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Posted

I’m curious to see what happens to housing prices once public education shitshow even impacts the “good school” areas. Or if gentrification hits light speed in well located pockets that were mainly held back by poor schools

Posted
1 hour ago, bluto said:

I’m curious to see what happens to housing prices once public education shitshow even impacts the “good school” areas. Or if gentrification hits light speed in well located pockets that were mainly held back by poor schools

The bigger impact will be rural areas.  There’s probably 100-150 counties (or more) that would dry up and blow away if their schools are wrecked,

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Posted
4 hours ago, atomheartbevo said:

The bigger impact will be rural areas.  There’s probably 100-150 counties (or more) that would dry up and blow away if their schools are wrecked,

I hope they’re in beautiful places like the Smokey’s, or Montana, or the Pacific Northwest, so I can buy cheap land and live away from everyone. 
 

but it will all be like the Texas panhandle. 

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Posted
6 hours ago, atomheartbevo said:

The bigger impact will be rural areas.  There’s probably 100-150 counties (or more) that would dry up and blow away if their schools are wrecked,

School issues aside, there are counties in Texas that could be consolidated. No one can justify Loving county with 50 residents.

Posted
1 hour ago, Nice Guy Eddie said:

School issues aside, there are counties in Texas that could be consolidated. No one can justify Loving county with 50 residents.

I bet the folks running the county beg to differ. I need to dig up an article about a county like that where a single family runs the county and all the oil money that flows from it. 

Posted
36 minutes ago, bluto said:

I bet the folks running the county beg to differ. I need to dig up an article about a county like that where a single family runs the county and all the oil money that flows from it. 

Yes I recall those stories as well. Basically a family/group run the entire county and bring in relatives from Dallas, and other cities, to vote.

Posted
15 minutes ago, Nice Guy Eddie said:

Yes I recall those stories as well. Basically a family/group run the entire county and bring in relatives from Dallas, and other cities, to vote.

What would be your population threshold for consolidation? To help you decide, I've made a quick map of counties with a population below 25,000.

image.thumb.png.fec7cfb1c4d1902e1d57f50d72b9576a.png

Posted
22 minutes ago, BeardIP said:

From what I can gather, public schools in "good school" areas as you call them, are funded by bonds that the people vote for. At least that is what one disgruntled teacher told me this week when I asked, "how is like Prosper building a $90 million dollar foosball stadium and Richardson ISD is closing like 4 schools because they are broke". It seems that areas are voting bonds in while waiting on Abbott to release funds that have been locked up for like 2 years now?

On a more granular level I’m talking specific school boundaries within districts. In Fort Worth for example there’s only ~3 elementary schools worth a damn, and the rest are pure shit. (Probably similar to Dallas with Lakewood elementary and the one near lower Greenville)

if you’re in the good boundary your home has a premium, literally one block over exact same house and it’s piss, or shit, your call. 

Posted
44 minutes ago, BeardIP said:

From what I can gather, public schools in "good school" areas as you call them, are funded by bonds that the people vote for. At least that is what one disgruntled teacher told me this week when I asked, "how is like Prosper building a $90 million dollar foosball stadium and Richardson ISD is closing like 4 schools because they are broke". It seems that areas are voting bonds in while waiting on Abbott to release funds that have been locked up for like 2 years now?

Is this not the result of the Robin Hood funds that Tracis county disproportionately pays out more than any other county in the state?  Even more so than Harris or Dallas counties?

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Posted

Those kids in Alaska did a pretty admirable thing on walking out of class and going to the Capitol. Their wonderful governor vetoed another education bill partly because, you guessed it, he wants the state to make it easier for charter schools to take root there. I am so glad I have not brought a child into this world where getting an actual education is now frowned upon. Meanwhile forming charter schools as a way to make money off of the children attending is really all that matters to any of these truly evil and awful people. 

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Posted
On 3/16/2024 at 6:23 PM, Catdaddyhorn said:

I'm really not sure what to do about this bullshit.  

FB_IMG_1710626598711.jpg

This guy was absolutely the most hated superintendent in DISD history when he left. I feel fairly certain that Colorado Springs did not miss him either. 

Posted
8 hours ago, UpperWestside said:

This guy was absolutely the most hated superintendent in DISD history when he left. I feel fairly certain that Colorado Springs did not miss him either. 

As someone who lives in HISD, I'd love to not miss that mother fucker. 

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Posted
17 hours ago, SydneyCarton said:

As someone who lives in HISD, I'd love to not miss that mother fucker. 

