SF events, among others, took place over the weekend; for those wondering what's in store, some highlights. Also, after the jump, a preview of tomorrow night's event, which is scheduled to commence at 7 p.m. at the Backbeat Cafe and Listening Room at 300 N. Akard Street, along with some tips.

And, of course, there's now a Facebook page devoted to Unsilent Night Dallas, boasting 697 fans -- most of whom have no doubt downloaded their Dallas-specific soundtrack but are still in need of boomboxes and flashlight-bearers. Should be unseasonably warm (with a chance of rain) before the Christmas Eve cold front, so no excuses.

The story of Taylor Pugh, the 4-year-old preschooler suspended by the Mesquite Independent School District for his long locks, is making the cross-country rounds today. Thanks to this Associated Press video, MISD spokesperson Laura Jobe's hairstyle has now been called into question.

​Waiting on a call back from Steve Leach, the so-called "buy guy" at Half Price Books, about something entirely unrelated to this point. But, to kill a little time, let me share with you a couple of items I picked up at the Northwest Highway mothership Sunday morning and converted from vinyl to digital just for you.

First up: a selection from a 1974 album recorded at Sumet Studios featuring the 1974 R.L. Turner High School A Capella Choir on one side; the Women's Select Choir on the other.  This, of course, would be Barbra Streisand's "People," because if Babs is good enough for New Directions, well, then.



Next up, in keeping with the season: the W.T. White Symphony Orchestra performing "Jesus Christ Superstar" at the 1973 Texas Music Educator's Association meeting in San Antonio. This particular album, which came with the event program, is notable because: The orchestra's director at the time was Chris Xeros, who'd go on to found the Richardson Symphony Orchestra, and because among the first violinists was Gale Hess, ex of of Cafe Noir. If you were in either the Turner or White ensembles and would like these records, let me know. I'm in the giving mood.

Mark Graham

DISD superintendent Michael Hinojosa

​A couple of weeks ago we noticed that the Dallas Independent School District's board of trustees was considering a new "Superintendent Evaluation Instrument," which broke down the criteria into three separate categories: "student achievement," "sound financial management" and "stakeholder satisfaction." For the purposes of this particular report card, percentages were assigned to each category, with student achievement accounting for 65 percent of the super's grade; financial management, 20 percent; stakeholder satisfaction, 15 percent.

But in looking at the latest breakdown before the board, which will vote on the new criteria this afternoon after giving Michael Hinojosa his review behind closed doors, those percentages have changed; it's now 55 percent, 25 percent and 20 percent, respectively. Which isn't a terribly big change, but a change nonetheless. And while I figured the numbers were altered by the board during its meeting last week, I figured I'd ask DISD spokesman Jon Dahlander.

"Some of board members felt we need to give more weight to financial management, because that was obviously an issue we had last year, so they wanted to see that change," he says. "Same deal with stakeholder satisfaction -- they felt it was important as well. They felt like too much emphasis was given to the academic stuff and wanted to balance it out."

Incidentally, Dahlander adds that, yes, the super's getting his review today, but he's not sure if we'll get a peek at the results: "It's a personnel matter, so I don't know. I do know that he is not asking for a [contract] extension today, and I am not expecting the board to approve an extension." Hinojosa's under contract till 2012."

​Patricia Viramontes has long been one of Dallas Independent School District's more controversial figures, dating back to at least September 2007, when district officials concluded that, yes, maybe the DISD's executive director of instructional technology services shouldn't be reporting to her husband after all, nepotism policies being what they are. Because, for those who haven't been playing along (no, not you, Allen Gwinn), Patricia's husband is Arnold Viramontes, Superintendent Michael Hinojosa's chief of staff -- who, till last year, was the DISD's chief technology officer and the man charged with cleaning up the unholy mess left by Ruben Bohuchot, who, last we looked, was being sentenced to 11 years in the hoosegow.

To the drama surrounding that position, add this latest chapter: Unfair Park (and Tawnell Hobbs and Allen Gwinn) has learned that earlier today, Patricia Viramontes was locked out of her computer and told to clean out her office. She was then escorted out by DISD security officers. As Tawnell and several Friends of Unfair Park have pointed out, IT didn't fare well in the 2008-2009 audit, with information technology among "three material weaknesses cited by auditors," as the DISD put it in its press release last month.

Unfair Park left a message for and sent an e-mail to Jon Dahlander, DISD spokesman, two hours ago. Then we called the superintendent's office, and we were told ... to talk to Dahlander.

