Friday, July 27, 2018

Santos Rodriguez Trail connecting places from history now in Uptown

A Santos Rodriguez Trail through Little Mexico would connect the history of the Little Mexico/ State-Thomas area, now called Uptown, just as Santos himself unified the people living there on 7-24-1973 with his tragic murder, at the age of 12, by a Dallas police officer.  His 3AM murder was a unifying event for Little Mexico and the entire Dallas minority community. Abuse by authority figures was too common for all minorities in Dallas.  This was a unifying tragedy. 

Eventually Dallas would look back at it as a painfully positive event awakening civil rights progress: https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2013/07/24/205121429/How-The-Death-Of-A-12-Year-Old-Changed-The-City-Of-Dallas?

Imagine a Santos Rodriquez Trail unifying the historic places in Uptown just as Santos unified the community by his tragic murder 45 years ago. Imagine a trail going through Klyde Warren Park, now on land that was part of "Little Mexico" according to this 1944 map:




Here is an initial suggestion of 6 places the trail could unite.  There are many many more. Using the above 1944 map see potential markers.  Many dozens of additional markers are needed for a trail from those who know the history.  This is just an initial 6 suggestions with numbers on the map below: 1) Pikes Park, 2) Goat Hill, 3) 2921 North Pearl, the grandfather's home from which Santos Rodriguez and his brother were pulled out of bed by police about 2:30 the morning of 7-24-73, 4)  NW corner of Bookout & Cedar Springs, the location of the Fina Station near where 12 yr. old Santos was handcuffed and shot in the head by Officer Cain in parked DPD Car, 5) Klyde Warren Park location with major Historic Markers for both Little Mexico & Freedman's Town Histories, 6) St. Ann’s School and Church.  (If you leave out Goat Hill, this walk is 2.3 miles.)





Imagine a Historical Marker drawing the thousands who visit Klyde Warren Park every day into the local history going back 150 years.  Imagine all the potential locations, in addition to the few above, along the trail. They can all be linked into one historic walk, past many historic markers with the history of the places now called Uptown.  An online GPS-driven application guiding such walks, narrated by those who lived much of this history, could be developed to tell this Dallas History.

The Santos Rodriguez name for a trail connecting historic places now in Uptown would reflect the unifying role this 12-year old boy's death played in the Dallas Civil Rights struggle. The struggle continues.

This idea will require a lot of work and funding.  We have a long way to go. The Dallas Mexican American Historical League, DMAHL, voted on 7-28-18 to support the planned idea.

This July 1926 photo is recorded as taken in Pike Park.  Does anyone know if it is facing East/Southeast with the St. Ann's School still under construction in the distance to the right?  

Work is also needed on a history trail through Black History in the State-Thomas and former Freedman's Town area.

Sunday, July 8, 2018

Transparency FIRST! Continued DISD secrecy stops any tax increase.

Dallas ISD urgently needs to increase taxation on Dallas property by 13 cents per $100 valuation to better support Dallas ISD schools. But first a significantly more complete DISD transparency must be provided to the public! The people of Dallas must first be able to secure any comparison they want of any DISD schools using virtually any of the 200 or so most critical variables describing and measuring achievement in schools.

A working Excel School Equity Spreadsheet: a spreadsheet with one row for every school and over 200 variables in the columns on each of those schools, including the 32 budget item allocation categories per student from the online PEIMS Financial Reports.  These 32 items identify where the money to run the school is coming from, and how much money is allocated from each source for each child.


Most questions can be easily answered by erasing school rows and variables columns that you are NOT interested in. Such rapid transparency will instantly answer questions such as the following:
  1. Parents could instantly compare schools anywhere in DISD with each other, schools near their home, or near their work, or near their grandmother.  It could be done quickly by erasing all schools in other zip codes and all variables not interested in.
  2. Parents could focus on any variable, such as average teacher experience, School Effectiveness Indices (SEI) in each school, as well as many student achievement measurements. 
  3. Child advocates can focus on the range of per-student funding by school in each of these 32 sources of funding per child in DISD schools, as well as both student and teacher demographics including student poverty levels.
  4. As events happen during the school year, parents and the public can go back to this data base to check out whatever the issue happens to be, comparing schools in manners never possible before!
  5. Child advocates could see if schools with higher percentages of high poverty, English as a Second Language (ESL), or handicapped students, are receiving the full amount of supplemental funding they should receive based on federal formulas, without any reduction in "regular" funding?

These, and hundreds of thousands of other questions, could instantly be answered with one School Equity Excel Spreadsheet for each school year.  Currently the work required to answer such questions keep school comparisons effectively hidden from parents and the general public.