I can imagine. Nothing good comes for the people that get stuck with him. I remember when he got a popular principal in DISD fired because of test scores. The community overwhelmingly loved what she had done to transform a school that had been a haven for gangs into a place where the students felt safe and that someone actually cared for them. All this terrible human being cared about were test scores and how he could make the biggest amount of money off of the students. His brain is just completely fried  and the world would be a better place if Mike Miles and his ilk had no place in it.

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Posted

So one IEP out of the way, time to discuss my middle child at OFE.  I had a 504 meeting with them.   She is doing well, but has dyslexia.  The state is moving dyslexia over to IEPs from 504s.  So in this meeting I start asking about some testing because she does have a few issues we think she should be evaluated on, which may help her out.  Her dyslexia instructor echoed my sentiments.  The staff starts to push back on me, basically she is doing well enough NOW so they don't want to.  I keep pushing and get to the real issue.  They tell me they (OFE and District) are prioritizing 5th/8th graders because the kids are switching schools.   Like I give a flying fuck.   HISD created this mess, it isn't my daughter's problem that they are understaffed or they were underprepared.    Let's start round 2.    

 

 

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Posted
4 hours ago, HenryJames said:

Having spent way too much time in Oklahoma, and with many relatives and some friends there, he’s going to destroy so many, many small towns by driving the public schools under.  A shitload of small businesses will fold, and a lot of family farms will be sold off/cease to exist as families move.

Sounds like he’s against capitalism, small towns, rural folks, and family farms.  Wonder if some of that Soros money is behind him.

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Posted
Having spent way too much time in Oklahoma, and with many relatives and some friends there, he’s going to destroy so many, many small towns by driving the public schools under.  A shitload of small businesses will fold, and a lot of family farms will be sold off/cease to exist as families move.
Sounds like he’s against capitalism, small towns, rural folks, and family farms.  Wonder if some of that Soros money is behind him.

And as corporate farms swallow it up on the cheap, they will just attribute it to Wall Street and keep voting for those that destroyed their communities. Cause somewhere in the world, there is a happy person in drag feeling fabulous.
Posted
2 minutes ago, Nivek said:

And as corporate farms swallow it up on the cheap, they will just attribute it to Wall Street and keep voting for those that destroyed their communities. Cause somewhere in the world, there is a happy person in drag feeling fabulous.

And they’ll ignore those corporate farms hiring illegal immigrants.

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Posted
13 hours ago, miguelito said:

I mean, he could do all those things AND give teachers a raise. It would be easy. 

He's just a piece of shit.

Well sure, but I'm just hoping for anything at this point. Hey Greg, let's start with a bottle of bourbon for every teacher and stop politicizing which bathroom a kid uses at school. After that we can discuss next steps.

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Posted
25 minutes ago, tx 3 putt said:

 

And all mentions of the fact that the earth is a sphere and the law of gravity.  To be replaced by a chapter on chemtrails.

We live in the dumbest fucking timeline.

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Posted (edited)

This is probably as good a place to park this as anywhere else -- Southlake Carroll ISD is racist/anti LGBTQ.

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/southlake-texas-carroll-isd-civil-rights-investigation-rcna151009

Quote

The U.S. Department of Education is seeking to negotiate with the Carroll Independent School District in Southlake, Texas, over four students’ civil rights complaints — which three education law experts say signals that the department has substantiated the students’ allegations of racist and anti-LGBTQ discrimination.

The Education Department’s civil rights enforcement arm described the next steps in its investigation in a letter Monday to the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, which represents the students. The development comes three years after the civil rights organization filed federal complaints on behalf of students who said Carroll officials failed to protect them from harassment.

For more on this story, watch NBC’s “Nightly News with Lester Holt” tonight at 6:30 p.m. ET/5:30 p.m. CT.

The four students, all of whom have either graduated or left the district, reported to the Education Department that they had been subjected to a barrage of racist and homophobic slurs and comments during their years at Carroll. One student said he suffered retaliation after reporting racial harassment to administrators. Another said he contemplated suicide after classmates repeatedly mocked him for his sexual orientation; his family said the district failed to address the bullying.

On Monday, the Education Department notified the NAACP Legal Defense Fund that it had contacted Carroll district officials to begin negotiating a resolution agreement in the four complaints — a step the agency takes only after finding that students’ civil rights have been violated, said Katrina Feldkamp, an attorney for the NAACP Legal Defense Fund.

Eight federal civil rights complaints have been opened against the Carroll Independent School District. Nitashia Johnson for NBC News

The Southlake school system — which became the focus of national headlines in 2021 after conservative parents rejected a sweeping plan aimed at preventing discrimination — will now have 90 days to reach an agreement with the Education Department on steps it will take to address problems identified in the student complaints, experts said.

