quash said:
contrario said:
quash said:
contrario said:
Bearitto said:
They need to build new schools because the new schools they have aren't new enough new schools.
Or they don't have enough schools. Growing communities have a growing need for public services.
They were closing schools just a few years ago.
Dallas needs to be broken up into smaller districts. If that means a couple of layers of administrators lose their jobs, oh well.
I don't live in Dallas, so i don't know the details, but what were the characteristics of the schools closing? Were they older schools that it didn't make sense to renovate? Were they in areas that didn't need the schools? I need context to draw a conclusion from "they were closing schools a few years ago." There is likely good reasons those schools were closed and new ones need to be built, one of which might be the immobility of real estate.
Students at lower performing schools are allowed to transfer without regard to the usual restraints. Several lower performing schools lost a big chunk of their student population and DISD eventually moved to close those schools. In those particular situations there wasn't a shift in where students lived, just in where they were transferred. And those transfers still need bus routes that get them to their chosen schools. Those kind of headaches are why it is better to try and improve the school. How to do that? If I knew I'd sell it and get rich.
This is consistent from what I remember growing up in DISD. I had friends who did just this. Of course, that results in a brain drain where the schools they leave behind are hurt more. Plus, we had the TAG (talented and gifted) schools which took even more kids away from these other schools.
And on the flip side it was hard to get good teachers to want to go to those other schools. They would even pay them more but the environments were often not conducive to learning. There were many liberal white women who had dreams of becoming the next Michelle Pfieffer in Dangerous Games only to run up against the reality of classrooms where some students would not tolerate being taught by a white woman. In addition, there is an issue where teachers are forced to deal with disruptive kids and violent children as the administration does not help them. The result is many of those do gooder liberal white women end up taking the first chance they can to teach in the suburbs or elsewhere for less pay.
So you have a few different issues going on. You have a racial bias/prejudice problem. You have a disruptive student problem. And you sometimes have a money problem. Ideally, you could mitigate the racial problem somewhat by getting more POC teachers but there just aren't enough and a number of them aren't even interested in teaching in those schools. Usually good schools happen in part because the community of parents ensure the school is not neglected as they want their kids to have the best. But the problem here is the active parents who could mobilize the school in this way see it as easier to just send their kids to another school. And they are right. So I don't see anything changing unless they change those rules on transfers which they won't likely do because it receives a lot of blowback from those same parents.
Also, my two predictions on such a bond are:
1. It will be approved because of the demographics and voting patterns in Dallas
2. It will largely be wasted and not have the impact they would hope.