Inside Dallas ISD

A new sensory room at Rosemont Primary is helping students with special needs unwind. With the support of Rosemont’s Parent Teacher Association and Dad’s Club, Special Education teacher Sarah Contreras helped make the sensory room a reality to benefit the students. “This is an outlet for our students to release some of that sensory overload or take in some of that sensory that they might need,” Contreras said. A ribbon cutting on Feb. 16 saw members of the PTA, Dad’s Club and Trustee Audrey Pinkerton celebrate the new sensory room. As students laughed and played in the ball pit, trampoline and…

With 269 teams competing at the Destination Imagination Regional Tournament this past weekend, 28 Dallas ISD teams qualified for the upcoming state competition. In order to qualify, teams had to place first or second in their category after performing a team challenge and an instant challenge. The winning teams are: Promoting creativity and teamwork to more than 100,000 schoolchildren across the United States, Destination Imagination is an educational program in which student teams solve open-ended challenges and present their solutions at tournament competitions. Dallas ISD had 28 of the total 33 teams that qualified for the state tournament. Hosted in Mansfield,…

The staff at Maple Lawn Elementary School is dedicated to giving back to the community it serves. Members of the school’s staff have been volunteering at the Salvation Army to serve meals to those in need. Maple Lawn Elementary team members originally volunteered in December as part of “Wellness Wednesday,” singing Christmas carols along with serving meals. They had such an amazing time that they returned in February to serve more meals as part of “Kindness Month.” “It truly makes the heart warm to give back and the people are always so gracious, appreciative and thankful,” said Stacy Owens, counselor…

Last year, Saumya Rawat founded IT Empowerment for Her, an organization that offers camps and workshops for young girls to give them hands-on experience in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) activities, Information Technology and Computer Science. Her work drew national attention, as she was awarded the 2017 National Award for Aspirations in Computing and also the 2017 SWENext Global Innovator Award. She also won a Technology Stars of the Future award from the National Center for Women & Informational Technology. Rawat, now a senior at Dallas ISD’s School of Science and Engineering, is in her second year of offering…