Angela Jones, a Black mother of a former Carroll student who was among those who complained to the Education Department, said she spent years advocating for changes to protect minority students in the affluent North Texas school district. But she was rebuffed by school board members and conservative parents who accused her and others of trying to force a far-left political ideology into classrooms. Jones said she and her family felt validated by the Education Department’s finding.

“They’re saying to the district, ‘You didn’t do it on your own, so we’re going to come in and make some recommendations for you to do it differently,’” Jones said. “I hope they’ll take it seriously, and re-evaluate and negotiate.”

Angela Jones and her husband, Dr. Wendell Jones, say their children faced discrimination in Southlake's public schools. Nitashia Johnson for NBC News

Photos of the Jones children at their home in Southlake.Nitashia Johnson for NBC News

A spokesperson for the Education Department said the agency doesn’t comment on pending cases. Carroll Superintendent Lane Ledbetter and the school board’s president, Cam Bryan, did not respond to messages requesting comment.

The local debate over how to address racism in Carroll schools became a national symbol of the battles over race, gender and sexuality that have swept the country and was featured in the 2021 NBC News podcast series “Southlake.”

The town’s fight began in 2018, after a viral video of white high school students chanting the N-word spurred dozens of Carroll parents and students to come forward with stories of discrimination. After the outcry, the school board appointed a committee of volunteers, including Jones, to come up with strategies to address the problem. The result of their work, the Cultural Competence Action Plan, called for mandatory diversity training for teachers and students and changes to the student handbook explicitly prohibiting harassment on the basis of race, gender and sexual orientation, among other changes. Then came the backlash. 

After the plan was released in the summer of 2020, conservative parents and activists — outraged at what they depicted as anti-white and anti-American indoctrination — formed a political action committee called Southlake Families PAC, which promised to defeat the diversity plan and elevate “Judeo-Christian values” in the school district. They raised hundreds of thousands of dollars to support a slate of hard-line conservative candidates, launched attack ads accusing their opponents of being radical leftists and, in November 2021, won majority control of the Carroll school board.

Two weeks later, the Education Department opened its initial investigations into student complaints. The total number of civil right investigations at the district would eventually grow to eight. The status of the other four open cases is unclear.

The probes set the stage for a potential conflict between local voters who opposed the diversity plan and federal officials tasked with enforcing federal civil rights laws. Now that the Education Department has initiated the process to negotiate a resolution with the district in four of the complaints, the federal agency could end up requiring Carroll to implement some of the same types of diversity and inclusion programs that Southlake voters have rejected in landslide elections in recent years.

In a video address to the community after the investigations were announced in 2021, Ledbetter, Carroll’s superintendent, said the district would “absolutely comply” if the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR) ordered changes. But some local activists have called on the district to fight back against what they see as federal overreach. They have spread unsubstantiated theories that the federal investigation was launched in retaliation against conservatives opposed to critical race theory.

U.S. Rep. Beth Van Duyne, a Republican whose district includes Southlake, wrote a letter in November 2021 to U.S. Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona, co-signed by Republican Sens. Ted Cruz and John Cornyn of Texas, expressing fears that the Biden administration was “weaponizing federal resources to intimidate parents who disagree with the policies of this administration.”

In a statement four months later, an Education Department spokesperson said the agency’s work is “in no way retaliatory and OCR serves as a neutral fact-finder with any complaint.”

In the years since gaining control of the school board, members backed by Southlake Families PAC have made changes that diversity advocates say have made the district less inclusive. The board voted in 2022 to eliminate language explicitly prohibiting discrimination on the basis of gender, sexual orientation and religion from the student handbook. And this week, the board adopted a resolution opposing the Biden administration’s decision to expand Title IX protections to LGBTQ students.

Carroll ISD's school board elections in Southlake, Texas, became a referendum on the district's diversity policies.James Breeden for NBC News

Ledbetter and members of the school board did not respond to a question from NBC News about whether it planned to work with the Education Department to reach a voluntary agreement.

W. Scott Lewis, managing partner at TNG, a consulting firm that advises school districts on complying with federal civil rights laws, said that if Carroll fails to reach a voluntary agreement with the Office for Civil Rights on how to address discrimination, the agency could impose changes that Carroll would have to abide by or risk losing federal funding or inviting an investigation by the Department of Justice.

Another approach that the district could take, Lewis said: Carroll could challenge the Education Department’s findings in court. “That’s not typically been very successful,” Lewis said.

Feldkamp, the NAACP Legal Defense Fund attorney, said her clients have asked the Education Department to require Carroll to implement many of the policies that were included in the Cultural Competence Action Plan, including mandatory diversity training for students and staff members.