"This is a personnel matter, and I can't discuss it," Dahlander said when reached by Unfair Park moments ago. That guy has the toughest job in Dallas.

Sara Kerens

Adamson High School in Oak Cliff, where less than 1 percent of the students are white.

​Jon Dahlander, spokesman for the Dallas Independent School District, posted a comment on Unfair Park today that perfectly expressed the school system's official position on the preservation/demolition of Adamson High School. It blames abandonment of the school on the people who have been fighting to preserve it. And then it says the school system is going to preserve Adamson.

Dahlander's spin was in response to my column of last week, "Adamson High School Alums Are Fighting DISD to Preserve the School Building and Their Bond With Its Students" (I don't write my own headlines anymore). More immediately, it was in response to an item on Unfair Park yesterday reporting that Mike Rhyner over at The Ticket was talking about the column.

Dahlander's lengthy comment made several key points. The first is that Jim Schutze gave a false impression: There are no plans to tear down Adamson.

The second point: "The current campus will remain standing and will be re-purposed."

Third: "There has been structural movement under the existing building since it was initially constructed in 1915. Several attempts have been made to mitigate this but the soil continues to cause shifting."

Fourth: The district hired Corgan Associates, described by Dahlander as "noted historical architects," and Corgan came up with two ideas. One was to preserve only the front wall of the school and tear everything else down. The second was to tear everything down and rebuild a new school that would be a mirror image of the old school, using some of the original bricks.

Then Dahlander said the alumni, who have been fighting to save the school, turned down the mirror-image idea: That, he said, tied the district's hands. Corgan had already said its first idea -- save the front wall only -- was no good because the front wall might fall down while they were working on it and kill some construction workers (so thanks a lot for that idea, Corgan).

Since the alums had nixed the mirror-image idea, DISD had no choice, according to Dahlander, but to abandon the building (which is what I said they were doing in my column. I never said they were demolishing it, even though abandoning will amount over time to the same thing).

​Speaking of old local cases involving schoolchildren sitting in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit ...

On Tuesday, the court handed down an opinion in that years-old case involving a Plano Independent School District third-grader and other PISD-off kiddies told by district officials that, no, they couldn't hand out "Jesus is the Reason for the Season" pencils amongst other religious-tinged whatnots ("candy canes with cards describing their Christian origin, tickets to a church's religious musical programs, and tickets to a dramatic Christian play") during a "Winter Party" in 2003. Surely you recall this showdown: Plano-based Liberty Legal Institute calls it "an ongoing case that has the potential of cementing many of the religious freedoms for our children that have taken decades to restore"; John Cornyn filed a brief on behalf of the families; and after getting his facts wrong ("In Plano, Texas, a school told students they couldn't wear red and green because they are Christmas colors"), Bill O'Reilly declared the district's policy "flat-out facism." Right -- that was the beginning of the War on Christmas.

Anyway. The families were upset because, in 2003, the district only prohibited students from passing out unsafe or "obscene, vulgar, or otherwise age-inappropriate" material. In 2005, after the suit was filed, the district adopted a new policy concerning the distribution of materials: 30 minutes before and after school; during any of the three annual parties; during recess; and, yes, during school hours, "but only passively at designated tables," as the court put it. The district said, Look, passing out anything during school hours is disruptive, K? To which the court responded this week by declaring the 2005 policy good and constitutional.

​Far as the Dallas Independent School District board of trustees is concerned, there are three factors that go into determining how good a job the superintendent's doing: "student achievement," "sound financial management" and "stakeholder satisfaction." Those, say the board, "embody the core beliefs and expectation of the community as represented by the Board of Trustees, and they form the framework for evaluation of the Superintendent of Schools." But, of course, all three do not carry equal weight when it comes to determining the super's success -- if they did, well, Michael Hinojosa most likely would have started hunting for a new gig 'round about the time the district came up $64 million short (for starters) in September 2008.

Which is why, Monday morning, the DISD board of trustees will vote on something called a "Superintendent's Appraisal Instrument," which spells out how to grade the superintendent. Student achievement will count for 65 percent of the grade; financial management, 20 percent; stakeholder satisfaction, 15 percent. No word yet on how the district will measure parents, students and taxpayers' satisfaction with the super. I'd go with blog comments, personally.

Governor Rick Perry stopped by DISD's Emmett J. Conrad High School on Fair Oaks Ave. yesterday to tout the Texas Workforce Commission's $1 million investment in expanding robotics education programs across the state. Conrad, of course, boasts an estimable robotics club -- the RoboChargers -- that, for the last three years, has actually been in charge of the governor's monthly maintenance.

