This was an unusually detailed news story with good information on finding the data online.
There is a noon news conference on 3-25-15 in suite 520 at 6500 Greenville in Dallas. We are presenting this complaint to the public, signing it, and then taking it to the U.S. Department of Education this afternoon.
Here is the complaint being filed, linked here in pdf format, and below:
Title VI Complaints Filed with the Federal Education Department, Dallas, Texas
Against Dallas
Independent School District (DISD)
March 25, 2015
Dallas ISD, through its policy of using a Title I
comparability formula based on teacher staffing, has increased inequities in
regular education funding of Dallas public classrooms and disproportionately
negatively impacted at-risk, special education (SPED), Limited English
Proficiency (LEP), minority, and low income students on its Title I campuses.
The huge disparities in equal access, accompanied by illegal supplanting of federal
and state dollars, egregious lowering of
regular education funding, teacher and principal staffing patterns, lack of
comparability of student services and safety on campuses, lack of effective
special education services, lack of access to certain magnet school programs,
discrimination in hiring practices that directly impact equal protection
guarantees of students, lack of research-based professional development and
support for teachers in failing schools, and unequal access to safe schools,
all document unconstitutional sourcing between Title I and non-Title I schools.
The harm to at-risk, SPED, LEP, and low income and minority
children in Dallas ISD was demonstrated by a 58% increase at the end of the 2013-2014 school year of
Dallas ISD schools on the annual the Texas PEG List of failing campuses and is
demonstrated through campus climate surveys demonstrating inequities in safe
schools. PEIMS documents detailing inequities in funding and illegal
supplanting of federal funds are available on the Texas Education Agency (TEA)
web site, http://tea.texas.gov/financialstandardreports/
. Teacher staffing patterns which dump
the least qualified teachers into the most vulnerable schools are available for
public view on the MyDataPortal designed by Dallas ISD, https://mydata.dallasisd.org/ . The
violation of federal law is apparent in Dallas ISD central staffing patterns
through resumes of the central leadership hired compared to better qualified
candidates who applied for central administrative positions. These employment
decisions violate the equal protection rights of both job seekers and students
in Dallas ISD who are negatively impacted by a lack of credentials and
experience in central administrative staff.
The inequities in access to comparable levels of principal
leadership was demonstrated in the last round of principal appraisals that
identified only principals in magnet, vanguard, and early college campuses as
the most effective. The use of a Teacher Excellence Initiative (TEI) which ties
annual teacher compensation directly to easily manipulated less than objective spot
observations and student test scores violates the equal protection rights of
students by increasing high rates of teacher churn on the campuses of Dallas
ISD’s lowest performing campuses and demonstrates the lack of validity of a
teacher compensation tool that is correlated to student demographics,
effectively rewarding the teachers who teach the most motivated, competent and best-served
students in the district.
Finally, in a school district that is currently blatantly
violating federal laws regarding use of Title I funding and is grossly
underfunding its Title I campuses, the
proposal for choice schools promises to further segregate at-risk, LEP, and
SPED students on failing campuses while continuing lack of appropriate resourcing
to serve these students.
Complainants ask for immediate relief from both the serious
inequities in regular education funding on Title I campuses and relief from
discriminatory hiring patterns which negatively impact student achievement. They ask for federal investigations into the lack
of appropriate special education services which directly impact campus safety
and racial disparities in student suspensions and adequate education provided
by DISD for equal access to magnet school programs by DISD where some schools
have a majority of students who did not attend DISD. , support rather than overtly punitive
conduct toward teachers on failing campuses rated Improvement Required, a
suspension of the current principal rating rubric, a suspension of the Teacher
Excellence Initiative, and a suspension of discussion of choice schools until
gross, illegal and unconstitutional inequities in sourcing of Dallas ISD
campuses and students are corrected.
An Overview of
Regular Education Sourcing and Supplemental Federal Dollars
Regular education dollars, by law, must be sufficient to fund the
required Texas learning standards and required academic core classes at each
grade for Texas public schools. Title I, special education dollars,
compensatory education dollars, School Improvement Grants (SIG), and bilingual
dollars may not supplant the necessary regular education dollars provided by
local and state governments for the purpose of teaching the TEKS and required
classes for graduation.
An examination of PEIMS records documenting the planned
campus budgets for 2013-2014 for Dallas Independent School District shows a
systematic lowering of regular education dollars on most Title I campuses
compared to a neighboring school district with Title I campuses and similar
revenue and student demographics. The few DISD non-Title I elementary neighborhood
campuses had some of the highest amounts of regular education dollars allotted
to them.
An examination of PEIMS records also documents egregious, illegal
supplanting of federal Title I dollars on several Dallas public schools
campuses. There is also a pattern at some magnet schools of loading in athletic
funding while removing operational costs in order to circumvent Title I
comparability laws. There is no evidence that any of these back-room
machinations were shared in open sessions with the Board of Trustees or with
parents.
Federal and State Funding
for Special Needs Students
Special needs students have several state and federal
funding allotments that must be used only to supplement the local and
state regular education funding provided through the foundation program
provided by the state of Texas. It is a violation of state and federal law to
use funding for special needs students (SPED, LEP, Title monies, compensatory
education monies) to supplant (replace) local education dollars.
The regular education program required for each grade and high
school must be paid for by local and state foundation dollars. Those dollars
cannot be replaced or supplanted by federal
education funding. State compensatory education (SCE) funding also
cannot be used to supplant regular education funding.
Federal funding is included in Title programs and dollars,
Career and Technical (CTE) courses, Limited English Proficiency (LEP) funding,
services for special education students and services for migrant students.[1]
All public school administrators are trained on federal laws regarding
supplementing rather than supplanting federal dollars for required state
dollars to meet state requirements.
Dallas ISD receives over 100 million dollars a year in Title
monies and around $154 million a year in state compensatory aid in addition to
millions in special education and bilingual funds.
The amount of local and state funding provided for each
school in regular education dollars by central administrators in Dallas ISD can
be found on the TEA web site in the area where Public Education Information
System (PEIMS) records are posted for both school districts and campuses: http://tea.texas.gov/financialstandardreports/
These PEIMS documents report how local, state, and federal
monies are budgeted and spent by school districts. Most of the time, these campus budgets are determined by central
administration, not by campus principals. PEIMS records are official government documents. The TEA web
site provides a high level of transparency on actual campus spending patterns.
This high level of transparency is sometimes completely different than the
overviews of campus budgets provided to the DISD Board of Trustees.
Federal funding flows through the Texas Education Agency
which disperses funding to individual public school districts including charter
schools in Texas. Superintendents and central staff make determinations
regarding campus budgets which are presented to the Board of Trustees.
E-mail requests of Dallas ISD Trustees regarding potential
issues regarding Title funding and campus budgets indicate Trustees are unaware
of potential illegal and unconstitutional funding patterns within Dallas ISD
because information they receive from central staff does not match actual PEIMS
records of campus revenue or spending. Annual campus and district budgets
presented to the Trustees also obscured illegal and unconstitutional patterns
of campus allocations.
Central administrators chose a Title I comparability model based on
teacher staffing numbers, rather than dollars spent on campuses, to
reach comparability before Title I monies were added to campuses. This Title I
comparability model has reached a zenith of unconstitutional inequities in
Title I campus sourcing compared to non-Title I sourcing and hides gross
supplanting of Title I dollars on Title I campuses and hidden back loading of
funds from Title I campuses onto magnet and Early College campuses. There is
evidence of supplanting of Title I funds, supplanting of School Improvement
Grants, supplanting of special education money, and consistent lowering of
regular education funding in both planned and audited PEIMS records for Title I
campuses in Dallas ISD. All of these practices are illegal and have increased
in the last few years as funding for the Superintendent’s special projects came
on line and as huge sums were added to the surplus budget.
Financial Model of Inequity and Violation of State and Federal Laws
As will be demonstrated through a comparison of PEIMS
records for Title I and non-Title I campuses and comparisons of magnet schools
to IR neighborhood schools, the Dallas
ISD campus sourcing model for Title I comparability is severely flawed and
gives an illegal and unconstitutional disadvantage to campuses with high
enrollments of LEP, SPED, and at-risk Title I students because of the
consistent practice of DISD central financial managers of lowering regular
education funding when federal dollars are available for Title I, special
education services, LEP services, CTE, and other federal funds such as School
Improvement Grants (SIG).
Many other violations of student equal protection
guarantees, such as teacher and principal staffing and programming, may stem
from the Dallas ISD illegal and unconstitutional campus sourcing model or may
magnify the inequities of a rigged financial model.
By skimming regular education funding from Title I campuses, regular
education dollars were available to rapidly scale the Dallas ISD surplus fund to
historic highs. Since Dallas ISD is such a large school district with a
majority of Title I campuses, skimming even hundreds of dollars per student
from regular education funding provides huge sums of local and state tax monies
that can be moved to increased overhead at the central administrative level, to
build the surplus fund for the district, and to fund special projects of the
Superintendent. Through PEIMS records for planned campus budgets for 2013-2014,
it is evident that some Title I campuses were low $1,000 a student or more in
regular education funding compared either to non-Title I campuses, to the
magnet schools, or to similar Title I campuses in a bordering school district.
An examination of audited PEIMS records for campus spending will
indicate that the historically high surplus budget for Dallas ISD may have its
source in supplanting SIG, Title I, state compensatory education, special
education, and LEP dollars in the place of regular education funds on Title I
campuses. Regular education dollars that were skimmed from Title I campuses
were moved to the surplus fund, were used to fund special projects of
administrators, and were used for increased layers of central administrators.
Evidence found in audited PEIMS records provides a pattern
of campus sourcing that is both illegal and unconstitutional. The damage to
students can be found in the increasing number of Dallas ISD campuses rated
Improvement Required, in stagnant and regressing test scores, in an exploding PEG
list, and in the historically low number of seniors on track for a timely
graduation in 2015.