“We need to send a message that we will not tolerate Black and brown students being pushed out of school, that it is unacceptable for racism and homophobia to win the day and that our public schools actually are supposed to be educational institutions where all students can feel supported and can thrive,” Feldkamp said.

On Wednesday, two community activist groups that had joined the civil rights complaints — the Southlake Anti-Racism Coalition and Cultural & Racial Equity for Every Dragon — sent a letter to Carroll officials calling on the district to agree “to remedies that will address the hostile environment” and “fulfill your responsibility to protect all students.”

Raven Rolle, a 23-year-old Black Carroll graduate and Southlake Anti-Racism Coalition member, said it shouldn’t have taken federal investigations for the district to listen to current and former students like herself who’ve shared stories of harassment. 

Carroll graduate Raven Rolle said she hopes the federal civil rights investigations lead to changes to benefit future students.Courtesy Raven Rolle

“Hopefully it sets a precedent for the kids that are currently there and kids who will be there years from now that these things will never happen again, and if they do, they’ll be dealt with appropriately,” Rolle said.

Mia Mariani, a 19-year-old college student living in Pittsburgh, was among the former Carroll students notified this week that the Education Department was taking action in response to her complaint of anti-LGBTQ bullying at Carroll. 

Mariani, whose story was detailed in the “Southlake” podcast, was bombarded by a torrent of vulgar messages from classmates on social media mocking her gender identity during a social studies class in the spring of 2022. After reporting the abuse, she secretly recorded her meeting with the principal, who argued that the boys who’d harassed her “were just wanting to debate” politics.  After her parents filed a complaint over the school’s handling of the situation, senior Carroll administrators investigated and concluded that Mariani’s complaint did “not satisfy the criteria necessary to constitute bullying.”

Now it appears the Department of Education has found evidence that her rights were violated.

Mariani said she was surprised when she got the news Monday. She’s worked to move on from her experiences in Southlake, she said, but hopes her case leads to changes for current and future students.

“Any change for them,” Mariani said, “is healing for me.”

 

Edited by C-Man
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Posted
11 hours ago, tx 3 putt said:

 

The Southlake superintendent's "response" to the "Is there racism in Southlake and in Carroll ISD?" question at 1:50 is mind-boggling even now, a few years later.

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Posted

98% voted no confidence in Miles. He also decided this week to email last year's (2023) Principal of the year to tell her she must resign. He also let go another recent Principal of the year...

I'm sure Abbott's TEA head will form a strongly worded tweet in response.

 

 

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Posted

What a horrible horrible situation. Abbott wants to not only tear down hisd, but the entire damn city 

It’s punishment for the city voting for the opposition party.
It’s not more complicated than that. Disloyalty to The Regime must be punished. This is the way; read any book on how authoritarian regimes work, and you’ll see this on about page 5.
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Posted
8 minutes ago, tx 3 putt said:


What a horrible horrible situation. Abbott wants to not only tear down hisd, but the entire damn city 

How could you think otherwise?  It is why it is immoral to vote for republicans in any capacity.   A long time ago I used to think that the R/D agenda was largely towards a better future but they just disagreed on the path to get there.   Then I realized they never gave a flying fuck about our future.  

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Posted
3 hours ago, tx 3 putt said:

What a horrible horrible situation. Abbott wants to not only tear down hisd, but the entire damn city 

3 hours ago, Brisketexan said:

It’s punishment for the city voting for the opposition party.
It’s not more complicated than that. Disloyalty to The Regime must be punished. This is the way; read any book on how authoritarian regimes work, and you’ll see this on about page 5.

The people of Houston/Harris County could fix this if they showed up at the polls in larger numbers in November…..

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Posted
31 minutes ago, tx 3 putt said:

 

Jurassic Park Ian Malcom GIF

And Southlake is a really important study because it shows us that modern "Christian Nationalism" and "white supremacy".....

eIxbzM.gif

 

 

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Posted
31 minutes ago, SydneyCarton said:

How's that? Are you under the impession that Miles was elected? Becuase he was appointed after the removal of an elected democratic official. 

 

https://www.texastribune.org/2023/06/01/tea-houston-isd-takeover-superintendent/

AtomHeart has been arguing for a while now that Harris County is big enough that it could flip statewide elections all by itself if turnout was higher, so that might have been what he meant but I hesitate to speak for him.

Posted
10 minutes ago, bolverk said:

AtomHeart has been arguing for a while now that Harris County is big enough that it could flip statewide elections all by itself if turnout was higher, so that might have been what he meant but I hesitate to speak for him.

That would be an odd flex considering that according to the Texas SOS it’s basically the same as Dallas county 



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