TALAS E-newsletter – April 15

The Monte Alto Independent School District Board of Trustees announced Isaac Rodriguez as the district’s next superintendent.

Rogriguez was selected as the sole finalist for the position out of a pool of more than 20 applicants in March and welcomed to the district last week.

Rosie Cobarrubias, the former superintendent, retired earlier this year.

Socorro ISD celebrated reading with an eventful week of special guest readings, activities, and dress up days.

District officials share that many high schools worked alongside their feeder schools and school librarians coordinated together to tackle the new task of conducting events online so students could continue their love of reading despite health and safety restrictions.

Fast-rising property values in Texas can be hard on local taxpayers, but they’re gravy to the state government.

Because of the way public schools are funded, a rise in local property tax revenue means the state doesn’t have to send as much money to local school districts. The schools would get the same amount as before — it’s not a budget cut — but the money that might have come from the state comes instead from local school property taxes.

Jose Loyo has a university degree in robotics. He leverages those advanced engineering skills daily to test engines for Cummins, a $40 billion multinational corporation that provides power sources for companies worldwide.

Loyo, 23, is proud of his job, proud of his wife and proud of his family-focused midwestern life in Columbus, Indiana.

And yet, because he was brought to the United States from Mexico as a 3-year-old, he is not a citizen and is concerned that he and his wife, Yamileth Martinez, 23, who also arrived in the United States as a child from Mexico, could be deported to a country they know only in stories.

A Latina professor at Texas A&M University-Kingsville last week filed a federal lawsuit against the university, claiming that current and past school leaders have been discriminatory in promoting and hiring Mexican Americans.

Norma Guzman, a professor in the Department of Teacher and Bilingual Education, claimed that various university officials harassed and discriminated against her, and that she was passed over for a promotion in favor of someone less qualified.

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton sued the Biden administration Tuesday in an attempt to restore a policy put in place by former President Donald Trump that forced migrants seeking asylum in the United States to wait in Mexico while their claims are processed.

As the economy continues to rally, many employers are looking to hire back workers or even add new ones. While that might be great news for those of us on the hunt for a new position, it can also be nerve-wracking—especially if you’re a younger worker without a ton of experience in interviewing for a new position.

The most stressful part of applying for a new job might just be when the time comes to talk money. Specifically, how much money you’ll earn in your new position. The last thing anyone wants to do is open a new chapter in their career thinking they’re getting paid less than they’re worth. This also holds true for anyone who already has a job and is seeking a raise.

Richard Carranza wasn’t Mayor Bill de Blasio’s first choice to be the city’s schools chancellor. Alberto M. Carvalho, the superintendent of Miami-Dade County Public Schools, changed his mind — on live TV, no less — about taking the job at the 11th hour. De Blasio needed a new chancellor fast.

With 1.1 million students, the New York City public-school system is the largest in the country, which ostensibly means that the chancellor’s job is influential and prestigious — an opportunity to change the lives of students and be seen on a national stage. You just have to survive the city’s blood-sport politics, play to its many vocal constituencies, and placate the nitpicking local media, all while staying on the right side of your boss, the mayor, who has his own problems.

President Joe Biden on Monday nominated two critics of Trump-era immigration policies for key roles at the Department of Homeland Security.

The nominations come as the Biden administration faces a rising number of people attempting to enter the country along the Southwest border.

Biden named Tucson, Arizona Police Chief Chris Magnus to be commissioner of Customs and Border Protection. Immigration policy expert Ur Mendoza Jaddou has been nominated to be director of Citizenship and Immigration Services.

Staff at St. Stanislaus elementary school in Cleveland have spent the school year constantly reminding students to keep masks up over noses, to keep safe distance, and sanitizing everything, including the Easter eggs given to the youngest students.

They even had students do the “monster walk” – walking between rooms with arms stretched out in front of them to create social distance, and placed jugs of water in classrooms instead of water fountains.

A Latina law school professor has been tasked with examining the future of one of the country’s three branches of government.

President Joe Biden has signed an executive order creating a presidential commission to study whether the Supreme Court should be overhauled, and he has named Yale Law School professor Cristina M. Rodríguez as its co-chair. Rodríguez and Bob Bauer, a professor at the New York University School of Law, will head the bipartisan commission to examine arguments both for and against a reform.

When teachers of color experience high levels of race-based stress in schools, they can also have an increasingly negative sense of belonging, according to new research.

Pep rallies are supposed to be joyful, loud and unabashed. Having just turned 12 in the fall of 2017, Alan bubbled over with excitement ahead of his first rally at Deming Intermediate School in Deming, New Mexico, a small city near the Mexican border.

Climate change is fueling longer dry spells, bigger floods, and more violent storms across the globe, but the effect is most pronounced in the tropics, where even a small rise in temperature can turn a heat wave from miserable to deadly or lend a hurricane the destructive power needed to level a small town. In the decades to come, more chaotic weather in Mexico, Central America, and the Caribbean will spur millions of people to move to the mainland United States. This new migration has already begun, as drought devastates farmers in Guatemala and Honduras and more dangerous hurricanes imperil communities around the Gulf of Mexico.