 |
| Dallas ISD Map with Schools and IR/FIR schools indicated along with new headquarters |
Who are the customers of DISD?
Friday, April 29, 2016
New DISD Administrative Headquarters: 9400 North Central Experssway
At the DISD School Board meeting on 4-28-16 the 8 remaining trustees voted 5 to 3 to purchase a $44 million building at 9400 North Central Expressway as Administrative Offices. This had only been made public within a week of the board meeting and the only testimony at the meeting was against it, by me. I gave copies of the following map to the trustees to document how this is a move away from the children. That was apparently not important except to the three trustees who represented far south Dallas and the schools that would simply all be 6 miles more distant from DISD Headquarters.
The body language by the 5 trustees who voted for this purchase, two of which this was their lasts meeting, was very negative toward the majority of DISD parents who will now be more distant from DISD Headquarters.
Who are the customers of DISD?
Who are the customers of DISD?
Saturday, April 16, 2016
Quintanilla Time Capsule Reunion #2 & Progress!
This Friday, 4-22-16, in the early morning, over lunch, and after school, the letters the 8th grade Quintanilla Class of 2006 wrote to themselves will be returned. Members of this class can come to Quintanilla from 7:30 to 9:30, or over lunch from 11:30 to 1:30, or after school from 4:00 to 6:00 p.m. to pick up their letter. They must bring their ID to pick up their letter from ten years ago. Hopefully the alumni from 2006 have already received a letter with these details.
Quintanilla achieved the status of the highest-performing middle school in all of Dallas last year with an SEI score (School Effectiveness Indices Score) of 59.3, the highest in the district! Quintanilla is a Dallas ISD middle school that has one of the highest 10 poverty levels of all 32 middle schools in Dallas ISD. The Quintanilla SEI was also higher than any of the 5 middle schools that are magnet schools.
Quintanilla has many of the same programs as other middle schools in Dallas ISD except for one program that has been only happening at Quintanilla for the past 12 years. That is the School Archive Project, or as it is now more frequently called, the Time Capsule Project.
This is the second year Quintanilla has had reunions of students who were in the 8th grade at Quintanilla 10 years earlier and wrote letters for the vault bolted to the floor in the school lobby. Having these students return is making the project more real for current students. They are realizing more that the future will be here and their letters really will be returned to them in 10 years. What they do now will make the difference for their future!
This year for the first time these returning students from a decade ago will be invited to volunteer to speak with current Quintanilla students on Career Day on May 2nd! A priceless set of messages will be delivered about the decade after 8th grade.
Beginning in 2009 the first of 7 other middle schools in DISD with time-capsule projects will begin their own patterns of annual 10-year reunions for classes who have been writing letters since their schools' time-capsule projects started. These schools will all see hopefully similar achievement gains from an ever stronger student focus on their own future.
The photo on the left is of the Quintanilla Time-Capsule contents. It shows the 2015 shelf with the new letters from the 8th grade class of 2015 after the letters from 2005 were removed to return to the Class of 2005. The letters from 2006 are still in the vault waiting to be returned to the 8th grade class of 2006 beginning on 4-22-16.
In the constant effort to continue to raise achievement, Quintanilla is now planning to request that all Quintanilla parents this May write letters to their student about their parental dreams for their student, and to begin an annual pattern of such letter writing. A child changes a lot in one year.
In each of these letters we will also be asking each parent to tell one story from their family history that they want their child to remember when they are 40 years old. What can be more valuable than to reinforce connections to a child's personal family history, along with parental dreams?
All Quintanilla students will then bring these priceless letters to their Language Arts Classes after STAAR testing. They will use them to write a letter to themselves about their own plans for their future, and how they will achieve those goals. Then all the letters for each student will be placed in one self-addressed envelope for each student and placed into the vault. The 6th and 7th grade students will have their letters collected for the vault. The 8th grade students will be writing the letter for 10-years into the future and will place their letter into the vault themselves after the normal annual photos are taken.
Next year the same process will be repeated at the end of the year except that 7th graders will receive back their 6th grade letters, and 8th graders will receive back their 7th grade letters. The goal is to constantly write better, more complete plans for the future as the normal changes in life happen. Parents will also be asked to write new letters each year as they observe their child's changes year to year.
With this process the achievement level at Quintanilla will continue to rise if all other factors in the school remain positive.
========================================================
Here is a link to the newspaper coverage of the above event that went very well: http://educationblog.dallasnews.com/2016/04/time-capsule-reveals-hopes-and-dreams-in-a-dallas-school.html/#commentsOuterWrapper
========================================================
Here is a link to the newspaper coverage of the above event that went very well: http://educationblog.dallasnews.com/2016/04/time-capsule-reveals-hopes-and-dreams-in-a-dallas-school.html/#commentsOuterWrapper
========================================================
Quintanilla achieved the status of the highest-performing middle school in all of Dallas last year with an SEI score (School Effectiveness Indices Score) of 59.3, the highest in the district! Quintanilla is a Dallas ISD middle school that has one of the highest 10 poverty levels of all 32 middle schools in Dallas ISD. The Quintanilla SEI was also higher than any of the 5 middle schools that are magnet schools.
 |
| School Effectiveness Indices for the past 2 years for 32 Dallas ISD Middle Schools |
Quintanilla has many of the same programs as other middle schools in Dallas ISD except for one program that has been only happening at Quintanilla for the past 12 years. That is the School Archive Project, or as it is now more frequently called, the Time Capsule Project.This is the second year Quintanilla has had reunions of students who were in the 8th grade at Quintanilla 10 years earlier and wrote letters for the vault bolted to the floor in the school lobby. Having these students return is making the project more real for current students. They are realizing more that the future will be here and their letters really will be returned to them in 10 years. What they do now will make the difference for their future!
