Inside Dallas ISD

Tornadoes destroyed three Northwest Dallas schools on Oct. 20, 2019. In a matter of days, the students and staff from the displaced campuses were reassigned to existing Dallas ISD buildings. Walnut Hill Elementary moved operations to Tom Field Elementary School. Students from Cary Middle School were split into Franklin and Medrano middle schools. And Thomas Jefferson High took over the Thomas Edison Learning Center complex. In January, the Dallas ISD Board of Trustees unanimously approved a plan to renovate Thomas Jefferson High School and build a new consolidated pre-K through eighth-grade campus to replace Walnut Hill Elementary School and Cary…

Quontinetta “Q” Bufford is no stranger to hard work and perseverance. She was a Culinary Arts student at Skyline High School with a talent for volleyball when she found out she was pregnant at 16-years-old.  “Failure was not an option for me,” said Bufford. Through the help of her family, teammates, coaches, teachers, and Skyline’s culture of excellence, she stayed on track with her education while balancing life as a new mom. Bufford graduated from Skyline High School in 2003 and started her pursuit of higher education through Dallas College (formerly DCCCD), playing volleyball for Cedar Valley and winning a…

Dallas ISD continues to celebrate National Hispanic Heritage Month as a wonderful opportunity to honor the rich Hispanic culture thriving in our district and embrace the diverse communities that represent us. Syeed Pickett is one of many Dallas ISD students enrolled in the dual-language program where he has learned how to speak, write and read Spanish. As a district, we strive to ensure all students are given the opportunity to develop stronger cognitive and academic skills by working side-by-side with individuals of various cultures and backgrounds. Pickett first began his foreign language journey at the age of four with Spanish…

Liliana Valadez, current executive director of Parent Advocacy and Support Services at Dallas ISD, has strong ties to both Texas and the district. She proudly explains that her family did not migrate from any Hispanic country, but they were on the Texas side of the Rio Grande when Texas was born as a republic. Both her parents and grandmother were longtime educators–her father was the district’s first Hispanic high school principal back in the ‘70s, and her mother was one of Dallas ISD’s original bilingual curriculum writers. Valadez herself is a product of the district, having graduated from Bryan Adams…