6-24-21, Testimony for 5:30 pm Hearing on Federal Program Funding

This presentation can be found at www.Dallasisd.us.

The Covid-19 Pandemic we have suffered within DISD demands this Federal Funding. The slide presentation indicates that Dallas ISD is receiving a total of $846.6 million in additional federal funding over a four-year period.  That funding started with this past school year.

However, nowhere is there any indication as to how these millions of dollars have been annually allocated by school so that the public can be assured it is equitably distributed.  Such a listing should be made public for each of the four annual budgets affected.

The easiest way for this to be achieved would be to add six variables to the School Information File, under Resources in the Dallas ISD Data Portal, for the six functions funded with these federal funds in each school.  These 6 functions are described on page 4 of today’s slide presentation.  

Dallas ISD is improving.  But the documentation you make easily available to the public must be consistent with the equity and transparency values you each claim to be embracing.

Please use an expanded School Information File as the major tool in your transparency.  Update the data constantly with dates for the most recent update given.  Ultimately archive each school year so it is available to reflect DISD progress from year to year.  Such transparency will make DISD increasingly attractive to more and more families.  It will lead Dallas to firmly hold the position of being the nation’s leader in urban public education.

The DISD enrollment record of 173,799 students from 1969 has remained the all time DISD enrollment record for 52 years!  That fact reflects a collection of embarrassments for our city, mostly centered on our racism!  

Dallas is changing! With constantly improving transparency, and equity, DISD will ultimately break this 1969 enrollment record!

6/24/21, Testimony for 5:45 pm Hearing on 2021/22 proposed Dallas ISD Annual Budget

You can find the 2021-22 Budget this hearing is about at https://www.dallasisd.org/cms/lib/TX01001475/Centricity/Domain/78/FY_2021-2022_Proposed_Budget_June_Board_Meeting061421.pdf

Please join me in asking for more transparency in this $2.26 billion budget. This presentation can be found at www.Dallasisd.us.

The main weakness of this 565-page budget document is that it does not send you to a spreadsheet with each of the 237 schools listed in a different row, and, in the columns, each of these cost items for each school listed in these 565 pages, including average student cost given for each school. This failure handicaps significantly the ability of the public to compare schools, and budget allocations between schools. Additional columns of data for all schools should be included to help in these judgments such as:

• Average teacher full-time equivalent salary and average years for the teachers at each school. It is a powerful indicator of what is happening at a school.
• Both teacher and student demographic profiles for each school should fill several columns and include poverty and other factors for students including TAG status and handicaps.
• Data on the current academic standing for each school should also be given in several additional columns.

Placing such data into a spreadsheet will significantly improve Budget transparency!

Most critically, it will improve the attractiveness of Dallas ISD for parents searching for a school for their children. Such transparency reflects a school district proud of each of its schools, and always seeking improvement. It would show that the highest performing schools do not require the highest budget allocation per student, but that two of the best high schools in the nation, that we are honored to have in DISD, are also among the schools with the lowest per-student budget allocations. DISD must continue to improve, but we can be proud of the progress made! We must continue to spread the good news, and have our enrollment grow.

This is the message I will be giving at 5:45 p.m. tomorrow in the 15 minutes allocated to a public hearing on this proposed DISD Budget. With Covid-19 declining, DISD now is back to requiring you to be physically present in the Board Room at 5151 Samuell Blvd in Dallas. Call
972-925-3720 today before 5 pm if you want to sign up to speak at this public hearing on the budget. The monthly Board meeting is scheduled to follow at 6 pm. Please join me in asking for greater transparency. This planned presentation will be posted at www.DallasISD.us.

What can a White person do to help Black lives matter?

This is being written immediately after the Chauvin Guilty Verdict.  A White middle-aged man was interviewed after the verdict and admitted he had googled  "What can a White person do to help Black lives matter?"  He did not have the chance to say what the result was, but that basic question must be explored by everyone.

I am White. 46 years ago, in July of 1975, I purchased my wonderful home in the Dallas Black community that was being evacuated by White people. White flight was only 10 years old and going full speed in Dallas. Fortunately, I was a social worker working as a Child Abuse Investigator for Dallas County and knew Dallas well. I knew the area of the home I was buying would be a very good place to live. It was the best purchase decision I ever made! My 4 kids all agree and live with their families in the area.  The furthest away is 6 miles.

Here is one reflection of Dallas White Flight in two spreadsheets covering 50 years, from 1965 to 2015:

Here is a more general overview of these 50 years, 1965 to 2015:

These tragic White Flight numbers reflect the racism in our history and reflect on the original question above. What can a White person do to help make Black lives matter?  What can Whites do to reverse our racist history? 

