Back Talk Lakewood/East Dallas

Woodrow's pep rally begins Wednesday at 6 p.m.

Woodrow Wilson High School's annual Homecoming Parade and Pep Rally will begin and end at the school, 100 S. Glasgow, on Wednesday starting at 6 p.m. The ROTC, band, cheerleaders, Sweethearts, sports teams and neighborhood groups will be sponsoring floats in the parade, which ends with a tailgate party featuring a burger, chips, drink and cookie for $5 a person. If you want to participate in the parade (click this link to download parade_route.pdf), show up at the school about 5:30 p.m. If you need more information, call Donna at 214-213-4774.

DISD layoffs delayed, but individual school cuts posted

D-day for DISD teachers has been postponed until Thursday, but the DMN has published a preliminary list of teacher cuts by school (no names, though). The delay from Wednesday until Thursday comes after the DMN says principals compared notes at a strategy meeting at DISD headquarters and found the lists didn't match.

Kent Fisher, the DMN education reporter who saw the preliminary list, says most of those being laid off "appear to be uncertified elementary school teachers, almost all of whom were hired within the last three years. Also, several dozen high school-level English and history teachers are listed. The list also contained 21 counselors at various schools."

Among campuses listed in the DMN story, which is based on the preliminary list that could certainly be changed between now and Thursday, Woodrow Wilson HIgh School would lose nine teachers; Long Middle School would lose seven teachers; Hill Middle School would lose four; Stonewall and Lipscomb would lose two; and Fannin, Hexter, Lakewood, Lee and Mount Auburn elementaries would lose one.

In fact, blog reader Kyle Rains just pointed out a downloadable pdf (Download 1015disdlayoffs.pdf) of the entire list, by school and teaching specialty (the teachers' names are blacked out). To the layman, this list is pretty incomprehensible, but I would expect that the teachers at each school would be able to discern who is being impacted pretty easily.

DISD layoff update: A teachers union message to members

The Alliance/AFT teachers union forwarded a message (partially excerpted here) to union members earlier today; it offers some information about the RIF that will occur tomorrow and how it impacts teachers...

"Four hundred sixty-three (463) teachers, counselors and contract employees will be notified of their RIF at the end of the workday on October 15, 2008, by letters given to them by their principals. Those employees will have three (3) workdays to make decisions on whether to sign the settlement agreement.

Hinojosa's job performance: 'Unscheduled review' begun

In what will likely be our final DISD update before teachers face the knife beginning tomorrow, the DMN reports that DISD's board decided to give Supt. Michael Hinojosa an "unscheduled review" of his job performance in light of the district's budget problems. A three-member subcommittee — Lew Blackburn, Leigh Ann Ellis and Edwin Flores — will meet Thursday in closed session to draft Hinojosa's interim performance review. School board chairman Jack Lowe says Hinojosa will not lose his job as part of the review. And the question is still out there for those who want Hinojosa gone: Who would you replace him with?

Sergio Kindle resurfaces at the Cotton Bowl and in the newspaper

If you listened to the radio broadcast of Saturday's Texas-OU game, you heard the name of UT defensive player "Sergio Kindle" called again and again, along with the occasional mention of Kindle's alma matter, Woodrow Wilson High School. Lo and behold, in the latest Woodrow PTA Wildcat Weekly newsletter, Sergio was mentioned again, this time for a great article written about him in the Austin American Statesman newspaper. If you remember Sergio's football exploits at Woodrow, you know he was almost bigger than life. But when he arrived at UT three years ago, he kind of disappeared for awhile, along with making a mistake or two. But now he appears to be back; hope things keep going well for him.

Hinojosa: Should he stay or should he go?

In the "I'm glad I'm not on the DISD school board" department, check out the comments at the end of this William McKenzie column in the DMN, titled "Why firing Hinojosa is a bad call": Anyone who publicly defends the superintendent these days probably needs to borrow Pacman Jones' bodyguard if he or she intends go out in public.

McKenzie makes an argument that keeping Hinojosa is a tougher decision than firing him, because DISD needs continuity — he points out that DISD has had eight superintendents during the past 20 years, meaning that on average, every 2.5 years, the district receives a new leader. And given that it takes that new leader a year or two just to figure out what's going on, which is just about the time he or she hits the road. Deciding what to do is a tough call right now; I admire the school board members (on the whole) for not being trigger-happy yet and doing what they can to resolve the issue as well as figure out what went wrong and make sure it doesn't happen again.

BL girls volleyball fundraiser

I took my 10-year-old daughter to a Bishop Lynch girls varsity volleyball game Tuesday night, to show her how it’s done. These girls are beasts (and that’s a good thing, as LH blogger Carol Toler explains here). Tonight the Lady Friars plan to use their smashing skills for the greater good  at a “Hit for Heart” fundraiser to benefit the American Heart Association. The players in tonight’s Lynch versus John Paul II game have secured pledges for all score-making offensive attacks (“kills”). So the more kills, the more funds raised for the AHA, get it?

This will be a killer game, alright … but wait there’s more: the first 150 people to enter the gym will receive a complimentary American Heart Association cookbook magazine and a red dress pin – the symbol for women and heart disease. Additionally, all those who make a donation on Thursday evening will be entered in to a raffle drawing. The catch: the game’s at John Paul II – all the way in Plano, but it’s sure to be worth the drive.

Stonewall Jackson garden controversy featured in Morning News

Neighborhood resident and DMN reporter Mariana Greene took a trip to Stonewall Jackson Elementary and wrote a story for the paper about the sad tale of Mark Painter, whose 20,000-square-foot onsite outdoor garden and classroom may be one of the most high-profile victims of DISD's ongoing budget problem.

Painter, you may recall from our blog stories (click here and here to review the posts and many comments) last week, built the garden and single-handedly holds together the curriculum for the 500 students at Stonewall, who rotate through the garden/curriculum during the year. DISD's budget cutters, though, don't consider the Painter curriculum as structured to be "core" teaching, which the News story indicates might cause Painter to be re-assigned strictly to inside teaching. Painter says he won't accept a 100 percent inside job, preferring instead to take his show on the road to St. Mark's School of Texas or one of the other private schools that have been trying to lure him from Stonewall over the years.

Remember that this is all speculation at the moment, since DISD hasn't officially RIFed anyone yet; that's all scheduled to come down Oct. 15 for teachers. Given that numerous neighborhod residents, parents and students have offered to raise enough money to allow Painter to continue his curriculum, we might not hear the end of this story for a few weeks.

State to DISD: Drop dead on $15 million funding request

DISD officials went hat-in-hand to Austin Tuesday, asking the Texas Education Agency to allow the district to use federal grant money to pay about 300 employees DISD no longer has the funds to pay itself, according to the DMN. The TEA officials said "no thanks" and suggested that DISD should contact the federal government about the request, since the money comes from Washington anyway. If the feds approve the deal, then TEA will line up behind it, too, according to the story.

Unfortunately, as the story points out, "prospects for a federal waiver appear bleak."

Trinity Corridor: The latest news about the project

For those of you interested in a Trinity River fix, check out the Trinity River Corridor Project's latest newsletter, which has a lot of information about what's happening with the big project. Although most of the update has to do with the Audubon Center's opening Oct. 18-19, there's an update about form-based zoning (which impacts building everywhere in the city), along with a list of public meetings about various aspects of the project. It's worth signing up for the periodic enewsletter, too, if you don't want to wait for Back Talk to bring you up do date.