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Racial Equity Office highlights six accomplishments from the 2019–2020 school year
0In an update to the Dallas ISD Board of Trustees on Thursday, Racial Equity Office Deputy Chief Leslie Williams and his staff identified several areas where REO efforts positively impacted Dallas ISD’s culture during the 2019-2020 school year. Success of ethnic-studies courses More Dallas ISD high school students participated in African-American Studies and Mexican-American Studies courses, as compared to the previous year. African-American Studies enrollment increased from 350 to 1,170 from the fall of 2019 to the fall of 2020. Mexican-American Studies courses also saw a noticeable spike during the same time period, from 537 to 2,059 students, according to…
CAP program underway to improve reading for Dallas ISD students
0Dallas ISD schools may be closed for the summer, but there are a wide variety of summer programs and activities for students to improve their confidence, reading comprehension, and learn more about their culture. One of these programs is Creating Accelerated Performance (CAP), a collaboration between the Racial Equity Office (REO), Teaching and Learning, and School Leadership, which operates from June 1–18, and aims to help students improve their reading skills and gain confidence about themselves. “Reading is the foundation of all learning. Our students have to read on grade level,” said Leslie Williams, Deputy Chief of REO. The program…
Community conversations will collect input and feedback on ensuring equity in the bond planning process
0Dallas ISD’s Racial Equity Office (REO) has scheduled a series of community conversations related to its Equity in Bond Planning process. The meetings will collect input and feedback on plans to invest a portion of the district’s proposed Bond 2020 package of school/facility improvements to create four school-community hubs. The hubs are proposed for neighborhoods served by H. Grady Spruce, Lincoln, Franklin D. Roosevelt and L.G. Pinkston high schools. Using a measurement tool called the Community Resource Index, or CRI, the Racial Equity Office meetings will share data about these neighborhoods in five categories—community, family, education, economics and health. The…
“Trini” Garza students share hardships of race and Covid-19 in published anthology
0Students from Trinidad “Trini” Garza Early College High School at Mountain View published a book about COVID-19, race and their life challenges. “Faceless: Untold Side Effects of Culture, Race & COVID-19” is a collection of almost 80 narratives, poems and short stories from students from two Mexican-American and African-American history classes at Trini Garza. “What we want everyone to take from this book is not just how we’ve spent our quarantine, but how we are determined to speak about our happenings in a way that makes reality just a bit better throughout it,” the book states. “This book is more…