Compared to Austin ISD and Irving ISD, both of which focused
local and state tax revenue on classroom instruction, the number of failing
schools in Dallas ISD grew significantly in 2013-2014. Both Irving and Austin
decreased the number of IR, or failing schools, and decreased their PEG list. This comparison suggests great harm to
Dallas ISD students through the use of a Title I comparability model that
actually decreased equity in financial sourcing of regular education dollars.
Summary
The choice to use a teacher staffing formula for Title I
comparability was made by central administrators and presented to DISD Trustees
as a model of equity. This comparability choice may have been made to protect
the much higher regular education student funding levels at magnet schools and
non-Title I campuses compared to regular education dollars at Title I campuses.
It also provided a smoke screen to lower
regular education dollars in the presence of double the percentage of special
education students on IR campuses.
The District may respond that it is constrained by revenue
and cannot create a truly equitable campus funding model that contains a floor
for regular education per student spending, but the Dallas ISD is no more
constrained than other school districts in Texas that follow the law and do not
create two tiers of public schools within their boundaries.
It is remarkably hypocritical for Dallas ISD to join other
plaintiffs in demanding a more equitable system of funding the public school
foundation program in Texas schools while using a financial model that
increases sourcing inequities in its most vulnerable schools.
Dallas ISD has sufficient revenues to provide true equity between
Title I and non-Title I campuses. The evidence resides in its bordering school
district, Irving ISD, with almost identical financial resources and a high
level of student poverty and LEP students. Instead, DISD uses a teacher
staffing model for Title I comparability that hides the true funding in local
tax dollars in its two tiered public schools of Title I and non-Title I
schools.
Complainants are NOT
asking for an end to the magnet programs or decreases in funding for the magnet
programs or non-Title I schools.
Complainants are
demanding a floor, not a ceiling, for Title I schools so that illegal and
unconstitutional supplanting of regular education dollars ceases and so that
all Title I have comparative spends per student in regular education dollars as
compared to a neighboring school district that has lowered the number of
low-rated schools in its district with such equality. Title I, neighborhood
schools educate approximately 90% of students in Dallas ISD, yet they are the
schools that were used to skim regular education dollars away from the classroom
instruction of most students. This skimming of regular education dollars from
Title I campuses may have been used to build a huge surplus budget and for
special projects of the Superintendent.
Based on a comparative, neighboring school district, there is no need for a tax increase to
develop an equitable distribution of regular education dollars.
Instead, the Dallas ISD must have a laser focus on classroom instruction and
must focus its local tax revenue on equitably funding its core mission which is
classroom instruction. Increasing property values in Dallas will provide
increased tax revenue to provide equitable levels of regular education funding
and other sourcing across all Title I campuses.
The DISD Board of Trustees
must be trained to better and more frequently question central administrators. They must demand better transparency
from administrators with more time to examine the administration’s requests for
budget amendments. There must be a much
more timely transparency regarding increased spending outside the classrooms,
and for any changes toward more levels in central administration.
Illegal supplementing
of magnet school regular dollars with the high school allotments that belonged
on the campuses of low-rated high schools are supplementing, by many thousands
of dollars per student in some magnets, by adding monies from the athletic
budget. This may be done so as to not
trigger a report of the actual defiance of Title I comparability for magnet
schools. It must stop!
1.
Illegal
and Unconstitutional System of Campus Funding
"In recognition of the special educational needs
of low-income families and the impact that concentrations of low-income
families have on the ability of local educational agencies to support adequate
educational programs, the Congress hereby declares it to be the policy of the
United States to provide financial assistance... to local educational agencies
serving areas with concentrations of children from low-income families to
expand and improve their educational programs by various means (including
preschool programs) which contribute to meeting the special educational needs
of educationally deprived children" (Section 201, Elementary and Secondary
School Act, 1965).
When Dallas Independent School District developed a Title I
comparability formula to provide similar resourcing across all DISD schools
before federal Title monies were added to campuses, DISD superintendents and
executive staff chose a comparability model using staffing rather than a floor
on regular education dollars before adding special needs programming funds on
campuses.
DISD’s use of a staffing formula for Title I comparability
intentionally hid from the view of elected DISD Trustees and taxpayers a system
of illegally loading campuses with few or no Limited English Proficiency (LEP)
students or special education (SPED) students with almost twice the regular education
funding per student as the failing campuses (Improvement Required-IR) with the
highest percentages of LEP and SPED students. Some Title I neighborhood schools
with the highest percentages of LEP and SPED students were also randomly
resourced with half the general education funding as non-Title I neighborhood
schools and as compared to magnets with no LEP or SPED students. Dallas ISD’s Title
I comparability formula demonstrates an egregious pattern of supplanting of
federal and state compensatory education dollars for general education dollars. That is an illegal use of both state compensatory
and federal funds.
The records documenting the illegal and unconstitutional
practice of supplanting federal and state compensatory funds for regular
education funding are available on the Texas Education Agency web site
containing campus PEIMS records. Most of the statements regarding the illegal
use of federal and compensatory funds are based on audited PEIMS records from
Dallas ISD campuses for 2013-2104, but records from the year previous also
document egregious misuse of School Improvement Grants in terms of supplanting
regular education dollars.
Supplanting of federal and state compensatory dollars by
decreasing the required spending per student on regular education programs is
illegal, but has been a consistent feature of Dallas ISD’s Title I
comparability formula which seems to have focused on producing a similar spend
across campuses AFTER Title I
funds, CTE funds, compensatory education, special education and bilingual funds
were added to Title I campuses. It was never the intention of any supplemental
funds to be used to produce similar per student spending across campuses.
There is also no correlation between the needs of IR schools
and the campus budgets for those schools. Outside the schools within the South
Dallas and West Dallas I20/20 feeder patterns, other IR schools with severe
needs for compensatory instruction received no extra funding in 2013-2014. Compared to bordering school districts with
Title I campuses, Dallas ISD campuses that were rated IR sometimes had the
least amount of funding compared to neighboring school districts.
In Dallas ISD, magnet schools, single-sex leadership
schools, Montessori schools, and vanguards once served the purpose of a
previous desegregation order. Many of
these choice campuses, where students are carefully screened for admission,
have few or no percentages of LEP and SPED students. Regular education funding,
dollars supplied by local taxes, are almost twice the per-student spending on
these campuses compared to failing campuses with critical masses of LEP and
SPED students.
This pattern of a
reverse Robin Hood formula, where egregious misuse of federal and state
compensatory funds supplanted regular education dollars, could not be
accidental or the result of lack of understanding of federal and state funding
laws. All education personnel are trained on federal and state guidelines.
Also, the pattern of misuse of federal and state compensatory education dollars
is consistent for several years and was hidden from the view of Trustees
through power point presentations by central administrative staff who were
totally dishonest regarding the details of campus funding even after being
questioned by some Dallas ISD Trustees.
When double the amount of regular education dollars still
did not supply special programming needs on magnet campuses, some magnets had
their utilities and food expenditures zeroed out in order to hide lack of Title
I comparability, a practice that dishonestly added up to $800 a student to
certain campuses. Later, these same campuses received millions in athletic
program monies when these campuses lack organized sports. In other cases, new
magnets were run off Title I funds, high school allotment funds from other
schools, and SIG monies.
These practices are blatantly illegal and were solely the
responsibility of central administrative staff.
Although the
definition may change from statute to statute, supplement, not supplant
provisions basically require that grantees use state or local funds for all
services required by state law, State Board of Education (SBOE) rule, or local
policy and prohibit those funds from being diverted for other purposes when
federal funds are available. Federal funds must supplement—add to, enhance,
expand, increase, extend—the programs and services offered with state and local
funds. Federal funds are not permitted to be used to supplant—take the place
of, replace—the state and local funds used to offer those programs and
services. (TEA Handbook)
Systematically decreasing regular education dollars on high
LEP, SPED, and at-risk campuses while illegally supplanting large sums of Title
I fund, School Improvement Grants (SIG), special education funding, state
compensatory education funding, and Career and Technical Education (CTE) funding
in place of regular education dollars is also unconstitutional. These practices
deprive at-risk, LEP, and SPED students on failing and low performing campuses
the federal and state funding intended
to equalize learning opportunities for under-served students who have been
identified as LEP, SPED, at-risk, and
low income. The lost learning opportunities in terms of extra teachers,
supplies, and instructional specialists in reading and special education have
been in the millions of dollars annually on some secondary and elementary
campuses.
On the elementary level, this systematic pillaging of
regular education dollars of the lowest income schools gave the wealthiest
non-Title 1 schools a huge advantage in regular education funding compared to
the lowest income Title I schools. There were in actuality no supplemental
funds’ gain in instructional resources for some of the poorest schools because
regular education dollars were simply lowered and supplanted with Title I
funds.
Dallas ISD’s central financial staff can hardly plead
ignorance or incompetence since the pattern of lowering per student regular
education spending on IR campuses and other neighborhood schools that are not
schools of choice was consistent, persistent, and egregious, never erring in
favor of the most vulnerable students in Dallas public schools.
In other cases, Dallas ISD’s administrative staff created
unconstitutional revenue streams to dishonestly present comparability figures
to the Board of Trustees. This included removing huge sums of state high school
allotment funds from the weakest high school campuses and moving these funds to
the strongest campuses, running the instructional programs of new choice
schools almost entirely off Title I funds, SIG funds, high school allotment funds,
and compensatory education monies while removing any costs for facilities’
utilities and maintenance for Low SPED and LEP campuses and illegally moving
these costs to other schools.
In what seems to be the only comedic relief in the illegal
sourcing of Dallas ISD schools, athletic funding made up the majority of
regular education dollars for Dallas ISD’s middle and early college programs
and illegally supplanted the Advanced Placement programs at the TAG magnet, and
SEM in 2013-2014.
Because of the intentional and persistent manner in which
regular education funding has been compromised for the most vulnerable
students, Complainants request the
development of a new Title I comparability formula that places a floor on
regular education spending across all Title I campuses, a formula that actually
meets the needs of IR campuses and campuses of extreme poverty with average or
above average the district percentages of LEP and SPED students.