The first thing a White person can do is to monitor their own behavior and stop any openly racist behaviors they may be doing out of habit.  

I have lived long enough to know that nobody can claim they are not racist.  Anyone who tries to claim they are the "least racist person in this room" must know that such a statement is absolutely worthless and only a red flag.  Your life and decisions and actions will show if you are racist.  You can NEVER verbally claim you are not racist.  Such judgments can only be made after you have died.  They can only be made by those who knew you in life.  

Racism is deep. Being racist in the U.S. is painfully normal. It is institutional!  We must work on it constantly.  That work is never finished.

One step in that process can be to help everyone set and achieve their own personal goals. 

I was a middle school teacher.  I tried to help students set goals.  I worked with other teachers to help start the School Time Capsule Project, an open-source student motivation and family history exploration system outlined in detail at www.StudentMotivation.org.

I am now retired but continue to volunteer as a School Time Capsule Postmaster helping run this priceless project in several neighborhood schools here in Oak Cliff and West Dallas.  It takes maybe three volunteer days a year per school to make this free-to-use, open-source project possible.

This student-focused project is one answer, of thousands, as to how we can make Black lives matter. 

Roots & Goals Drive Education, Civics, Voting, & Academic Achievement!

For thousands of years education has been driven by teachers who focus on helping students know their roots and form life goals, developing the tools they must have to achieve those goals. 

The School Time Capsule Project has created a structure to expand the focus on roots and goals throughout the 14 years leading to graduation.

Every year, from pre-k through high school graduation, each parent is invited to write a letter to their child about their dreams for their child. First by the school, then in third-grade students begin the process of writing an annual letter to each parent asking for a letter back about their dreams for them, and asking that a story from their family history be included.

As the years pass these letters from the students will naturally change, and be sent to more family members, especially those who are older and know more of the family history. Grandparents, great grandparents, aunts and uncles, and other relatives can be written to as the student expands their awareness of family history.

Each time a student receives a letter from a parent or other relative they are encouraged to immediately read it so they can ask that relative about any details in the letter they may not fully understand.  Such conversations could evolve quickly into those goal-centered/family history discussions that we all want to be more common in all families.

The letters from parents and relatives, or anyone the child is close to, are collected by each student to be brought to school on an assigned day for the second letter-writing exercise.

In that class, the first assignment is to prepare a self-addressed envelope to hold all of the letters. Then each student writes a letter to themselves about their life and their own goals.  As this is done the teacher checks all of the envelopes to be certain they are addressed correctly so they always find their way back to the student.  The letters are all placed inside the envelope, sealed, and placed into the School Time Capsule.

Each year the letters are returned before the next letter writing exercise.

(See more at https://schooltimecapsule.blogspot.com/ )

Forging opportunity out of crisis, a letter to Dr. Miguel Cardona, incoming U.S. Secretary of Education

Dear Dr. Cardona,

The title of your first presentation today to the American Public as the nominee for Secretary of Education was perfect: "To forge opportunity out of crisis."  That is where we are.  The project I will describe below is an opportunity that is an open-source, very low budget, and volunteer-based project.  It is associated with progress here in Dallas ISD.

I retired as a teacher 9 years ago from Quintanilla Middle School here in Dallas ISD. Quintanilla is a 98% Hispanic and 95% high poverty middle school. 70% of my student’s parents only spoke Spanish.  It was a normal struggling Dallas inner-city middle school in 2005, the year that the School Time Capsule Project started. 

This is an open-source, volunteer-ran, almost-no-budget-project that students, parents, and teachers enjoy. It started with 8^th graders writing letters to themselves planning their lives 10-years into the future and planning for a 10-year class reunion. It expanded over the years with priceless teacher and parent input into an annual letter-writing by all grades and to parents and relatives writing letters to the students that include priceless family history stories as well as their own dreams for their students.

Academic achievement has soared! Now Quintanilla is one of the highest achieving middle schools among all 33 DISD middle schools. Being one of the four highest poverty middle schools in Dallas ISD has not changed.  It appears we are eliminating poverty as a factor in the achievement gap by injecting goals and the study of family history, a study the entire family is involved with.  

I have continued to work as a volunteer School Time Capsule Postmaster for Quintanilla.  We have now had 5 classes return for their 10-year reunions.  We also ask for volunteers at these reunions to come to the school on Career Day and talk about their first decade after 8^th grade.  They give recommendations for success.  It appears this focus on the future has contributed to the constantly higher academic success. 

