Dallas ISD has, for the moment at least, put last spring’s athletic-recruiting scandal behind it. The 15 coaches and administrators Superintendent Mike Miles fired over the summer have exhausted their appeals. Madison High School’s 2012-13 and 2013-14 basketball titles have been vacated. There’s a new athletic director and, the district…
In January, before many people were aware that a little-known corporation with the powers of eminent domain wanted to build a private toll road through the rural communities east of Lake Lavon and Lake Ray Hubbard, the Texas Department of Transportation was promising in a written agreement to help the…
For the first time since 2002, the Texas State Board of Education is considering the adoption of new social studies textbooks. The books must incorporate 2010 state social studies standards, which have been criticized as right-wing biased and blatantly conservative. See also: Proposed Texas Social Studies Textbooks Get Climate Change…
The issue at hand is a little wonky, but not too complicated. The Dallas City Council took bids for a contract to collect fines for the city’s municipal courts. In the next fiscal year, the contract holder is expected to resolve more than 150,000 cases. MSB Government Services submitted the…
Sometimes, things are delightful for their simplicity. Cowboys’ receiver Cole Beasley’s response to a Twitter heckler Sunday was definitely one of those times. Beasley made his first fumble of the year Sunday afternoon against the Jaguars. Twitter user @massot15 thought Beasley needed to know he should hold onto the ball…
On Tuesday morning, right after an African-American principal and an African-American superintendent had finished predicting a great future for East Dallas’ Lee Elementary and its new International Baccalaureate program, a woman buttonholed DISD trustee Mike Morath. After a few complimentary words about Morath’s efforts on behalf of the campus, she…
It was something that was inevitable once Thomas Eric Duncan was sent home from Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital with antibiotics on September 26. There would be legal action against the hospital for its treatment of Duncan, the first person diagnosed with the Ebola virus in the United States. Wednesday morning,…
Alex Truman didn’t think something was wrong until he returned to the gym. Before fathering his two kids, he worked out regularly and even made an early career of exercise. He had two degrees in health and fitness and ran gyms on the East Coast before he moved to Dallas…
The neighborhoods surrounding Dallas ISD’s Robert E. Lee Elementary are much like the neighborhoods surrounding nearby Stonewall Jackson and Lakewood Elementary. That is, they are predominately white and upper middle class, with just a touch of East Dallas crunchiness. But while Stonewall and Lakewood bulge with kids from the neighborhood,…
In Dallas ISD, early childhood education has been a major push in the last year. It’s a move that administrators believe could one day in the future lower soaring poverty rates in a district where free and reduced lunch rates have steadily creeped toward 90 percent in recent years, and…
They had one job. Last Tuesday, the one day this year most people will even think to look at the Dallas County elections website, it went down. For seven hours. Any person needing to know her polling place had to seek out other methods. The situation was laughable, but it…
Tuesday morning, a lawsuit was filed in federal court by an anonymous plaintiff asserting that her daughter, who has Down syndrome, was raped twice by a DART paratransit driver in September 2013. According to the plaintiff, driver Cedrick Agentdropped off his other passengers on the bus before pulling over and…
After Jason Harrison’s father sued the city, the Dallas Police Department and the two officers who shot and killed his son, Harrison’s mother and brother, David, have filed a lawsuit of their own. They claim Harrison, a schizophrenic, posed no threat when officers John Rogers and Andrew Hutchins, killed him…
Late last week, the Transportation and Safety Administration announced on its blog that 2014 has been a record breaking year for dumbasses bringing unsecured weapons into airports. It’s quite an achievement, a worthy capper to DFW patrons’ long history of bringing dumbfounding items into the airport. So far 105 of…
Mobile home parks, at their best, offer community, safety and freedom for people who can’t afford to be tied down in a regular house but don’t want to be fleeced by a slumlord running a crumbling apartment complex. A Dallas commercial real estate company called Harvest Partners Ltd is doing…
Last week, Denton became the first city in the state to pass a citywide ban on fracking. Voters approved the ban in a landslide, with 59 percent in favor of the ban and 41 percent against, after more than five years of struggle between anti-fracking activists and the energy industry…
Everything, as we all know, is about Obamacare. Your delivery pizza costs 14 cents more because of Obamacare. Your uncle’s Facebook wall is a disaster because of Obamacare. That traffic accident that slowed down your morning commute? Obamacare. Ted Cruz wants you to know that net neutrality is just as…
Vinita Hegwood, a Duncanville High School English teacher, has some strong opinions about white people, especially as it relates to what’s happened in Ferguson, Missouri. Friday night, she decided to share some of them. “Who the fuck made you dumb duck ass crackers think I give a squat fuck about…
Last week, we told you about an internet survey pushed out by Dallas state representative Rafael Anchia asking residents their opinion about the Trinity Toll Road. We speculated that Anchia’s sudden interest might signal forthcoming action in Austin, likely an attempt by supporters to fund the currently unfunded (and unneeded)…
At a condominium near Turtle Creek, there is a bitter, strange battle brewing between the building’s homeowners’ association and the domestic partner of one of the HOA’s members. In January, the 3081 Gilbert Homeowners’ Association felt so threatened by the man, they filed a lawsuit. The court filings start out…
London games, at least from the various couches I’ve watched them on, are always odd. English fans, to their credit, are always enthusiastic, but their cheers are usually half-a-beat off. The extra quarter-of-a-second they need to process what happens on the field, combined with the generally terrible Wembly Stadium pitch…
Insecam is a super-creepy Moscow-based website that is currently streaming footage from 73,000 unsecured IP cameras. The site says it’s doing it to promote security — it is able to access the cameras because their owners never changed their default password — but clearly has revenue-generating ads. There are feeds…