Dallas ISD’s present
staffing method of maintaining comparability for Title I seems to be a ruse to
underfund IR campuses and those campuses with high populations of at-risk, LEP,
and SPED students while sliding huge extra sums of funding to non-Title 1
campuses or campuses with the highest achieving students.
Examples include:
·
Lakewood Elementary was funded with a planned
per student general education budget of $4758 per student while Clinton Russell
received $2365 and Stevens Park $2854 in 2013-2014 according to the PEIMS
records for planned campus budgets. Russell received $1604 and Stevens Park $1099
in Title I funds which did not even bring their per-student spending to an
equal amount as Lakewood students even after illegally supplanting Title I
dollars at Russell and Stevens Park. Stevens Park is a very low income school
while Lakewood Elementary is a relatively high income school with a very low
level of poverty. After skimming regular education dollars away from Stevens
Park, supplanting Title I funds did not bring the campus up to the regular
education dollars provided Lakewood.
·
High Tech High received only $126 in regular
education dollars and $4620 in Title I funds, a clear and persistent violation
of federal law for several years.
·
The Talented and Gifted Magnet, after lowering
regular education funding to $4576, received over $2,000 per student in “athletic” funding when no school in the district
receives funding in this manner. This athletic boost put the Talent and Gifted
Magnet beyond comparability measures at the same time the magnet had its
operating costs and foods costs zeroed out of its budget. The total revenue
added after posting $4576 for comparability purposes was $2800 in “athletic
funding” and no food or operating or maintenance costs.
·
School Improvement Grants totaling $20 million
dollars appeared to supplant regular education dollars at North Dallas High
School, at Spruce High School, at High Tech High, and at Roosevelt High School.
·
Instructional funding at the Education Magnet
was largely Title I funds even though the Education Magnet was covering the
utility costs and food costs for other magnets at Townview. The Education
Magnet seemed to be used as a shell school to cover Title I incomparability at
SEM and TAG by paying the utility and food bills of these schools.
·
Disbursement of Title I funding for campuses
followed no formula, but seemed dependent on attempting to level off similar
funding levels on Title I campuses.
·
There is no evidence of any attempt to match the
needs of most IR campuses to campus funding. Instead, high poverty middle
schools such as TW Browne were sourced as if they were flourishing schools with
no broad and deep instructional issues.
Dallas ISD’s weakest secondary schools persistently had a
lower spend in regular education dollars and sometimes in total dollars than
bordering suburbs with no Title I students even though district per student
revenue is similar. Extremely poor students in IR schools would have been given
extra classroom dollars by moving to non-Title I bordering suburbs that
provided higher instructional dollars than the poorest IR secondary schools in
Dallas ISD. This inequity in classroom spending in school districts bordering
Dallas that contain no Title I schools is shocking. For Dallas ISD middle schools
with the most serious academic deficits in the state of Texas to have less
classroom instructional spending per student compared to bordering suburbs with
no Title I schools reflects on the inequity and egregious supplanting in some cases in the
funding model used in Dallas ISD.
It will be shown in the remainder of these complaints to be
filed with the federal Department of Education that Dallas ISD is running a
two-tier, unconstitutional education system. The top tier of the system, made
up of mainly non-Title I campuses, was provided more funding in regular
education dollars, stable staffing in teachers and principals, safe campuses, and top programming. These schools served much
few percentages of LEP, SPED, at-risk and poverty students.
The bottom tier schools, mainly those rated as Improvement
Required (IR) by the Texas Education Agency, had millions in regular education
dollars illegally removed from them while these schools also suffered from
constant churn in teachers and principals, lack of adequate special education
services even though secondary IR schools were afloat with special education
dollars, lack of effective instructional programming, and lack of research-based
education practices. In addition, these schools consistently reported poor
campus climates with unsafe learning conditions for students and working
conditions for teachers. School climate surveys seemed to be withheld from
public scrutiny for these schools in the 2104-2105 school year.
PEIMS documents located on the Texas Education Agency web
site, http://tea.texas.gov/financialstandardreports/ document the egregious misuse of Title I
funding and indicate a pattern of supplanting regular education dollars with
School Improvement Grants. The PEIMS documents indicate an intentional,
well-planned pillaging of some of the most vulnerable students in all the Texas
public schools with a Dallas ISD financial model that streamed the most
financial resources per student to some of the top magnet schools in the
nation.
When IR schools were and are constantly reconstituted, the
instructional failures of these campuses were and are blamed solely on teachers
and campus leadership with no hint of the illegal and unconstitutional sourcing
of these campuses by central administrators.
A cursory examination of PEIMS documents for the last few
years also shows that while the District may tell Trustees there is a formula
for the distribution of Title I funds based on the number of students on free
or reduced lunch, there is no adherence to this formula.
If a secondary campus has high percentages of special
education students, its Title I funding may be minimal because of an internal
protocol that seeks to bring most schools to a similar level of overall
spending rather than providing an equitable floor of regular education dollars that
adds appropriate layers of Title I and special education funds to regular
education dollars. The actual needs of
the campus are ignored and are deficient in resourcing to move many IR schools
off the state list of the lowest achieving schools in the state.
Campuses with low percentages of secondary special education
students were sometimes given large doses of Title I funds on top of minimal
levels of regular education funds. The
Title I funding on Dallas ISD campuses had a random relationship to the actual
level of poverty on many campuses.
The see-saw effect of either loading Title I high schools
with regular education OR Title I funding is apparent from an examination of
PEIMS records and is illegal. Neither Title I nor special education funding
should be dependent on any other factors other than the stated formulas given
for each.
IR, or failing middle
and secondary schools, have almost twice the district percentage of special
education students and high percentages of LEP students for their grade level.
It appears the District is complicit in illegally supplanting
Title I, SIG, and special education by both adding large sums of Title I and
special education funds to cover lowering regular education dollars and by
under-funding Title I campuses by lowering regular education far below the
magnet schools and Title I campuses in bordering school districts.
2.
Creating a De Facto, Systemic Method of
Supplanting Federal Supplemental Funding on Most Dallas ISD Title I Campuses:
Violation of Equal Protection Guarantees and State and Federal Law
Dallas ISD’s current Title I comparability formula hides the
fact that compared to Title I campuses in bordering school districts, Dallas
ISD Title I campuses and their students have been systematically deprived of
millions in regular education dollars through simply substantially lowering the
amount of regular education dollars before Title I, CTE, special education, and
bilingual funding were added.
This systemic plundering of regular education dollars for
other purposes rather than classroom instruction essentially negates much of
the impact of supplementary funding for Title I, bilingual programs, state
compensatory education funding, Career and Technology funding, and special
education funding. Lowering regular education dollars before adding federal and
state compensatory and special programming dollars does the most damage to special
education, LEP, poor, and at-risk students by removing the power of additional
dollars for special needs students. The Dallas ISD Title I comparability
formula as well as the “equity” model developed by the current administration
are essentially reverse Robin Hood formulas for pulling out any floor on
regular education dollars on Title I campuses before supplementary federal and state
dollars are added. Non-Title 1
campuses and magnets and choice schools that admit almost no LEP or SPED or
at-risk students have the highest amounts of regular education dollars on their
campuses. This practice assumes educating high achieving students for the
required state standards costs more than educating critical masses of LEP,
SPED, and at-risk students found on the campuses of neighborhood, Title I
campuses.
Dallas ISD has essentially violated both federal and state
law by creating a two-tier system of non-Title I and magnet and choice schools
which were allotted in some cases almost twice the amount of regular education
dollars as the poorest Title I campuses in the District filled with the highest
percentage of LEP, SPED, poor, and at-risk students.
In addition to in-district legal and constitutional
violations of equal protection and equal access, Dallas ISD’s current campus funding
formula essentially created a de facto separate and unequal school district of
Title I campuses within Dallas ISD compared to both its magnet schools and
compared to bordering suburban Title I schools in districts that have similar
levels of revenue and similar demographics.
Dallas ISD has also
violated the Texas state Constitution in refusing to provide an efficient
system of education within its borders since the classrooms of Title I campuses
were financially violated while state and local funding were used for many
purposes other than classroom instruction. Dallas ISD is not a property-poor
district, yet the level of per student spending for regular education is much
lower than surrounding districts with the same level of tax revenues.
In effect, the
current administration is short-changing Title I students of dollars necessary
for instruction in the state-required curriculum in order to fund projects that
had no impact on student achievement if the PEG list is examined for 2013-2014.
As a sample of the millions removed through a bogus Title I
comparability formula relying on staffing instead of instructional dollars, a
comparison of regular education spending at the high school, middle school, and
elementary levels in Irving ISD were
compared to Title I campuses in Dallas ISD. The data for these comparisons were
pulled from the public PEIMS documents available on the Texas Education web
site. The comparisons include planned campus budgets for 2013-2014.
Both school districts, Irving ISD and Dallas ISD, have
similar levels of revenue, and student demographics are similar on Title I
campuses. While Irving ISD was able to bring an IR high school campus off the
low performing list in one year, Dallas ISD dramatically increased the number
of IR high school campuses in the same year while also under-funding
neighborhood high school Title I campuses. Dallas ISD also has many IR high
school campuses that have lingered on the IR and AU state lists of poorest
performing schools for years.
As an example of the harm inflicted by Dallas ISD’s current
use of a sham comparability formula, Sunset High School in Dallas ISD will be
compared with Irving High School in Irving ISD. The two schools provide an
example of similar-sized high school campuses with similar demographics.
Irving ISD central administrators planned $3887 in regular
education dollars for Irving High School for the 2013-2104 school year. By
state law, regular education dollars
must be adequate to support the state-required curriculum and learning
standards for all students before the addition of federal and state
compensatory dollars. Irving ISD then added all supplemental funding to the
$3887 in per student regular education dollars for Irving High School,
including $722 in state compensatory funding. Irving High School, a very
close match demographically to Sunset High School, received a total of $6655 in
per student funding aimed directly at the classroom.
Adding to this picture of inequity in funding is the fact that
Dallas ISD received $149 million for state compensatory education (SCE) in
2012-2013 as an indication of the size of typical SCE funds for the District.