The annual writing project now involves many schools and includes grades from 3^rd through 12^th grade.  Only 8^th grade and 12^th grade letters are focused 10-years into the future and remain in the vault a decade. All other letters are returned the following year by volunteer Time Capsule Postmasters like me.

Many positive changes happened since 2005 to our students, not the least of which is that students begin to see the power of writing.  Negative behaviors were lessened. Graduation rates went from 33% to near 90%.

The costs involved paper, copying, envelopes, and postage to connect with former students for their 10-year reunions. We have been able to secure the 700-pound vaults we use from Costco delivered, usually for $1,000 or less.  (See photo for vault we had to buy to replace the first one at Quintanilla. It became too small for the large number of letters.)

See project details at https://schooltimecapsule.blogspot.com/.

I would be honored to answer any questions you or your staff may have.  This is an open-source project free for any school to use.

The LULAC National Education Service Center here in Dallas has been the major supporter for this project for the past 9 years.  I am copying this letter to the Director of that office, Ray de los Santos.

Thank you for taking on the monumental task of U.S. Secretary of Education.  I hope the School Time Capsule Project can make your job more rewarding.  It involves writing issues all teachers know and should make their work easier, but they must have School Time Capsule Postmaster volunteers to support them and not add to their already heavy workloads. 

I will be in the crowd if you ever visit Dallas,

Bill Betzen, volunteer
School Time Capsule Project Postmaster
Supported by LULAC NESC Dallas, (National Education Service Center) 
345 S. Edgefield Ave., Dallas Tx 75208
An open source project, free to use if sharing improvements
https://schooltimecapsule.blogspot.com/
214-957-9739

Dallas ISD Bond 2020 $3.7 Billion Proposal

The first writing I did on the 2020 Dallas ISD Bond Proposal was in February.  See it at https://billbetzen.blogspot.com/2020/02/2020-bond-program-for-dallas-isd.html.

Now we are voting and I am supporting the passage of this bond.  Have my concerns been taken care of?  No!  

We still have problems but our students do not have more time!  They must have new and improved schools!   Thomas Jefferson High School must be totally removed with a new building put up since NO work has been done on that site since the tornado over a year ago.  But Covid-19 has shown that DISD must replace 1950's sized classrooms with Covid-19 sized classrooms to create more healthy environments!

I will speak about this at tomorrow's 10/22/20 Board Meeting about the need to now vote again on Thomas Jefferson H.S., and this time vote to build a new school!

Dallas ISD students deserve new schools in multiple locations, not just in North Dallas!  The $3.7 billion 2020 Bond will hopefully pass.  Then hopefully the needed transparency can be secured for public oversight to grow and reinforce public support for our schools.  

Covid-19 Dangers Present Opportunity for Dallas ISD, Testimony to Board

It was very impressive to listen to the 20 or so teachers who spoke before me today about the dangers of returning to the classroom. I will not repeat that data but will add one source of related data not yet mentioned.

I have spent hundreds of hours searching for a nation or state that successfully started schools face to face with a daily infection rate above 5 per 100,000 population.  No such place exists.  Dallas County has an infection rate 8 times greater than that!  How can we start in-person school with only failures in the nationwide and the international record with starting schools with infection rates even lower than our rates here in Dallas?

We have the opportunity of introducing our students to accelerated online learning.  This will push our students into the future ahead of their time.   If we do it correctly, this will be known as a time of accelerated achievement.

First, we have teachers who overwhelmingly do not want to have in-person classes that expose their students and themselves to potential Covid-19 infections.

Second, we have hundreds of thousands of adults at home, retired or unemployed, including grandparents and other relatives, who would find great satisfaction in helping our students as online tutors.  We also have the screening systems needed to screen and clear large numbers of volunteers for this sensitive work.

Third, the technology exists to have all tutoring be recorded and monitored at random by the teachers and other DISD staff for safety and meeting academic goals.

Fourth, most of you know of the School Time Capsule Project that is now 16 years old in Dallas ISD.  It is being moved to an online version so that students can more easily secure the family history letters from parents and relatives also addressing their dreams for the students.  Increasing the focus on life goals and dreams for the future will help students realize the importance of these online classes.  Hopefully, the parents and/or grandparents can even become online tutors for the students.  Motivated students change everything!

Today's decisions could set up our students for great steps forward, or for increased illness and, God forbid, even death if you are wrong. The School Board must not respond to anything other than the best interest of our children.

Thank you for the work you do.