University of North Texas junior Stephen Michael Benavides

​He sounded a little groggy when he spoke to Unfair Park this morning. But University of North Texas junior Stephen Michael Benavides had a long night: The chair of ACLU's student chapter spent Thursday night appealing to the UNT Supreme Court to adopt language of a failed bill and allow same-sex couples to run for homecoming court.

The Student Senate had failed to pass an earlier bill that would have allowed same-sex couples to run. Later, the Student Government Association drafted legislation for a student referendum on whether "same-sex and/or gender-neutral couples should be able to run for homecoming court," as it says on the school's Student Government Association Web site, where voting begins November 16.

The SGA president, Dakota Carter, helped draft the legislation. "I decided that the people who are voting for those who can win homecoming should be the ones making the rules for who can run," she tells Unfair Park.

Benavides, though, doesn't think such a decision should fall to the student body and will appeal to SGA in the coming week to change its plans. "You should never impose majority opinion in place of minority rights," Benavides says.

"If you can't get the right or the equality to run as a same-sex couple for homecoming court at a university, and university campuses are liberal compared to the rest of the nation, then we've got a big problem here," said Benavides. "If you can't do it on a university, how are you going to do it on a national stage?"

Edwin Flores

​This'll most likely be our one and only item about the race for the Dallas Independent School District board of trustees -- because, judging by the early-voting numbers, well, not too many folks seem to be all that interested. Take the hotly contested District 1 race, for instance: Incumbent Edwin Flores has the early lead with a little more than 50 percent of the vote -- or, a whopping 661 votes. Challenger Kyle Renard, a pediatrician, has so far brought in 492 votes, while Linus Spiller and Mel Cannon received a combined 173 votes.

Leigh Ann Ellis may not return to the board: She's got 310 votes so far, which puts her far behind Mr. Lois Parrott, Bruce, who leads the District 3 race with 439 votes. Meanwhile, Bernadette Nutall is the frontrunner to succeed Ron Price in District 9 with 405 votes. The nearest challenger, Sally Cain, has 214, while Juanita Wallace comes in with 191 in early voting. You can play along on the Dallas County Elections Web site as results come in. But keep in mind, this should be over early: Bruce Sherbet told us yesterday early voting should account for some 40 percent of the overall tally, with results wrapping 'round 9 p.m.

Update at 8:20 p.m.: Can't help it. Here goes: With 19 of 47 precincts reporting, it's Flores, 1,508; Renard, 1,184. In other words: No run-off; not yet. With 10 of 44 precincts reporting, it's Parrott by a beak: 646 votes to Ellis's 516. And in District 9, where it's seven outta 52 in so far, mark it down Nutall, whose 500 is better than Cain's 250 and Wallace's 236 combined.

Update at 8:55 p.m.: Parrott and Ellis remain close: 1,450 to 1,138, respectively, with 35 of 44 precincts in. But Flores's lead only grows over Renard: 2,339 to 1,798, with all but 14 precincts reporting. As for Nutall, she's got 878 votes; Cain, 616. In other words, Flores wins without the runoff; as for the other districts, Round 2 forthcoming. The night's most surprising result? Melvin Cannon's vote count bests Linus Spiller's and then some; proves you don't need to know how to use a computer to get well more than 200 votes in The Bickerin' 1.

Update at 9:14 p.m.: That Bruce Sherbet knows how to call an election. Looks like we're about done here. Flores is back on the board; Parrott and Ellis are headed to a runoff; so too Nutall and Cain.

​Speaking of the Dallas Independent School District and grant money ...

I was poking around the briefing agenda for this week's meeting of the board of trustees and noticed this intriguing item: NASA -- yes, that NASA, not this NASA -- is giving the DISD, via the Foundation for Community Empowerment, $1.45 million to help students with science and math ... and to promote NASA. Per the briefing docs, half the money will go toward a "science-focused website and a computer lab in the designated area of identified Dallas ISD schools and Dallas Pre-K locations," while FCE will take the other half to "fund a mathematics iniative to complement the district's science initiative."

As there's been no announcement of the grant, I called district spokesman Jon Dahlander to find out which schools have been selected to take part; he could only give the number -- 51 elementary schools, 25 junior highs, 17 high schools -- as most of them haven't yet been informed they've been chosen to participate. The board won't vote on accepting the grant till later in the month. But, says Dahlander, the grant will "help out those schools that need the most assistance in math and science. We're very excited about it. How can you not be? This is NASA. This isn't Big Bob's Science Shack." (That's a side business I run; totally beside the point.)