Yet, SCE funds do not appear on Dallas ISD campus PEIMS reports in the category
of Accelerated Education for any high school in 2013-2014. As a note, while the
District spent the legally allowable sum of $59 million in overhead
administration from these SCE funds in 2012-2013, it could have chosen to add
to campus resources instead of funding central administrative positions.
A Dallas ISD
evaluation of the 2012-2013 SEC grants states:
The purpose of the
State Compensatory Education (SCE) program is to increase academic achievement
and reduce the dropout rate of At-Risk students through direct instructional
services. The goal is to reduce any disparity in (1) performance on
state-mandated assessments, and (2) high school graduation/ completion rates
between At-Risk students and all other district students. Texas Education Code
(TEC) §29.081 defines the state criteria for identifying At-Risk students.1
Students who meet any of the criteria are to be reported through the Public
Education Information Management System (PEIMS) in the fall of each school
year. Among the 13 criteria are students who are limited English proficient,
students who failed a state assessment, or students who were retained. The
district is required to submit the district improvement plan, two campus
improvement plans, and the local evaluation of state compensatory education
strategies, activities and programs to the Texas Education Agency (TEA)
annually.
“An analysis of STAAR
and TELPAS assessment results from the district pointed out the need to address
special population groups. Disaggregated student achievement data shows that
the following student groups need to be addressed in order to close the
learning gaps: Hispanic, Limited English Proficient, African-American, special
education, and at-risk students. According to these data, there is a need to
provide supplemental staff and programs to support the social, emotional, and
academic needs of low achieving students, English language learners and other students
considered at risk of academic failure, including eliminating any achievement
gap between males and females. There is also a need to target training and
support to ensure that all teachers are skilled in the use of research-based
instructional practices and cultural proficiency. To serve as first-level
responses to learning difficulties, the campuses will need to identify and
develop proven, practical intervention practices and strategies ..”[2]
Of the $149 million in SCE monies in 2012-2013, the
District only spent $86 million on programs/services for at-risk students while
also under-funding by millions its high schools containing high percentages of
the targeted at-risk students: special education, LEP, and students who had
failed state required tests for graduation. Many SCE-funded positions were left
vacant.
There is no evidence from the campus PEIMS reports for Sunset, for
example, that SCE funds targeted the at-risk population on Sunset’s campus or
any other high school campus with high attrition even though there is evidence
of increased attrition at the high school level over the past
three years as well as high rates of failure on End of Course Exams with the
high attrition HIDING the actual failure rates on EOC exams. Sunset High School
received no compensatory state funds[3]
even though District evaluation reports describe the majority of at-risk
students in Dallas ISD, the students targeted by SCE funding, are male,
Hispanic, and LEP.
The District report on SCE funds for 2012-2013 clearly provides a
picture of the District failing to hire planned positions and using $50 million
for administrative overhead while the formula used for Title I comparability
grossly understaffed the classrooms of DISD.
House Bill 5 of the 83rd Legislature will require
that all school districts serve students failing EOC exams with SCE funds
before any other group. Whether Dallas ISD followed this law will be seen when
the public can view campus planned spending for the 2014-2015 school year in
PEIMS records.
Yet, in neighboring Irving ISD, there was a plan in place to
use SCE funds for the targeted population at Irving High School. Irving ISD had
one high school campus rating of Improvement Required or IR in 2013 and by 2014,
the high school was no longer IR, perhaps because Irving ISD was not using a
bogus plan to strip regular education and SCE funds from its failing high
school campus.
If Dallas ISD used SCE funds for credit recovery at its high
schools, that program was exposed as a sham in articles by The Dallas Morning News investigative reporters.
Because of DISD’s formula, Sunset High School received only
$2977 in regular education dollars and received no state compensatory funding.
Exactly where state compensatory funding went is not clear from PEIMS reports. The
total instructional, classroom dollars planned for Sunset High School, a school
with major dropout and student achievement issues, was only $4725 compared with
$6655 for Irving High School. Between lowering Sunset’s regular education
dollars and the absence of state compensatory funds for a school high in
at-risk students, Sunset students missed out on $1730 per student in funding
compared to its direct demographic
peer in Irving, Texas in a school district that has similar per student revenue
as Dallas ISD.
That $1730 per student times the 2144 students predicted to enroll
in Sunset High School equates to a $3.7 million dollar difference in classroom
and instructional funds available for the students of Sunset High School
compared to their demographic match in Irving ISD, a neighboring suburb with a
high poverty rate and high percentage of Hispanic and LEP students.
Placing a floor of $3800 in regular education funds would
have given Sunset High School about $1.8 million in just added regular
education revenue which could have significantly lowered class sizes in the
academic core.
In the same Dallas ISD Trustee district, belonging to
Trustee Eric Cowan, Molina High School lost over a million dollars and Adamson
around $870,000 compared to the regular education dollars these schools would
have received in general education dollars in a school district with similar
revenue located only a few miles away. Those figures do not include missing SCE
funding.
From only the neighborhood high schools of North Oak Cliff, a total in 2013-2014 of around
four million dollars was removed from classrooms of students attending DISD
neighborhood high schools compared to the regular education instructional
dollars provided neighborhood high school students a few miles away in a school
district with similar revenue. While some corporate reformers harp on zip codes
not defining the educational outcomes of urban students, none of these
reformers has compared regular education spending for classroom instruction as
dependent on the vagaries of zip codes.
Aside from the two-tier system operating WITHIN Dallas ISD where
magnet and non-Title I schools receive almost twice the regular education
funding as some neighborhood Title I schools, Dallas ISD cannot even
demonstrate a comparable spend to similar Title I schools sitting on its
borders that are a demographic match to its neighborhood Title schools.
In Pleasant Grove, Samuell High School, which has been on
the state unacceptable list for almost a decade, is lacking over a million
dollars in funding from the 2013-2014 school year if any equitable and legal
method of funding regular education dollars similar to the formula used in
Irving ISD had been applied rather than a mishmash of special education dollars
and Title I funding.
Skyline High School lost $5.3 million dollars in regular
education funding if its students had received the same per student regular
education funding that is available in Irving ISD’s high schools. In addition,
athletic funding seems to have been moved off the campuses of comprehensive
high schools and transferred to magnet and Early College campuses to boost
classroom instructional resources.
Regular education funding across all Irving ISD high schools
was very similar—around $3800. In Dallas ISD in 2013-2014, the following
schools failed to meet the $3800 regular education funding awarded Irving High
School even though these schools are also high LEP, SPED, and high poverty:
Adamson, Bryan Adams, Molina, Hillcrest, Thomas Jefferson, Kimball, Samuell,
Seagoville, Spruce, Sunset, WT White, Carter, North Dallas, Conrad, and
Skyline.
In contrast, Booker T. Washington High School for the
Performing and Visual Arts, serving in reality as a multi-county high school
funded by local property taxes of Dallas taxpayers, was scheduled for $5775 in
regular education dollars and was awarded a third of a million dollars from the
athletic budget to further increase its instructional resources according to
PEIMS records for 2013-2014. Booker T. Washington has one of the lowest levels
of poverty in the district and the highest percentage of white students, many
of whom are from out of district. Booker T. Washington’s regular education dollars
for 2013-2014 were twice that of Sunset High School.
The only Dallas high schools that are high poverty that were
awarded a higher spend than Irving High School in regular education dollars are
those neighborhood high schools with shrinking populations: Pinkston,
Roosevelt, Lincoln, and Madison whose small student populations increased costs
and were part of I20/20. The increased regular education dollars at these high
schools and the total instructional spend was much less than the resources
given IR schools in Austin ISD where central and campus administrators put
effective instructional plans and resources on campuses and decreased their PEG
list in 2013-2014.
The current Dallas ISD comparability
formula used for 2013-2014 essentially removed $19 million in regular education
funds from Dallas ISD high schools loaded with LEP and SPED and at-risk
students if compared to similar student populations in Irving ISD, a district
with similar levels of tax revenue. Not placing a ceiling on Title I high
school campuses while providing a floor of $3800 in regular education
funding would cost the District $19 million a year based on 2013-2014 PEIMS
records.
Complainants are not
requesting a ceiling on campus regular education dollars for existing high
schools or ceiling for magnet programs which have had severe cuts in regular
education dollars in the past few years.
Instead, complainants
are demanding a floor for regular education dollars for Title I high schools
that is comparable to a much more successful district, Irving ISD, sitting on
the border of Dallas ISD.
Complainants are also
requesting that the Department of Education monitor regular education spending
on Dallas ISD Title I campuses for the future in order to monitor compliance in
regular education spending across campuses.
Complainants are also
requesting that Dallas ISD quit robbing other programs and grants, such as high
school allotment or the athletic budget, in order to fund its magnet and Early
College programs. If magnet programs cannot be run on comparable dollars to
Title I comprehensive high schools, Dallas ISD needs to develop honest,
transparent solutions to that problem.
Information on Title I comparability presented annually to
the Dallas ISD Trustees seemed to focus on some attempt to equalize spending
across Title I and magnet schools AFTER Title I schools
received Title I, CTE, bilingual, and special education funding. Using an
“equity” formula that compares magnets and neighborhood campuses after
supplementing for special needs on Title I campuses filled with special
education and LEP students is not an equity formula but a perversion of equity;
it is a Robin Hood formula that removes regular education dollars from the most
vulnerable students.
It was never explained to the Trustees that comparability
formulas should have provided equity BEFORE any supplemental
funding was added and that there should be no expectation that with a floor on
regular education dollars, comprehensive high schools would then have similar
total instructional spending per student. The poorest high schools with the
largest percentages of LEP, SPED, and at-risk students should have had much higher
sums of financial sourcing than magnets with no LEP, SPED, CTE, or at-risk
students. The Dallas ISD formula proposes that teaching the mandated state
standards and courses to poor, LEP, special education, and at-risk students is
much cheaper in regular education dollars, which are supposed to totally fund
the state-mandated standards, than teaching the same standards to magnet
students who have been carefully filtered for admission to magnet schools.