This year for the first time these returning students from a decade ago will be invited to volunteer to speak with current Quintanilla students on Career Day on May 2nd! A priceless set of messages will be delivered about the decade after 8th grade.
Beginning in 2009 the first of 7 other middle schools in DISD with time-capsule projects will begin their own patterns of annual 10-year reunions for classes who have been writing letters since their schools' time-capsule projects started. These schools will all see hopefully similar achievement gains from an ever stronger student focus on their own future.
The photo on the left is of the Quintanilla Time-Capsule contents. It shows the 2015 shelf with the new letters from the 8th grade class of 2015 after the letters from 2005 were removed to return to the Class of 2005. The letters from 2006 are still in the vault waiting to be returned to the 8th grade class of 2006 beginning on 4-22-16.
In the constant effort to continue to raise achievement, Quintanilla is now planning to request that all Quintanilla parents this May write letters to their student about their parental dreams for their student, and to begin an annual pattern of such letter writing. A child changes a lot in one year.
In each of these letters we will also be asking each parent to tell one story from their family history that they want their child to remember when they are 40 years old. What can be more valuable than to reinforce connections to a child's personal family history, along with parental dreams?
All Quintanilla students will then bring these priceless letters to their Language Arts Classes after STAAR testing. They will use them to write a letter to themselves about their own plans for their future, and how they will achieve those goals. Then all the letters for each student will be placed in one self-addressed envelope for each student and placed into the vault. The 6th and 7th grade students will have their letters collected for the vault. The 8th grade students will be writing the letter for 10-years into the future and will place their letter into the vault themselves after the normal annual photos are taken.
Next year the same process will be repeated at the end of the year except that 7th graders will receive back their 6th grade letters, and 8th graders will receive back their 7th grade letters. The goal is to constantly write better, more complete plans for the future as the normal changes in life happen. Parents will also be asked to write new letters each year as they observe their child's changes year to year.
With this process the achievement level at Quintanilla will continue to rise if all other factors in the school remain positive.
Thursday, April 7, 2016
Texas Ethics Commission Complaint Resolved
A year ago I filed a complaint against a DISD Trustee Candidate who failed to complete campaign finance reports, failed to respond to the Texas Ethics Commission in a timely fashion, but then went on to lose the election in spite of the secrecy his failure provided.
Last week I receive formal notice that the complaint was found valid and that $750 in fines had been paid by this candidate due to this complaint and his delayed response to it. See order entered at https://www.ethics.state.tx.us/sworncomp/2015/3150486.pdf
The system works! It must be used. Complaints must be filed in a timely fashion and failure to respond in a timely fashion by the respondent will be held against them.
Here is a record of those groups who were supporting this candidate: http://www.dallasisd.org/Page/13930. You need to download the various reports for the most complete image of who was supporting this campaign.
If you study the campaign finance reports over time, and in the current election, you will find a consistency in that the same collection of PAC's and individuals is supporting candidates who most strongly supported Mike Miles and the well documented destruction of DISD since 2012.
There is also a high correlation of investments in charter schools, and people serving on charter school boards in these groups and among the candidates they have supported.
Notice the large amount of the support for Demarcus Offord that came from Dallas Kids First:
Notice who Dallas Kids First is endorsing in the May 2016 DISD Trustee elections:
Last week I receive formal notice that the complaint was found valid and that $750 in fines had been paid by this candidate due to this complaint and his delayed response to it. See order entered at https://www.ethics.state.tx.us/sworncomp/2015/3150486.pdf
The system works! It must be used. Complaints must be filed in a timely fashion and failure to respond in a timely fashion by the respondent will be held against them.
Here is a record of those groups who were supporting this candidate: http://www.dallasisd.org/Page/13930. You need to download the various reports for the most complete image of who was supporting this campaign.
If you study the campaign finance reports over time, and in the current election, you will find a consistency in that the same collection of PAC's and individuals is supporting candidates who most strongly supported Mike Miles and the well documented destruction of DISD since 2012.
There is also a high correlation of investments in charter schools, and people serving on charter school boards in these groups and among the candidates they have supported.
Notice the large amount of the support for Demarcus Offord that came from Dallas Kids First:
 |
| Dallas Kids First support for Demarcus Offord in 2015 election |
Tuesday, April 5, 2016
Dallas ISD District 5 Candidate Forum 4-5-16
DISD District 5 Candidate Forum
League of Women Voters AND West Dallas 1 Neighborhood Coalition
Tuesday, April 5, 2016
6 to 7:30 p.m.
El Centro West Campus
3330 N. Hampton Rd., Dallas, Texas 75212
Cosponsors: NAACP, Women’s Council of Greater
Dallas
www.lwvdallas.org 214-688-4125 www.vote411.org
Come Join us and hear:
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)