The Future of Dallas Depends on Dallas ISD
Dallas ISD announced last week that the number of Improvement Required schools in the district has made another significant drop. In the 2015–16 school year the district had 37 IR schools, 21 in 2016–17, and will only have 14 for the 2017–18.
This is not an insignificant achievement. As a comparison, during the same time period, Houston has had 58, 40, and 40 schools on the IR list. But let’s remember that to qualify as an Improvement Required school, you must be in the lowest 5% of schools for academic performance across the entire state of Texas.
So while I want to celebrate the district’s achievement, I also want us to collectively set the bar a higher. Having fewer schools in the lowest 5% of academic performance in the State isn’t our goal for our children. Our kids and our city can’t compete if that is our highest expectation.
And we know that Dallas ISD is completely capable of doing more. When we look at schools that are staffed competitively, that have additional resources, that get the most attention, we see incredible bright spots. The Dallas ISD Talented & Gifted High School at Townview has been named the best high school in the United States several times in the last 5 years. Booker T. Washington High School for the Performing Arts is sending 5 students to Julliard this year. These are remarkable achievements that wouldn’t be possible if the resources for these schools and these students hadn’t been available.
An even more striking example can be found at a little elementary school in Pleasant Grove. Blanton Elementary had been on the Improvement Required list just a few short years ago. But through a program called Accelerating Campus Excellence intended to turn around struggling schools, the district moved some of the best teachers in the district into Blanton and invested more resources into the school. And as a result, in just two years Blanton went from ranking 132nd out of approximately 150 elementary schools in Dallas ISD based on STAAR math scores, to ranking 6th in the district.
We have clear examples of what Dallas ISD is possible of when the necessary resources are available to truly invest in our students. We also know that the majority of our campuses are not getting the necessary resources. Texas ranks 38 out of 50 states in terms of education investment per student, and cuts at the state level have put increased pressure on local property owners. The Texas Supreme Court ruled last year that the way we fund our schools in Texas is fundamentally broken, yet they left it to the State Legislature to fix, and it is now clear that the dysfunction in Austin will leave Texas schools without any real solution to this growing problem.
Dallas ISD was forced to cut $60 million from the budget this year. Increased class sizes, eliminating librarians from high schools, eliminating the college and career readiness department — these were just some of the hard decisions that the administration and the board had to make in order to balance the budget.
These cuts come at a time when we have serious work to do. More than 60% of the 3rd graders in the district are struggling to read on grade level. This is a critical benchmark because 3rd grade is typically when a student transitions from learning to read, to reading to learn. And students who don’t read on grade level in the 3rd grade are 4x more likely to drop out of high school, and significantly more likely to spend time in prison.
But our School Board Trustees have an option — they can give voters the chance to make a small increase in their property taxes that could generate $70-$120 million more in annual revenue for the district. But some trustees have questioned if we really need the money, and others have asked if the residents in their district can afford the $5 — $10 per month average increase in their property taxes.
And baked into the Superintendent’s proposal for this additional revenue is a program called FARE (Funds for Achievement and Racial Equity) that invests $40 million directly into 41 campuses that have the highest need based on student achievement. This has the potential to be a game changing investment of more than $1500 per student per FARE campus.
The stakes are high. The City of Dallas has the highest child poverty rate of any major American city. 30% of all children in our city are waking up unsure where their next meal will come from.
We can’t wring our hands about child poverty, but then shrug our shoulders about adequately funding our schools. And an excellent education is the most critical tool that can help these kids escape this reality.
My 5 year old daughter Lucy starts kindergarten in two weeks. She will be attending our neighborhood school, Hogg Elementary. 96% of the students at Hogg are economically disadvantaged, and 55% are learning English as a second language. Just 31% of Hogg’s 3rd-5th graders were reading on grade level this year — which is the kind of number that has kept other parents in our neighborhood from sending their children there. But I’ve met the principal and I’ve met many of the teachers, and I know that given the advantages my daughter has started her short life with, she will likely thrive at Hogg.
I am not advocating for more funding for Dallas ISD to benefit my child. 89% of the 158,000 kids in Dallas ISD are economically disadvantaged, and don’t start out in life with every advantage. I believe it is up to us as a community to do everything in our power to ensure every single child in Dallas gets an excellent education. Their future depends on it — and our ability to do so determines the future of our city.