Dallas ISD’s “equity” formula turns supplemental funding
upside down and adds supplemental funding, along with supplanting Title I
funds, before reporting comparability to the Trustees. There is no evidence
that the Trustees were aware of or understood the perversion of equity in
funding provided their constituents. For central administrators to plead they
did not understand federal and state laws regarding supplanting federal and
state monies is not a defense and is outside the boundaries of belief.
Middle school
spending in regular education dollars in Irving ISD demonstrates another
egregious pattern in Dallas ISD of underfunding Title I campuses in terms of
lowering regular education funding before
adding federal supplemental funding.
Dallas ISD neighborhood middle schools, especially those
neighborhood IR middle schools filled with high percentages of SPED, LEP, and
at-risk students, are provided millions less in regular education dollars compared
to middle school students in bordering Irving ISD.
Dallas ISD neighborhood middle schools with the highest per
student spend in regular education dollars are located at Marsh, Franklin,
Gaston, Long, and Walker and hover around $4100 a student. Zumwalt and Edison
had funding in the same range, but are much smaller schools.
Some Dallas ISD middle schools in the
worst shape academically in the state are funded at a $1,000 a student
less than the average regular education spending per middle school student in
Irving ISD.
Spence Talented and Gifted Academy, housed in a neighborhood
middle school, had its regular education dollars lowered to $3201 while its
Title I funding illegally supplanted the lowered regular education spending for
several years.
Dallas ISD Low Rated Middle Schools: Regular Education Funding
|
|||
PEIMS Records for Planned Campus Budgets 2013-2014
|
|||
School
|
# of Students
|
Regular Ed Dollars
|
|
$$
|
|||
Browne Middle
|
1023
|
3631
|
|
O Holmes
|
837
|
3596
|
|
Boude Storey
|
727
|
3644
|
|
Dade
|
802
|
3702
|
|
Medrano
|
902
|
3255
|
|
Hood
|
982
|
3381
|
|
The only middle schools in Dallas ISD that approach the
regular education dollars provided all neighborhood middle
schools in Irving ISD are Dallas ISD magnets and vanguards—schools of choice
where students are filtered for admission. DESA, for instance, is provided
$4900 in regular education funding.
The reason so many parents leave Dallas ISD schools after
successful experiences at the elementary school level may be found in the gross
underfunding of neighborhood middle schools in Dallas ISD. For the most
vulnerable students, those in IR schools, no floor for regular education
dollars means special education funds are not supplemental, but used in part to
provide the state-mandated curriculum.
Improvement Required (IR) middle schools in Dallas ISD are
some of the lowest rated schools in the state of Texas, yet these IR middle
schools have been systematically grossly underfunded compared to similar middle
schools in Irving ISD and other school districts. Browne Middle School,
according to schooldigger.com, is at the 1.5 percentile of rankings in the
middle schools in the state of Texas. Many other IR Dallas ISD middle schools
are in the lowest 5% in the state with their peer middle schools either failing
charter schools or schools operated by the Juvenile Justice System in Texas.
Yet the bogus “equity” model in Dallas ISD stripped millions out of these
schools compared to demographically similar schools in Irving ISD.
Providing a floor of even $4500 (less
than the average for Irving ISD’s middle schools) would cost Dallas ISD around
$18 million a year because every one of its middle schools is under-funded
compared to a school district of Title I campuses sitting on the border of
Dallas ISD.
Elementary schools in Dallas ISD also
show an irregular, random funding of regular education dollars with some
non-Title campuses with the lowest
level of poverty and LEP students receiving the highest level of
regular education funding.
Non-Title I elementary
campuses of Lakewood and Stonewall Jackson are provided high levels of regular
education dollars along with some Title I funds. This practice entirely negates the entire point of federal supplemental
funding since other elementary schools must use Title I funds to catch up to
the level of funding provided nontitle schools.
Stevens Park, Clinton
Russell, Truett, and Lowe Elementary Schools (all extremely high LEP schools)
were the victims of illegally supplanting Title I funds for regular education
monies. Truett’s regular education funding dropped to $3135 while its Title I
funding increased to $1098 to bring it up to less than the regular education
funding provided Lakewood and Stonewall Jackson at almost $4800 each. Preston
Hollow Elementary received almost $5000 per student in regular education
funding while the lowest funded elementary schools with the highest levels of
LEP, SPED, poverty, and at risk students had total program dollars much less
than nontitle campuses with the lowest
levels of poverty in the district. Since Preston Hollow represents a small
Title I school and Lakewood and Stonewall Jackson represent non-Title large
elementary schools, Plaintiffs are requesting a floor within 10% of the regular
education dollars at these schools to provide the floor for all elementary
Title I campuses. A spreadsheet follows
this discussion showing how many campuses would be under-funded at a $4400
floor.
This floor also
pushes Dallas ISD elementary school campuses toward the average instructional
per student spending in Irving ISD on its elementary campuses which is around $6100 solely for instruction, not for
operations or administrative costs.
From a competitive standpoint, most Title I campus students
in Dallas ISD are at a competitive disadvantage in the instructional resources
afforded them compared with both nontitle campuses within the Dallas ISD and
compared to Title I campuses in bordering school districts with similar
demographics and per student revenue.
None of this
under-resourcing of Title I neighborhood schools in Dallas ISD is the result of
lack of adequate financing for Dallas ISD compared to bordering school
districts. This inequitable, unconstitutional, and illegal campus sourcing
scheme was deliberate, systematic, and systemic and the sole purpose was the
removal of tax dollars from classroom instruction for other purposes.
Title I Campuses: Illegally Supplanting Title I Funds
|
|||
Elementary schools:
|
Regular Ed $
|
$ Title I Funding
|
|
Clinton Russell
|
2365
|
1604
|
|
Stevens Park
|
2854
|
1099
|
|
Truett
|
3135
|
1098
|
|
Lowe
|
3103
|
1186
|
|
Dallas ISD’s funding formula consistently removes millions
in regular education spending from neighborhood Title I elementary school
campuses before adding Title, bilingual, and other federal funding.
This practice illegally removes any benefit from federal or
state compensatory monies.
The total REGULAR
EDUCATION funding per student, supplied by local property taxes in Dallas
compared to regular education funding levels in Irving ISD, adds up to a loss of around $70
million classroom instructional dollars for Dallas ISD Title I students in just
one year. Not placing a ceiling on existing campuses that are over the
suggested floors would add $7 million more in regular education funding. It will take $77 million annually to bring
Dallas ISD Title I campuses in compliance with bordering school district
formulas that focus local property taxes on classroom instruction. This focus
on classroom instruction rather than building a surplus budget or skimming
regular education funds for special projects is shown to increase student
achievement.
The
justification for the requirement of a floor on regular education funding per
student is simple. Dallas ISD is showing a regression of student achievement
over the past couple of years when the Texas PEG list of failing schools is
examined.
During just the one
year of comparison from PEIMS records for regular education campus spending in
2013-0214, Dallas ISD Improvement Required Schools and low performing schools increased
from 45 schools on the Public Education Grant (PEG) list of failing schools to
71 schools in Dallas ISD, a 58% increase.
Austin ISD and Irving
ISD, in 2013-2104, with effective classroom funding formulas that focused local
tax dollars on classroom instruction, lowered their Public Education
Grant (PEG) or low performing schools from 11 to 9 and 15 to 12 respectively..
Summary
Dallas ISD has failed to uphold constitutional guarantees of equal
protection for its most vulnerable students in developing a widely acclaimed
funding model that was touted as a model of financial equity. The truth
regarding the lack of equity for LEP, SPED, at risk, and poor students is
demonstrated in the PEIMS public documents available on TEA’s web site which provide
a picture of illegal supplanting of federal funds, of misuse of athletic funds,
and underfunding of a majority of Title I campuses. The gross, systemic
lowering of regular education funds is apparent from even a superficial
scrutiny of PEIMS records.
Using the vendor ERG to declare Dallas ISD an efficient school district
needs examination by the Department of Education since ERG declared Dallas ISD
was an efficient school district when the District was illegally supplanting
federal dollars and systematically underfunding Title I campuses.
The harm done cohorts of students attending Title I campuses
in Dallas ISD can be measured in the increasing number of IR schools and the increasing
length of the PEG list compared to Austin ISD and Irving ISD which successfully
lowered the number of IR and PEG schools by using a floor for regular education
funding of its IR schools.
Complainants are
requesting a series of actions to correct the unconstitutional system of regular
education funding operating in Dallas ISD on Title I campuses filled with LEP,
SPED, and at-risk students. Dallas ISD’s bogus Title I comparability formula
has left Title I campuses with thousands of dollars less per student in regular
education funding than Title I campuses in a bordering school district, Irving
ISD. Complainants are not asking for
ceilings on regular education spending on any current campuses, but are
insisting on a floor of regular education dollars.
·
An
immediate floor will be set for high school comprehensive high schools for
regular education per student spending at $3800 in the 2015-2016 budget. This
floor at least gives some comparability to the funding of high poverty campuses
found in Irving ISD. This floor without a ceiling will cost Dallas ISD
approximately $19 million a year even though Title I, neighborhood schools will
still suffer gaps in regular education spending per student compared to magnet
campuses.
·
An
immediate floor will be set for middle school students in regular education
funding at $4500 per student for the 2015-2016 budget. This will
cost approximately $18 million a year based on the PEIMS documents available
for 2013-2104. All Dallas ISD Title I
middle school campuses are underfunded.
·
An immediate
floor will be set for neighborhood Title I elementary schools for the 2015-2016
budget that matches within 10% the non-Title I campuses of Lakewood and
Stonewall Jackson. This will cost around $39 million dollars a year if
no ceiling is required for existing campuses.
·
These
actions will occur for the 2015-2016 school year. Allowances will not be made for large Dallas ISD campuses since large
campuses have a number of security issues not found in smaller schools. There
is no intention of creating more inequities on large campuses by overcrowding
classrooms. Trustees will immediately develop a plan for increasing regular
education spending on Title I campuses to meet legal standards and this plan
will be presented in Town Hall meetings along with an admission of how
underfunded some Title I campuses have been in relation to non-Title and magnet
school campuses in terms of regular education dollars.