The fatal problem with current transparency within Dallas ISD is that the data is broken up into multiple locations and formats so that comparing schools is a very time consuming and consequently impossible process for most people.  That changes with all the data unified into one spreadsheet with all the data in the columns and each row dedicated to one school. 

Here is a start with 95 variables for the spreadsheet, but this will quickly more than double as variables are added:
Item #
DISD School Equity Excel Spreadsheet Column data - one school per row with one column for each following data item:
1
Date Data is recorded
2
School Year represented in this data
3
School Name
4
Street Address
5
zip code
6
Census tract
Student Enrollment:
7
# in pk
8
# in k
9
# in 1
10
# in 2
11
# in 3
12
# in 4
13
# in 5
14
# in 6
15
# in 7
16
# in 8
17
# in 9
18
# in 10
19
# in 11
20
# in 12
21
total enrollment
22
total enrollment capacity
23
White student enrollment
24
African American Enrollment
25
Hispanic Student Enrollment
26
American Indian Enrollment
27
Asian Enrollment
28
Hawaiian Enrollment
29
Multi-racial Enrollment
30
Ethnicity not reported
31
Total Female Students
32
Total Male Students
33
LEP total
34
BE
35
ESL
36
Sheltered
37
DEN
38
Not Served
39
LEP SPED
40
BE not LEP
41
LEP exit
42
At Risk
43
Economically Disadvantaged
44
Special Education
45
TAG
Teacher Information:
46
Total number teachers
47
White teachers
48
African teachers
49
Hispanic teachers
50
American teachers
51
Asian teachers
52
Hawaiian teachers
53
Multi-racial teachers
54
Total Female teachers
55
Total Male teachers
56
SPED teachers
57
Counselors
58
% teachers 0-3 years experience
59
% teachers with 11+ years experience
Achievement information:
60
School Effectiveness Indices (SEI) for this school year
61
Percentage of students approaching standards in STARR
62
Percentage of students meeting standards in STARR
63
Percentage of students mastering standards in STARR
Expenditures by Object (Objects 6100-6600) - Data from PEIMS Standard Financial Reports
64
Total Expenditures all funds per student
65
Operating-Payroll all funds per student
66
Other Operating all funds per student
67
Non-Operating(Equipt/Supplies) all funds per student
Expenditures by Function (Objects 6100-6400 Only)
68
Total Operating Expenditures all funds per student
69
Instruction (11,95) * all funds per student
70
Instructional Res/Media (12) * all funds per student
71
Curriculum/Staff Develop (13) * all funds per student
72
Instructional Leadership (21) * all funds per student
73
School Leadership (23) * all funds per student
74
Guidance/Counseling Svcs (31) * all funds per student
75
Social Work Services (32) * all funds per student
76
Health Services (33) * all funds per student
77
Food (35) ** all funds per student
78
Extracurricular (36) * all funds per student
79
Plant Maint/Operation (51) * ** all funds per student
80
Security/Monitoring (52) * ** all funds per student
81
Data Processing Svcs (53)* ** all funds per student
Program expenditures by Program (Objects 6100-6400 only)
82
Total Operating Expenditures all funds per student
83
Regular all funds per student
84
Gifted & Talented all funds per student
85
Career & Technical all funds per student
86
Students with Disabilities all funds per student
87
Accelerated Education all funds per student
88
Bilingual all funds per student
89
Nondisc Alted-AEP Basic Serv all funds per student
90
Disc Alted-DAEP Basic Serv all funds per student
91
Disc Alted-DAEP Supplemental all funds per student
92
T1 A Schoolwide-St Comp >=40% all funds per student
93
Athletic Programming all funds per student
94
High School Allotment all funds per student
95
Prekindergarten all funds per student

This data is freely available online on each school, but not in such a single spreadsheet format allowing fast and easy comparisons. This format with a row dedicated to each school, and 200+ data items in the columns, makes it very easy to compare equity between schools.  The possible inequalities between the schools are not easily transparent, not easily visible, using the currently fragmented transparency in Dallas ISD.

The general concept of the DISD School Equity Excel Spreadsheet has been approved unanimously at a meeting of about 70 NAACP members and at a meeting of the Our Community Our Schools Coalition.  Other groups concerned about equity in DISD schools are being approached and are asked to join in this effort, and/or provide ideas and direction for this effort to expose the equity or inequity between Dallas schools.



The effort to make this information visible is much bigger than any of us. The battle for equity, and the many other massive improvements urgently needed in Dallas ISD, will be pushed and monitored by such greater public transparency!  The infinitely greater ability for everyone to compare schools in thousands of ways never possible before will drive Dallas ISD improvement! That will also improve Dallas!