Surely there's at least one Friend of Unfair Park better acquainted with the Dallas Achieves Math, Science and Technology Initiative than I; this is also a big part of that. (Makes sense: FCE president and CEO Marcia Page is a former Dallas Achieve-er and TI exec.) There's also another component, per the executive summary: promoting "a greater awareness of NASA's missions and accomplishments." Me, I'll just show my DISD first-grader The Right Stuff. Again.

​It's a common scenario: an "A" elementary school student suddenly becomes a "C" middle-schooler. What happened? According to local brain health researchers, your child is suffering from information overload.

"He was so overwhelmed by the amount of information he was trying to stuff in," says Dr. Sandra Bond Chapman, chief director of the Center for BrainHealth at the University of Texas at Dallas. She's referring to one ninth-grader she encountered during her research earlier this year on one Dallas Independent School District campus.

With schools relying on standardized test scores almost exclusively to measure a student's aptitude, the focus of education is on memorizing content rather than learning strategy. Kids are cramming information rather than sorting through it to piece together the bigger picture. For a middle-schooler, this kind of educational system is a real hazard.

"Our brain is undergoing more change during the middle school years than any other time in our whole life," Chapman tells Unfair Park. "We've missed this window of cognitive development during middle school."

That's why the Texas Legislature has granted the Center for BrainHealth $6 million to study 2,000 middle-school students across North Texas over the next two years. There will be an official announcement tomorrow afternoon at E.B. Comstock Middle School, where researchers will begin training in the first middle school classroom.

​Whilst doing some research for something that may not lead to anything, I've been reading Walter J. E. Schiebel's Education in Dallas: Ninety-two years of History 1874-1966, published by the Dallas Independent School District. So this isn't entirely an exercise in futility, I thought I'd share some of the tome: After the jump, you'll find Chapter 1 ("The Early Years 1874-1899") and Chapter 17 ("A Forward Look"), in addition to W.T. White's very brief foreword and the August 1965 district map. (And only the DISD would publish a 92-year history.)

And while we're on the subject, a Friend of Unfair Park asks me to remind you about tomorrow night's board of trustees candidate forum for District 9, scheduled for 7 p.m. kick-off in the Woodrow Wilson High School auditorium. This, of course, is the seat being vacated by Ron Price, and all those vying for his spot on the board -- Sally Cain, Bernadette Nutall, Juanita Wallace and Rossi Walter -- are scheduled to attend to "respond to a list of 10 questions compiled by the community council." Audience questions will be taken, should time permits. And it should. Because that's when it gets really interesting.

So jump, lest you fail the exam.

Kyle Renard

​On Monday I moderated a District 1 school board candidates debate, and long story short, all four contenders were thoughtful, well-reasoned and dead-level; even 79-year-old long-shot Melvin Cannon's call for more vocational education was greeted with a few nods of approval. Most of the questions stuck to issues of policy and procedure; "transparency" on the board was the buzzword amongst the candidates, even the one (Edwin Flores) who voted to quash these very elections, so we'll see.

But there were a few uncomfortable moments, such as: Several parents at my son's District 1 elementary school wanted to know why, for instance, Dr. Kyle Renard, a pediatrician with one son in private school and another in Townview, had told The Dallas Morning News last week she couldn't recommend parents send their kids to DISD: "People are very loath to take a risk with their children. ...We have to prove to them it's not a risk [to put their children in public schools]. Right now, I can't tell them that." Some parents believe it's precisely that sentiment that has parents keeping their children out of Dallas public schools -- well, that and stories like this morning's piece about 48 percent of fifth-graders not being ready for middle school.

Edwin Flores

​(Permit me this small detour: Used to be DISD sent us to middle school after sixth grade; that changed not so long ago over many parents' protests. Which I bring up for this reason: At Daniel Webster, the lowest-performing of the lot, only eight percent of its fifth-graders are ready for middle school. But one year later, 56 percent of its students are "on track" for junior high. Maybe that's because sixth-graders are supposed to stay in elementary school? The News story didn't mention the commonplace and occasionally very significant rise in on-track rates among sixth-graders, and a small sampling of the DISD scorecards suggests it's often exponential. Anyway. Just a thought. No doubt I'm wrong. I am, after all, a product of the DISD.)