·
Principals will be given discretionary power
over increased funding in regular education dollars rather than having staffing
patterns set by DISD central staff. This option will give principals choices for their Title I dollars rather than
having those dollars’ purposes determined by the Superintendent.
·
If the state of Texas increases funding per
student, part of the increased state allowance will be used to decrease the gap
in regular education funding between Dallas ISD Title I campuses and magnet
campuses so that over time the gap in regular education funding per student decreases
between Title I campuses and magnet and choice campuses.
·
Every
school in Dallas ISD will post its latest audited and planned campus budget as
reflected in the PEIMS documents found on the TEA web site so that
the public and parents can monitor how students receive equitable financing across neighborhoods in regular education dollars which are
supposed to provide the instructional resources for the TEKS. Dallas ISD central administrators have failed
to provide either Trustees or the public transparency on regular education
dollars on campuses across the district and huge gaps across campuses are not
explainable due to teacher salaries.
·
Dallas ISD will be monitored so that funding for
existing neighborhood Title I schools, filled with LEP, SPED, high poverty, and
at-risk students are not marginalized financially in the future with Title I comparability
formulas that actually remove any supplemental value for state and federal
compensatory and programming funding.
·
Dallas
ISD secondary schools’ regular education funding will NOT be raided in order to
provide full-day, PreK instruction. Dallas ISD secondary students on
neighborhood campuses have the same constitutional rights to comparable funding
as magnet and choice school students and a right to comparability with
bordering suburbs in their spending per student on regular education for
neighborhood schools. Dallas ISD is a property wealthy school district whose
constant chaos and corruption seem to be the foundation for its lack of
classroom resources. Robbing secondary students to pay for PreK is not an
option.
·
Dallas
ISD cannot plead lack of financial resources to bring constitutional and legal
compliance in campus sourcing of regular education dollars. Dallas
Trustees might have sessions with Irving ISD Trustees to educate themselves on
efficiencies in the use of public dollars so that local, state, and federal
monies remain targeted at equity in the classroom.
·
Dallas
ISD may not supplement magnet school campuses with “athletic” donations
intended to provide backdoors to extra revenue hidden from comparability tests
nor may the district zero out expenditures for food and utilities on favored
campuses nor may the Dallas ISD use any other subterfuge in
supplementing the funding of its magnet school students. Transparency will
light the road ahead and the public will be trained to read the PEIMS records
and the regular education spending per student on each campus as an indication
of actual equity.
·
Dallas
ISD may not bring any new “choice” schools on-line before its unconstitutional
and illegal funding of Title I schools are remedied by creating floors for
regular education funding for neighborhood high schools, middle schools, and
elementary schools. There has been a pervasive lack of transparency or
even a functional budget in Dallas ISD when choice schools are added. If Dallas ISD choice schools are added in
the future, the Department of Education will monitor student populations to
ensure that LEP and SPED and at-risk students are not further segregated in low
performing schools and that per student funding is in line with Title I
campuses.
·
Dallas
ISD may not create “choice” schools that are funded at a higher level than its
existing Title I campuses in terms of regular education dollars. The budgets
for new choice schools will be fully transparent and brought to the Board of
Trustees to be discussed in Open Session. The skimming of regular education
dollars off Title I campuses seems to have provided the impetus and funding for
programs that will never benefit the skimmed students.
3.
The
Teacher Excellence Initiative (TEI): Violation of DISD Students’ Equal
Protection Rights and Teacher Due Process Rights
Dallas ISD’s current Teacher Excellence Initiative violates
equal protection rights of students on neighborhood campuses filled with LEP
and SPED and at-risk students and violates the due process rights of both
principals and teachers on these same campuses.
Evidence has already been brought of the illegal and
unconstitutional funding of many neighborhood Title I campuses in Dallas ISD.
In addition to underfunding some of these campuses by millions of dollars, the
level of campus safety, the level of inexperienced teachers, the level of
principal efficacy, and the level of churn across campuses is not equitable
compared to Dallas ISD magnet schools.
With illegal and unconstitutional funding disparities
between IR high SPED and LEP campuses and magnets with few or no SPED or LEP
students, there is constant reconstitution on failing high SPED and LEP campuses.
This constant reconstitution affects teachers and principals, leaving little
accountability for the Superintendent or central staff for the disparities
between magnet schools and IR schools in funding, staffing, or programs.
Leading or teaching on high LEP and SPED campus, with a huge
disparity in resourcing because of central administrative campus funding decisions,
is already a career risk since reconstitutions based on two years of low state
ratings can mean principals and teachers are removed and have either their
contracts non-renewed or they are fired. In Dallas ISD, these teachers,
according to text messages made public in a Human Resources scandal, are not
welcomed for other teaching assignments. The onus and accountability for the
lowest state ratings rest on principals and teachers even though proof of
inequitable and illegal violations of supplanting of federal and state
compensatory funds exists along with high churn in principals and teachers.
The annual compensation, not merit bonus money, of Dallas
ISD teachers is now tied to a system of performance reviews known as the
Teacher Excellence Initiative.
The Superintendent has admitted in an open, public budget
meeting on February 16,2015 that he, the Superintendent, would have to hold
harmless teachers with good ratings on the TEI in order to encourage them to
move to IR campuses such as South Oak Cliff High School. This open admission of the
bias in the TEI violates due process for all teachers on all IR campuses and other
Title I campuses that have been shorted equitable funding by up to a million
dollars in one year.
If the TEI is sensitive to gross differences in student
demographics across Dallas ISD campuses and thereby creates invalid teacher
appraisals based on student demographics, the TEI is a direct violation of due
process for teachers. If the TEI cannot be used for all teachers under all
circumstances and the TEI has a punitive effect on teachers on IR campuses, the
TEI directly impacts the equal protection rights of students on those campuses
since the TEI will lower teacher pay on IR campuses as well as increasing the
career risk of teaching on those campuses. The TEI, where teachers essentially
compete for their salaries, assumes equity in inputs across Dallas campuses
when in reality, evidence exists that there are gross inequities in staffing,
funding, and campus safety.
If teaching on an IR campus equates to lower teacher appraisals and
lowered teacher compensation for career educators, the TEI cannot be used in
Dallas ISD.
The fact that campus contextual factors matter more than
attempts to forecast student outcomes by use of different Value Added
Measurements (VAM) has already been litigated in the case of a former DISD
teacher from Kimball High School.
Former Texas Education Commissioner Robert Scott formally
ruled in 2008 that campus factors can override the instructional expertise of
individual teachers when Scott awarded back pay to a Kimball High School
teacher who was fired during a reconstitution of the campus for low test
scores. The pervasive chaos of the campus had more impact on lack of student
achievement that efforts of teachers as documented in Scott’s ruling:
Good cause does not exist to terminate
Petitioner’s term contract. The reason
given for proposed termination was the failure of Petitioner to demonstrate a
pattern of academic achievement by her students. The Findings of Fact establish that the
school’s environment not Petitioner was the cause of the lack of
achievement. Because Petitioner’s
actions as a teacher are not found wanting, good cause does not exist to
terminate Petitioner’s contract. DOCKET NO. 071-R2-0708
Dallas ISD completely ignored the Commissioner’s ruling and
continues to use the CEI as an accurate measure of teacher effectiveness. The
CEI is included as part of teacher evaluations in the TEI.
The DISD Classroom Effectiveness Indices (CEI) compares
student achievement levels based on different demographic characteristics in
order to theoretically provide a level playing field for rewarding or punishing
teachers based on predicted student instructional outcomes.
The problem with all VAMS is that not one VAM in existence
takes into account the context where classroom learning takes place. There is
no handicap for teachers in illegally funded schools where safety is a problem
or where teacher and principal churn is constant, weakening the entire school
according to a preponderance of research. High SPED and high LEP schools in
Dallas ISD work from illegal and unconstitutional disadvantages, but not one
input measure of funding or staffing is included in the TEI which will
determine teacher compensation.
Because IR schools already represent a threat to any
experienced or inexperienced teacher wishing to build a productive career as a
teacher, teacher and principal appraisal instruments must provide latitude for
the context of different campuses, or teachers and principals suffer
disproportionate consequences for instructing children on campuses with high
percentages of LEP, SPED, and at-risk students.
The TEI gives a teacher compensation advantage to teachers in low LEP
and SPED schools while providing disadvantages to teachers assigned to IR and
under-resourced Title I schools. The TEI provides another reason for
experienced and proven teacher talent to find “safer” campuses to build
their careers. In doing so, the TEI deprives the neediest students on IR
campuses from the full advantage of recruiting teacher talent that can be
retained on their campuses and equal protection guarantees.
Plaintiffs request the federal Education Department bring a complete halt to
any attempt at tying teacher compensation in Dallas ISD to student output
through the TEI. This request is based on the illegal and unconstitutional
sourcing of campuses in Dallas public schools and based on the inability of all
current VAMs to include the contextual variables of campus conditions that are
as important as teacher expertise and effort in determining student achievement
outcomes.
In addition, the current superintendents’ public statement
that high-rated teachers would have their TEI rating essentially frozen if they
transferred to IR schools is a public statement of the lack of validity of the
TEI.
The TEI does not include campus safety factors, constant
churn in teachers and principals, quality of campus leadership, forced
micromanaging of professional practices, and lack of adequate resources on many
campuses. All of these factors are totally beyond the control of teachers, yet
teachers are held accountable for instructional outcomes.
The current attempts by the Superintendent of giving
supplemental pay to high-rated teachers willing to transfer to IR schools
ignores the fact the current teachers on IR campuses might also be high-rated
if they simply transferred to non-Title I schools. That fact that the majority
of the highest paid teachers in the district under the TEI scheme will probably
be located on non-Title I campuses is a violation of equal protection rights of
Title I students.
4.
Audition
and Recruitment of Out of District Students: Booker T. Washington High School
for the Performing and Visual Arts: Violation of Equal Protection Guarantees of
Dallas ISD Students
Dallas ISD students who attended Dallas public schools in
the eighth grade are now in the minority (only 40%) at Booker T. Washington
High School, an arts magnet school financed with Dallas ISD taxpayer monies.
