When Withers Elementary reopened in the ’90s, the Dallas ISD school struggled to compete with the numerous private schools in the surrounding area. The North Dallas school continually battled low enrollment until a group of parents had an idea in the early 2000s: the school could start a two-way immersion dual-language program that would put Spanish-speaking and English-speaking students in the same classroom, teach them the same curriculum in both languages, and create bilingual, bicultural and biliterate students. Fast forward nine years, and not only is Withers’ student population at capacity, it has a waiting list to get into its…

More than 2,000 teachers were identified this year as eligible to apply to the Distinguished Teacher Review process, which aims to identify and reward the most effective Dallas ISD teachers. This represents more than a 25 percent increase than the number of teachers invited to apply to the DTR process in the 2014-15 school year. To meet DTR eligibility criteria, teachers excelled in all relevant components of the Teacher Excellence Initiative, including teacher performance, student achievement, and student surveys. The teachers also earned TEI evaluation scores in the top 25 percent of their teacher category. The 2015-16 DTR process was broken into two application…

Attention parents: would your student be interested in attending a school that focuses on hands-on learning where, in a given day, they might create a blog, practice leadership and public speaking skills, and create and present projects about real world issues? The school—D.A Hulcy STEAM Middle School—is housed under a science, technology, engineering, arts and math banner, and it would help prepare the student to succeed throughout their life. Or maybe your student would prefer to attend Mata Montessori, which would give them the independence to learn on their own terms? The student would leave Mata with the tools necessary…

Touched by the news coverage of the destruction wrought by recent tornadoes, Cathy Vernon was overcome with the need to do something to help victims who had lost everything. The day after the storms, Vernon, the student activities coordinator and student council sponsor at Booker T. Washington High School for the Performing and Visual Arts, began calling her students and the school’s PTA president to arrange a donation drive. With school out and everyone on winter break, Vernon said she was unsure what the group could collect. Nevertheless, they put out calls to colleagues and families via social media asking…