So, where were we? Oh, yes. Why Kyle Renard can't recommend DISD to parents. On Tuesday, The News -- which has endorsed Flores -- ran a letter to the editor condemning Renard's statement ("reckless disregard for the type of thoughtful deliberation that is required for the culturally and academically diverse student population that makes up District 1") and damning her as "incompetent." Last night, she sent Unfair Park her response to that letter. It follows after the jump. So go -- bell's ringing.

DISD trustee Carla Ranger

​In case you missed it, on Tuesday Tawnell Hobbs published Dallas Independent School District trustee Jack Lowe's list of things he's looking for in an "ideal" trustee. Among his bullet points: "Supports our vision of being the best urban school district in the country." Fantastic. "Makes courageous decisions for the good of the whole district even when it is politically risky." Right on. "Focuses on students and student achievement, not jobs and contracts." Hmmm, really? And: "Support Edwin Flores as Board President for the next two and a half years." Say what? Lowe later said the list wasn't intended for public consumption; can't imagine why not.

Anyway. Today on her blog, trustee Carla Ranger alludes to the Lowe memo when writing that the board's decision to kill the May '09 elections last year almost killed the May 2010 elections as well, per a missive from Texas Education Agency Commisisoner Robert Scott. And what does Ranger think of Lowe's memo, especially the part about Flores, who's up for re-election next month? Not much: "It is very important for citizens to Vote for the candidate of their choice -- not a candidate who has made secret 12-point deals with current Trustees seeking to continue imposing a narrow, destructive and self-serving agenda on the district."

Have I mentioned I'm moderating the District 1 candidates debate Monday at 6:30 p.m. at Marsh Middle School? I have. Excellent. Audience questions will be taken during the forum, but, again, feel free to leave 'em in the comments.

​The American Civil Liberties Union of Texas just sent word that the organization, in coordination with a U.N.-affiliated advocacy group called United Sikhs, sent out a letter warning Texas school districts -- including DISD -- to protect Sikh students from discrimination or bullying. The missive is after the jump.

The letter reminds the superintendents of state laws requiring schools to prohibit and take steps to prevent student harassment. "Because schools are responsible for ensuring the safety of all students," the letter reads, "we encourage you to actively monitor the treatment of Sikh students by their classmates and teachers, and to take concrete steps to guarantee that they are not subjected to bullying, harassment, or intimidation."

According to the ACLU of Texas press release, the letter was sent "directly to school districts where problems have been reported," though when we called spokeswoman Dotty Griffith for a clarifification, she said the move was more of a preventive measure.  United Sikhs "knew of complaints in general, and we joined with them to reach out to school districts with a significant number of Sikhs and inform them of the rights of religious expression and the obligations of the law," says the former Dallas Morning News food critic. "It was more of a preemptive thing just in case there are problems."

OK, so are discrimination, bullying or abuse happening against Sikhs at local schools?

"We're not aware of any incidents," DISD spokesman Jon Dahlander told us. "For years DISD had been a leader in adopting and enforcing anti-harassment policies that extend both to students and employees. If there's an issue at any particular school, it should be reported immediately so it can be investigated promptly."

Kimberly Thorpe

At the Belo Mansion this morning, Michael Hinojosa touched on everything from educational gains to the juvenile curfew.

​Last time we checked, there wasn't much to laugh about when it came to the state of public education in Dallas. But leave it to Dallas Independent School District Superintendent Michael Hinojosa to at least try to insert some humor, even at his own expense.

This morning Hinojosa gave the "State of the District" address at the seventh annual Symposium on Education at the Belo Mansion. "I have good news, and I have bad news," Hinojosa told a small crowd this morning. "The good news is that I hate hearing long speeches. The bad news is I like giving long speeches."

The joke turned into the theme of the address.

On the good side, the Brown Center on Education Policy at the Brookings Institution noted in a report released in February that between 2000 and 2007, the DISD was the second-most improved district in the country and the most improved urban district in Texas. But there are still a lot of kids dropping out -- though, Hinojosa insists, not as many as you thought. "Don't believe the rhetoric when people [tell you] there's a 50 percent drop out rate in Dallas," he said. "That's just simply not true."

If you consider only the federal standards, then students must graduate within four years to not be considered drop-outs. Using that definition, Hinojosa pointed out Dallas ISD's completion rate is "somewhere between 60 and 70 percent." (Don't worry: We're fact-checking.)

And then there's the demographics issue. "We don't apologize for our demographics," said Hinojosa, noting that while Plano ISD has about 55,000 students, Dallas ISD has 55,000 English-language learners alone. "I'm an immigrant myself."