Dallas ISD has had dozens of openings for teachers in the
arts since the arrival of the current Superintendent. Dallas ISD has failed to
provide adequate training in the arts in grades K-8 so that all interested
students in Dallas ISD are prepared to audition at a public Dallas ISD school.
Complainants are requesting additional arts classes in all the
cluster areas provided at Booker T. Washington in grades K-8 in existing DISD
schools, not as part of new choice schools, so that all interested
Dallas ISD students are able to successfully compete for admission at the arts
magnet. As part of the regular education funding that should be increased on
most Title I campuses in order to provide equity, additional arts programming,
part of the academic core, must be provided all students.
5.
Lack
of Effective Programmatic Remedies and Funding for IR Secondary Schools and
Violations of Equal Protection Guarantees
Dallas ISD is not a property poor district, nor does it lack
the ability to recruit experienced administrators, principals, and teachers who
have a track record of practicing effective research-based programmatic
remedies and interventions. Dallas IR secondary schools contain on the average
almost twice the number of SPED and LEP students as other neighborhood middle
schools, yet research-based programmatic remedies seem absent from campuses
which also suffer from discipline policies that are exacerbating unsafe campus
conditions.
Plaintiffs are requesting investigation into:
·
The underfunding due to blatant supplanting of
Title I funds at Spence Middle School where lack of psychological services may
have played a role in a student’s suicide.
·
Unsafe campus conditions at Sara Zumwalt Middle
School, Edison Middle School, Billy Earl Dade, Boude Storey, and Marsh Middle
School as documented in press stories and parent and community complaints for
relief.
·
Lack of appropriate student services and special
education expertise, special education teacher training and resources, and
psychological services on all IR middle school campuses with particular
attention to Billy Earl Dade.
·
Increase in the size of classes for neighborhood
secondary schools with large percentages of SPED and LEP students compared to magnet
schools containing a much smaller percentage, or none, of these students.
·
Total, public transparency regarding campus
climate surveys which should be available on every DISD campus web site to warn
parents and communities about unsafe schools.
Teachers
in both high SPED middle and high schools report a lack of visibility of
special education services and personnel for students mainstreamed into regular
classrooms.
While
many IR middle and high schools seem to be supplanting special education
dollars for regular education dollars, and the supplanting also seems to be
taking place on campuses with high SPED populations that have not yet been
rated IR, classroom teachers report no intersection with special education
teachers who should be providing support for mainstreamed students. Special
education teachers are not present in regular classrooms to assist the large
numbers of mainstreamed students. This fact may play a major role in the large
number of SPED-heavy schools on the state IR list.
Secondary
classrooms have become crowded in many neighborhood schools where SPED and LEP
students attend school compared to much lower student/teacher ratios and
smaller classes for non-SPED and non-LEP students in choice schools.
Dallas ISD classroom teachers have also
reported an inability to differentiate instruction for SPED and LEP students in
secondary schools due to a cut in teachers’ collaborative planning period, the addition of 5 hours of classroom
instruction per week, lack of adequate training, overcrowded classrooms, and
lack of special education support personnel visible in regular classrooms.
Increasing
class sizes in IR schools, which contain large percentages of SPED and LEP students, while
removing sufficient planning time and support for teachers may have played a
major role in failure at these schools. Collaborative planning time was pushed
to an extended day for teachers and took place after school, exhausting
teachers and providing more reasons for teacher talent to leave for the
suburbs. These dysfunctional practices may stem partly from lack of equitable
funding on these campuses.
·
Complainants
are requesting that campus climate surveys be posted for public inspection on
the web site of each public school in Dallas ISD in order to monitor schools
that may need assistance in developing better discipline policies for students.
·
Complainants
are requesting an investigation into current special education funding patterns
than may indeed be supplanting regular education dollars, especially on
campuses with high percentages of special education students and low levels of
regular education funding.
6.
Lack
of Appropriate Funding and Staffing to Decrease High School Attrition and EOC
Failure and Violations of Equal Protection Guarantees
Roosevelt High School in Dallas ISD seemed to be on a path
to improvement TEA Commissioner Michael Williams toured the school in the fall
of 2012.
The current senior class at Roosevelt contained 179 members as sophomores as
reported on the DISD web portal, MyDataPortal. On September 15, 2014, the
senior class had dwindled to 75 seniors
who were enrolled at Roosevelt.
The latest End of Course exams, taken by students in
December, 2014 with results reported in January, 2015, left 59 Roosevelt seniors able to graduate based on their passage
of all five End of Course exams required for graduation.
The next round of EOC exams will not take place until the spring,
with results reported in early June, too late for a timely spring graduation
for Dallas ISD seniors.
As of the latest round of EOC testing, only 6383 Dallas seniors are eligible for graduation, almost a thousand
less than the senior class of 2014. Nowhere in any Dallas media outlet or
at the Board level has this severe attrition and failure of EOC exams been
discussed in their impact on this senior cohort.
This senior cohort has been the recipient of three years of
Broad-based corporate reforms.
Complainants are
requesting an investigation into the missing students at Roosevelt High School
and the extremely high attrition rates for this 2015 senior cohort for
Roosevelt, Conrad, Samuell, South Oak Cliff, Lincoln, Pinkston, Spruce, Carter,
North Dallas, Thomas Jefferson, Bryan Adams, Sunset High School, WT White,
Wilmer Hutchins, and Adamson. Combining high attrition and high failure rates
on EOC exams has left these high schools with at least 30% to 60% of their
sophomore cohort absent from a timely graduation in 2015 based on attrition
rates since their sophomore year in addition to high EOC failure rates.
While the Texas
Senate has lowered EOC graduation rates, had the Legislature not been in
session, the effects of inequitable and inappropriate resourcing on these
Dallas ISD campuses would have punished and impacted disproportionately LEP,
SPED, at-risk, minority and poor students.
EOC pass rates have only been reported to the board as the
percentage of current seniors who have passed all five tests. This methodology
leaves the impression that Dallas ISD pass rates are just a little lower than
the state average when in many cases, severe attrition in addition to failure
on EOC exams may result in IR status in 2015.
Some missing students may have transferred to other DISD
high schools since Skyline’s class of 2014 grew itself out of possible IR
status based on low graduation rates by increasing the cohort by 70 students from
in-district transfers. Skyline itself is extremely under-funded, but the
increase in students eclipsed its high failure rates on EOC exams.
The misuse of credit recovery in low performing schools in
order to increase graduation rates has already been documented in the senior
class of 2013.
The attrition in the present senior class combined with high
rates of EOC failure on IR campuses has lowered the graduating class by almost
2,000 students compared with their numbers as sophomores. Extreme attrition on
many campuses is hiding the actual failure rates on End of Course exams.
Part of the
under-resourcing of these campuses may be traced to moving state high school
allotment dollars from weak campuses to magnet schools as a way of
circumventing Title I comparability guidelines, but the majority of the problem
seems to begin in under-resourcing regular education dollars for teaching the
academic core in most high attrition high schools in addition to the absence of
targeted plans for use of State Compensatory Education funds.
North Dallas High School had shown improvements with extra
funding from a SIG that allowed an increase in student services personnel and
an increase in collaborative planning time for teachers. When North Dallas
returned to its previous low funding pattern, those necessary extra personnel
disappeared along with increased planning time for teachers. Student attrition
at North Dallas may return it to IR status because funding by Dallas ISD does
not adequately resource the high school with a large population of homeless
students.
It appears that
classroom financial cuts and cuts in student services personnel have damaged
student retention and achievement levels in high SPED and LEP populations.
Supplanting Title I dollars and underfunding regular education dollars may be
the foundation for increased secondary attrition.
It appears that dropping collaborative planning periods,
increasing class sizes, and underfunding high school campuses that are not magnet
schools has increased attrition and lowered graduation rates, especially on
campuses with high percentages of LEP and SPED students.
·
Complainants are requesting a full investigation
by the federal Education Department into high attrition rates on Dallas ISD high
school neighborhood campuses. Since Pearson has purchased the GED testing
service in Texas, pass rates on the GED have plummeted. Many students in this
year’s 2015 DISD graduation class who are missing from a timely graduation may
never receive either a diploma or GED unless current graduation policies are
changed by state legislators.
7.
A Disproportionately
Negatively Impact on African American Students: Equal Protection Violations
ITBS scores of K-12 students in Dallas ISD present a pattern
of declining abilities in reading over the past three years, a time of
“disruptive reform” in Dallas ISD. Advanced Placement scores for neighborhood
high schools with a majority of African American students have the lowest pass
rates of all high schools. Special education placements are higher for African
American students and research-based intervention policies, such as PBIS
(Positive Behavior Interventions and Support) are almost nonexistent as a way
of socializing students back into productive membership in school communities
with high numbers of minority SPED students.
Increases in the achievement gaps between African American
students and other racial and ethnic groups have been pervasive in past few
years. Graduation rates have been
negatively impacted in the current senior cohort.
Complainants are requesting immediate, authentic
comparability in a Title I formula based on floors for regular education
spending in an attempt to increase instructional capacity in schools where the
achievement gap is increasing. Complainants also request the Department of
Education investigate disparities in suspension rates between racial and ethnic
groups since suspension rates appear to be tied to race and the pass rates of
Advanced Placement tests on comprehensive high school campuses show a direct
correlation to race.
8.
Principal
and Teacher Staffing: Violations of Equal Protection of LEP and SPED and
At-Risk Students
From public information on uncertified and inexperienced
teachers available on MyDataPortal, it is overwhelmingly clear that magnets,
vanguards, and some non-Title I campuses have the highest level of experienced
teachers, the lowest levels of teacher churn, and the lowest levels of
principal churn.
These staffing patterns are a violation of No Child Left
Behind statutes and equal protection guarantees for LEP, SPED, and At-Risk
students.
While teacher churn across Dallas ISD has increased in the
last couple of years, stripping away needed classroom dollars for teacher
recruitment, the process of filling IR and Title I campuses with high
percentages of non-experienced teachers who may hold no certifications has
increased during the current administration with a focus a disruptive education
reform.
