El Paso schools brace for continuing, record-breaking COVID-19 infections

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...
Read MoreBy 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...
Read MoreTexas 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...
Read MorePrivate 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...
Read MoreA 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...
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