Inside Dallas ISD

An all-girl robotics team from Sunset High School is the first ever Dallas ISD team to qualify for the Robotics World Championships in FTC. Sunset’s 8811 Robo* Bison Amistad team is competing in this week’s World Championship in FTC in Houston. It’s a grueling four-day, 128 team competition against the best in the world. “As a young woman, society doesn’t expect me to be involved in the STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) field, so joining robotics was a great challenge and reward,” said Karen Garcia, one of the four members of the advancing team. “I never expected myself to…

Campus staff at the seven existing ACE campuses celebrated the academic gains they have made this school year as well as the addition of six more district schools to the program at a recent mixer. ACE – Accelerating Campus Excellence – accelerates school transformation through three primary factors: strong school leadership, effective teachers, and high expectations for both students and staff. The ACE plan incentivizes top teachers and principals to work at the district’s highest-need schools to ensure that effective teachers are in the classrooms where they are most needed. Learn more here.

This month, students from Dallas ISD’s Kennedy-Curry Middle School visited Dallas-based Axxess Technology Solutions, a home healthcare software provider and consulting firm, for a career day. Students were able to interact with employees from different areas of Axxess, including human resources, marketing, computer development, nursing and accounting. They also heard from CEO John Olajide and Dallas ISD District 5 Trustee Lew Blackburn.

Construction Services executives Thursday recommended to trustees reallocating several million dollars in bond funds as part of a plan to free up dollars for improvements to schools with more pressing needs.  The plan calls for the district to purchase less land and build fewer new schools than originally planned, resulting in savings to pay for renovation and expansion at existing schools. Two originally proposed new schools, one in east Dallas and a second in North Dallas, will not be built, saving millions, money that will instead be used to fund improvements at W.T. White High School and E.D. Walker Middle School,…