From the Superintendent’s appraisal of Dallas ISD principals
in 2014, the principals receiving Exemplary ratings, with the accompanying
increase in pay, were all located on vanguard, Early College, or magnet school
campuses. This rating system and staffing system are a violation of equal
protection guarantees of LEP, SPED, and At-Risk and Title I students since principal talent should be
staffed equally across Title I and non-Title I campuses.
Complainants are requesting an investigation into principal
churn rates, principal evaluations, and teacher appraisals and staffing for
lack of comparability between Title I and non-Title 1 campuses and for IR
schools with high percentages of SPED and LEP students.
9.
Illegal
Hiring Preferences and Illegal Promotion Preferences: Teach for America and
Broad
It is apparent from Dallas ISD employment portals that ask
about Teach for America as well as Dallas ISD hiring and promotion patterns
that Dallas ISD is violating federal equal protection guarantees in its hiring
practices as well as violating the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
Dallas ISD and the state of Texas may engage in no practices
that create set-asides for TFA or Broad-trained candidates without violating
federal employment and constitutional guarantees regarding equal access for all
job seekers. Since most Texas public schools are the recipients of federal
funding, federal employment laws and constitutional guarantees of equal
protection cannot be violated at whim. No Child Left Behind statutes that
prohibit critical masses of uncertified and inexperienced teachers from
providing instruction for low income and minority children are ignored in
Dallas ISD which practices an overt system of preferential treatment in
recruitment, hiring, and promotion for Teach for America and Broad-trained
recruits who many times lack any certification, credentials, or experience for
their assigned roles.
Complainants request an investigation into current
employment and promotion practices in Dallas ISD where TFA has been given
unfair advantage in hiring and promotion. Reports of TFA candidates being
illegally recruited through job posting unavailable for the rest of Dallas
teachers and other candidates violate federal employment laws as well as
constitutional guarantees of equal protection. Resumes of candidates who applied for executive
positions and had more experience, credentials, and previous success in urban
schools compared to the hired TFA and Broad candidates are available and
provide evidence of illegal, discriminatory hiring patterns in Dallas ISD.
These illegal hiring patterns also remove equal protection
guarantees from students since filling executive level leadership positions
with candidates with no previous experience or credentials in their roles
deprives students of the programmatic remedies that would be brought to the
District through hiring candidates with successful track records and
credentials.
It also appears that a crony system of patronage may exist
that provides political support for the superintendent in exchange for
executive jobs for candidates lacking credentials, training, or previous
experience in their leadership roles.
All of these practices are in direct violation of federal
law.
10.
Effective
Models of Funding and Interventions for IR Schools are Available
Austin ISD does have a slightly higher amount of per student
funding than Dallas ISD and a lower level of student poverty across the
district, but Austin ISD does have traditionally low performing campuses that provide
close demographic matches to DISD low performing campuses.
Unlike Dallas ISD,
supplanting of federal or state compensatory is not in evidence on current
Austin ISD IR campuses nor does Austin ISD take a punitive position in regard
to its teachers. Austin ISD, smaller than Dallas ISD, has 126 Board Certified
teachers.
Austin ISD’s campus funding model has been closely watched
by the Texas Civil Rights Project and as a result, failing campuses get the
funding and community support they need to help them transition off the list of
IR campuses. Austin ISD’s Public Education Grant (PEG) list has shrunk through
legally funding its failing campuses and using the collaboration of
partnerships to help low achieving campuses. Dallas ISD’s PEG list continues to
grow.
While Austin ISD inundates its IR campuses with a high floor
of regular education funds in addition to supplemental funding, Dallas ISD uses
a reverse Robin Hood plan that takes resources from the poorest schools while
shuffling funding and its most experienced teachers to campuses with either low
percentages of Title I students or its magnet schools of choice.
Complainants request that public hearings are held to
demonstrate to the public and trustees the existence of legal and effective
campus funding models and prescriptive remedies for failing campuses as evidenced
in the success of Austin ISD or Irving ISD.
Since the public can monitor the supplanting of federal and
state compensatory dollars once they understand how these dollars have replaced
local monies in regular education funding, the existence of PEIMS records on
the Texas Education Agency web site needs to be explained to the Board of
Trustees as well as Dallas taxpayers.
Increasing the number of schools rated lowest in the state
of Texas is not inevitable for Dallas ISD if research-based, programmatic
remedies are used in conjunction with equitable and comparable sourcing in
monies and staffing between Title I and non-Title I campuses and between
schools meeting state standards and those in the Improvement Required category.
Summary
An examination of planned campus budgets for Dallas ISD for
2013-2014 proves that illegal supplanting occurred on Title I campuses, that
magnet school campus budgets were rigged to avoid Title I comparability
formulas in existence by the District, and that most Title I campuses were grossly
underfunded in regular education dollars when compared with a similar bordering
ISD with similar demographics and revenue.
There is no evidence that Dallas ISD Trustees knew of these
illegal and unconstitutional violations of federal and state law due to annual
power point presentations where central administrators assured Trustees that
the District was operating under an equity model known as the “Dallas Miracle.” (https://thehub.dallasisd.org/2014/11/26/88/
)
There is no way for central administration to escape
responsibility for under-funding Dallas ISD’s campuses full of LEP, special
education, and at-risk students to an estimated $77 million dollars in one
school year. All school administrators are trained on federal and state law
regarding supplanting federal and state monies. Not only that, but it is
apparent from examining the records that campus budgets were pulled from
different buckets of funds by hand and revisited every year. The purpose seems
to have been to protect magnet programs through hidden sourcing while pulling
as many regular education dollars off Title I campuses as possible.
These regular education dollars could then be used to build the
surplus budget and for special projects of central administrators.
It is incumbent upon Dallas ISD Trustees to change the
current Title I comparability formula to one where regular education spending
has floors on Title I campuses. The first revenue priority is legal and constitutional
funding of the classrooms where the majority of Dallas ISD students reside and
where LEP, SPED, and at-risk students are found in critical masses.
Pleading lack of funding will not work. Sitting at Dallas
ISD’s borders is a school district that does not enjoy what should be
the economies of scale found in Dallas ISD. The comparable district in revenue
has the same issues of high poverty and high LEP and at-risk students as Dallas
ISD. The comparable school district also seems able to maintain its physical
structures for students in an efficient manner rather than having seas of
portables on overcrowded campuses.
Dallas ISD must change its Title I comparability formula for
the budget cycle of 2015-2016 to a formula with a floor for its most disadvantaged
students.
In addition to pulling around $77 million dollars in regular
education funding off its Title I campuses, Dallas ISD is also engaging in
illegal staffing patterns on Title I campuses which are frequently overwhelmed
with high numbers of teachers with no teaching experience. Some of these same
campuses have lack of sourcing to deal with high levels of student misconduct.
IR Title I campuses also have a pattern of extremely high
churn in principals and teachers and have the reputation of being “career
enders” for educators. These staffing practices violate the equal protection
guarantees of students on these campuses as well as NCLB statutes.
It is clear from the illegal funding and illegal staffing of
Dallas ISD Title I and IR schools that the extremely high number of schools on
the annual PEG list is not solely a function of high poverty in Dallas schools,
but a function of illegal and unconstitutional spending and staffing patterns
and lack of constitutional comparability between campuses with low levels of
SPED, LEP, at-risk, minority and poor children and those with high levels of
these students.
Sourcing in Dallas ISD funding, staffing, and programmatic
remedies must follow student need, not the need of central administrators and
some Trustees for bragging rights to an historically high level of surplus
funds.
Continuing a pattern of chaotic, disruptive education reform
that creates even higher teacher and principal churn in IR schools removes
constitutional guarantees of equal protection from campuses with high
percentages of LEP, SPED, and at-risk students.
We the undersigned hereby declare that
the above is true and correct to the best of our knowledge and we file this
complaint with the U.S. Department of Education in search of the above
mentioned remedies:
1)
Date: _____ Signature: __________________ Print Name: ________________
Address:
__________________________City/zip: _________________________
Email: ____________________Phone:__________ Relationship: _____________
2)
Date: _____ Signature: __________________ Print Name: ________________
Address:
__________________________City/zip: _________________________
Email: ____________________Phone:__________ Relationship: _____________
3)
Date: _____ Signature: __________________ Print Name: ________________
Address:
__________________________City/zip: _________________________
Email: ____________________Phone:__________ Relationship: _____________
4)
Date: _____ Signature: __________________ Print Name: ________________
Address:
__________________________City/zip: _________________________
Email: ____________________Phone:__________ Relationship: _____________
5)
Date: _____ Signature: __________________ Print Name: ________________
Address:
__________________________City/zip: _________________________
Email: ____________________Phone:__________ Relationship: _____________
6)
Date: _____ Signature: __________________ Print Name: ________________
Address:
__________________________City/zip: _________________________
Email: ____________________Phone:__________ Relationship: _____________
7)
Date: _____ Signature: __________________ Print Name: ________________
Address:
__________________________City/zip: _________________________
Email: ____________________Phone:__________ Relationship: _____________
8)
Date: _____ Signature: __________________ Print Name: ________________
Address:
__________________________City/zip: _________________________
Email: ____________________Phone:__________ Relationship: _____________
9)
Date: _____ Signature: __________________ Print Name: ________________
Address:
__________________________City/zip: _________________________
Email: ____________________Phone:__________ Relationship: _____________
10)
Date: _____ Signature: _________________ Print Name: ________________
Address:
__________________________City/zip: _________________________
Email: ____________________Phone:__________ Relationship: _____________
[1]
http://www.esc20.net/users/0073/docs/Supplement%20Not%20Supplant%20Handbook.pdf
[2]
http://www.dallasisd.org/cms/lib/TX01001475/Centricity/domain/98/evaluation/13-14/ataglance/EA14-301-4-SCE-AAG.pdf
[3]
There is no evidence of SCE funds being reported through the appropriate
“Accelerated Instruction” category on the PEIMS documents even though other
school districts across Texas reported these funds correctly.
