School district bond elections were mostly successful in Saturday's local elections, with 40 of the 50 measures on the ballot passing. Meanwhile, one key race for Dallas ISD's School Board remains undecided and headed to a runoff. Members of our local affiliate--Alliance AFT--worked for the re-election of incumbent Bernadette Nutall with thousands of phone calls and door knocks in Dallas...
By Dena Donaldson Texas AFT Community Schools Coordinator Since 1990, the school transformation framework known as “community schools” has become a nationally recognized way of strengthening neighborhood schools. Today, over 5,000 schools nationwide identify themselves as community schools. Texas AFT currently has four locals actively pursuing community school initiatives in their districts, with many other locals and districts interested in...
Texas AFT issued a press release today marking the occasion of “Safe Schools Week” with a call for Ebola training and preparedness. Here is the text of today’s release: October 19-25 is Safe Schools Week—an initiative of the Texas Education Agency and the Texas School Safety Center to “to develop robust emergency operations plans for a wide range of possible...
Private and corporate interests targeting Texas public schools for a hostile takeover have an experiment under way right now in Dallas ISD. And you have a big stake in the outcome, no matter where you live and work in Texas. The Dallas experiment features the use of a long-dormant state law authorizing the transformation of a public school district, in...
A school-board runoff election in Dallas ISD on June 21 produced a big win for the community coalition (including our Alliance-AFT affiliate) that has been fighting a corporate takeover of Dallas ISD schools. The takeover has been cloaked in the guise of “home rule.” But it would really usher in even more control over district policies by elite interest groups...
A state district judge in Dallas confirmed today that Dallas ISD’s process for choosing classroom teachers to serve on a home-rule charter drafting commission violated state law, as alleged in a lawsuit filed by our Dallas affiliate, the Alliance-AFT. Members of a district-wide advisory committee, who by law are entrusted with naming four classroom teachers to the commission, were not...
The previous Hotline reported that Texas AFT’s local affiliate in Dallas ISD had filed a petition for a temporary restraining order to bar the school district from proceeding with illegal appointments to a “home rule” charter commission. This commission would have the authority to propose sweeping exemptions from statutory safeguards that protect students and teachers. Today we can report that...
The Alliance-AFT, Texas AFT’s local affiliate in Dallas ISD, has filed suit against the school district to ensure that its appointments to a powerful home-rule commission are lawful and representative of classroom teachers. Much is at stake for the whole state in the Dallas dispute over home rule. Dallas ISD, the second-largest school district in the state, has been targeted...
The backers of the current drive to turn Dallas ISD into a "home rule" charter district—the first ever in Texas—would have you believe that nothing but sweetness and light and solicitude for the children of Dallas ISD lies behind their bid to take over the district. For a reliable guide to what's really going on—a grab for power that would...
Texas AFT’s local affiliate representing school employees in Dallas ISD, the Alliance-AFT, and allied local community groups are not alone in taking a dim view of the proposed “home rule” takeover of their school district. As reported by education historian and ”corporate reform” critic Diane Ravitch on her blog, this past weekend the State Democratic Executive Committee—the elected governing board...
Hotline readers may recall an incident in January in which a Dallas ISD teacher was yanked from his classroom and put on leave after sending a critical e-mail to one of the district's school board members. A news conference and letter campaign from our local affiliate, Alliance-AFT, helped get Drake reinstated. Now the American Federation of Teachers has the story...
