The Dallas ISD Board of Trustees unanimously approved a resolution on the commitment of Dallas ISD to black students and black lives.
Under the resolution, trustees in collaboration with the community will identify high-need issues and reconvene with Superintendent Michael Hinojosa in 30 days to begin to take actions to achieve measurable improvements for black students within Dallas ISD over the next year. Hinojosa credited the board for their quick and decisive action on this issue and committed to increase the districts efforts to do more.
“While we’ve made a lot of progress, the status quo is not acceptable and we need to do more,” Hinojosa said. There are some things that we’ve built on that are going well, but some things that we need to go further. The administration fully supports this resolution.”
Board President Justin Henry started the board meeting with an 8 minutes and 46 seconds moment of silence, which was how long a Minneapolis police officer kept his knee on George Floyd’s neck. Henry thanked trustees Joyce Foreman and Maxie Johnson for helping him author the resolution—and all the other fellow board members for their valuable support and input—in an emotional speech in support of the resolution. He closed his speech by recognizing Breonna Taylor, who was killed by police officers on March 13 and would have turned 27 years old on June 5, the date of the board meeting.
“We have to move beyond incremental steps,” Henry said. “When something is at a crisis as it is now and has been since I was a child and before then, we have to look toward more systemic and deep change. We have to develop a higher level of urgency.”
