Inside Dallas ISD

The next few weeks should be a busy time for seniors still in search of funds for college. Many scholarships have application deadlines in March and April. Dallas ISD’s Counseling Services department maintains a scholarship web page with links to funding from a variety of organizations who want to support students attending a certain college or pursuing a specific discipline or career. Here are a few scholarships listed on the site that are available only to district students: Eric Louis Brown Memorial Scholarship-Available to a district student who has demonstrated excellence in academic and athletic pursuits: Deadline March 20 Dallas School…

Four campuses have advanced to the next round in the NCAA’s Read to the Final Four® contest for Dallas Independent School District third-graders. The bracket style tournament mimics the NCAA Final Four basketball tournament schedule, with schools advancing based on how many minutes students read outside school hours. Since November, third-graders from across the district have been counting the number of minutes they read each day. The Final Four advanced from the Elite 8 round. The schools in the Final Four are Highland Meadows Elementary, José “Joe” May Elementary, T.G. Terry Elementary, and Pleasant Grove Elementary. The prizes provided by the NCAA and the…

A group of young entrepreneurs at Sunset High School has earned the campus a Gold Level Certification for their work operating and managing the school store. Sunset teacher Marcus Nickerson leads the DECA School Store class that researched and wrote a 37-page report on the school-based enterprise (SBE). The report details everything from the cash flow, profit/loss margin, inventory tracking and marketing plan for the business. Students in the class also operate the store through positions such as barista, financial clerk, store manager, and inventory specialist. DECA, a student organization that prepares emerging leaders and entrepreneurs, recognized Sunset High School and…

Dallas ISD trustees unanimously approved a policy change that will bring a new approach to how schools respond to disruptive students in pre-K–2nd grade. Under the policy change and pending approval to the student code of conduct, students in pre-K–2nd grade who commit Level 1 offenses—which are the lowest-level infractions such as classroom disruption and bus misconduct—will not receive out-of-school suspensions. The new approach will also provide additional support to schools. All pre-K–2nd-grade teachers will receive a comprehensive training session at the beginning of the school year focused on how to best respond to a disruptive student. The district will…