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Friday, March 21, 2014

Supporters of home rule for Dallas ISD struggle to win over others

A lot brewing right now in Dallas regarding a proposal to go toward "home rule," that I am told means mayorial control of schools (even though Rep. Villalba cited within suggests something differently).  A discourse on equity is not present; if anything, communities of color are already turned off by both the proposal (what they know of it) and the way that it is getting done—foisted on them.
"A never-before-used 1995 state law allows school districts to switch to a home-rule format. If 5 percent of DISD’s registered voters sign the petition, the school board will have to name 15 people to a commission to rewrite the district’s charter.

The charter would then have to be approved by local voters and the state education commissioner. Organizers hope to have it on the November ballot."

Inasmuch this is indeed about mayorial control, this is a reactionary and very concerning proposal as it de-democratizes public schooling.  It eliminates those structures like our school boards about which people have a vote. 


Angela

Supporters of home rule for Dallas ISD struggle to win over others












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State Rep. Jason Villalba, R-Dallas, and Dallas City Council member Jennifer Staubach Gates are hosting the town hall meeting. 
Backers of an effort to convert Dallas ISD to a home-rule district Thursday night struggled to win over a crowd of frustrated parents, teachers and activists.

State Rep. Jason Villalba, Dallas City Council member Jennifer Staubach Gates and others leading a town hall meeting on the issue in northwest Dallas were interrupted on several occasions. They were asked why the campaign is moving so fast, who is funding it, what a new governance structure might look like, and why none of their promotional materials were published in Spanish.

Attendees appeared largely unsatisfied with the answers.

“We’re at a crossroads here,” said Villalba, R-Dallas, who is also a DISD parent. “This is a new process. We need your input. This is not something that is meant to be done by billionaires from another place. This is meant to be done by you.”

Villalba acknowledged that many concerns appear to be centered on possible governance changes. He said that he would not support a school board with members who are all appointed by the mayor.
“I can tell you right now: Having appointees appointed solely by the mayor is off the table,” he said.
The session at the Preston Royal Library was in a hot room that was not nearly large enough to accommodate the crowd that showed up. It was one of three town hall meetings held Thursday night by Support Our Public Schools, the group leading the initiative. The organization launched a petition drive this month to change DISD to a home-rule district.

Villalba and Gates hosted the event. Both have endorsed the campaign. The other meetings were in South Dallas and Pleasant Grove.

Rene Martinez, leader of the District 3 chapter of the League of United Latin American Citizens, said the Pleasant Grove meeting was orderly. But he said the home-rule supporters “got kind of shellacked in terms of a lot of opposition.”

Similar issues were raised at that meeting, Martinez said.

“What is the rush on this thing?” he said. “Why not start the process again and include people? Who’s behind this?”

Mayor Mike Rawlings and other supporters say that changing to home-rule would free the district from burdensome state rules. It could mean an earlier school start date and a modified curriculum, though the STAAR state exams would still be required.

Three sources told The Dallas Morning News this month that the idea was pitched to them with a goal of establishing a new governance structure, perhaps under the mayor’s oversight. Rawlings has declined to publicly share specific goals, saying the process would start with a blank sheet of paper and community input.

A never-before-used 1995 state law allows school districts to switch to a home-rule format. If 5 percent of DISD’s registered voters sign the petition, the school board will have to name 15 people to a commission to rewrite the district’s charter.

The charter would then have to be approved by local voters and the state education commissioner. Organizers hope to have it on the November ballot.

Support Our Public Schools, also known as SOPS, is financially supported by Hillcrest High graduate John Arnold, a Houston philanthropist and former Enron trader and hedge fund manager, and other, anonymous donors.

State records show the group was formed in November as a tax-exempt 501(c)(4) nonprofit. Louisa Meyer, chair of the Dallas ISD Citizens Budget Review Commission, is one of the organization’s five board members. She was among the meeting leaders at the northwest Dallas meeting.

She addressed whether the names of donors would be publicized.

“It’s the privilege of the donors to remain anonymous,” Meyer said, to a chorus of boos.
SOPS has declined to say how many of the required 24,459 signatures it has collected since launching the drive earlier this month.

Thursday’s forum followed a tough meeting last week between Rawlings and Hispanic leaders at an East Dallas church. At that gathering, the mayor spoke for about 10 minutes and was interrupted twice. He walked out after the second interruption.

On Wednesday, DISD Superintendent Mike Miles said he believed his schools could improve without becoming a home-rule district. Miles declined to take an official position on the home-rule effort, but he shot down the key reasons that advocates are citing for the campaign. Specifically, he said state law, the Texas Education Agency and the DISD school board have not stood in the way of his efforts to overhaul the district.

That’s not consistent with the message Rawlings, a staunch Miles ally, has been spreading in his attempt to sell people on home-rule. The mayor and others have argued that the district has performed so badly that it cannot be fixed without a radical transformation.

Thursday’s meeting was disrupted several times by frustrated opponents of the plan. In almost every case, the meeting organizers ignored them, saying that only questions that were written down would be answered.

Organizers did answer numerous written questions, but many others could not be addressed in the allotted hour. They promised to post the questions and answers on the group's Facebook page.
Local activist Carlos Quintanilla refused to be ignored. He demanded to know why the meetings did not also include opponents of the home-rule effort.

“Because this is not a debate,” Villalba said. “Tonight is a town hall forum.”

Quintanilla promised: “We’re not going to make it easy for you!”

Follow Scott Goldstein on Twitter at @sgoldstein.

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