TALAS E-newsletter – January 28

After a months-long process to find its next leader, the Runge Independent School District Board of Trustees has its next superintendent lined up. Hector Dominguez, the current principal at Crosbyton ISD, has accepted the job.

Dominguez was named the lone finalist following a recent round of interviews and will officially be eligible for hire on Jan. 29. He will start his new job in Runge in February, likely either Feb. 1 or Feb. 8.

“He has family in Nixon (located about a half hour north of Runge) and has been a band director, assistant principal and principal,” said RISD board President Sandy Villarreal. “He seems to be a great fit and is very personable, very smart and has a wonderful positive attitude.

The McAllen Independent School District (ISD) announced their superintendent is the Texas Superintendent of the Year.

Dr. J.A. Gonzalez was awarded the honor by the Texas Association of School Boards. In November, the Texas Association of School Administrators (TASA) named him the state’s nominee for 2021 National Superintendent of the Year, an award given by AASA, the School Superintendents Association.

Dr. Gonzalez said he is proud to earn the recognition, although he never anticipated it happening during a pandemic.

The UISD is looking to honor its current superintendent by naming its newest elementary school after him.

The school district will name the campus after Roberto J. Santos who will be retiring this summer after 39 years of service.

Over the course of 16 years as superintendent of schools, Mr. Santos worked endlessly with the board and the community to construct eight new elementary schools, four middle schools, four ninth-grade campuses, and one new high school.

San Antonio teachers are combatting pandemic learning loss with a surgical approach to keep young students at grade level, focusing on a core curriculum of must-have skills in reading and math.

Given the challenges of limited class time and distance learning during the pandemic, San Antonio educators know students are simply not learning everything they would in a normal school year, especially in the early grades.

So this year, educators are going deep.

With the various coronavirus vaccines now circulating throughout the nation, the conversation about the pandemic has shifted to include the logistics of distributing doses efficiently, sufficiently and, to a lesser degree, equitably. A number of Dallas County Commissioners in Texas recently tried to tackle that issue of equity by passing a measure to prioritize vaccine doses for residents in neighborhoods that are majority Black and Latino.

According to a report from the Dallas Morning News, the decision came after a review of data collected by the county showed that most vaccine shots have been going to residents of neighborhoods that are largely white and rich. This, despite the numbers showing that coronavirus has hospitalized more Black and brown residents in Dallas than other demographic groups. An epidemiologist there even pointed out to the Dallas Observer that three of the hardest hit communities are those that lie south of a highway that essentially divides Dallas on racial and financial lines.

With kids back in school after winter break, much attention turns to the standardized tests, like the STAAR tests, which typically take place at the end of the school year.

The Texas Education Agency recently announced students will be taking the STAAR tests this spring; however, there will be some traditional elements missing from the tests. Accountability decisions, like grade promotions that are often tied to the STAAR tests, will not be included this year.

“The TEA and commissioner Morath have said accountability will be disconnected from the test this year, and we think that is a smart decision,” Anne Wicks said.

One Texas A&M history professor, who is also core faculty in Latino and Mexican American Studies, is impressed by the diversity report released by the university’s commission, but says making meaningful change will present its challenges.

The Texas A&M University Commission on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion presented their findings to the Texas A&M University System Board of Regents Monday evening. The report found the school falls short in matching demographic populations of Texas. Although the commission found Hispanic enrollment has increased by 300% since 1999, enrollment among Black students is flat over the past 20 years, including the hiring of Black faculty and staff. The report also detailed retention of those students is 13-20% lower than other land grant institutions.

It is no secret that racial identity and justice in the United States is becoming increasingly relevant. Issues of race seep into every institution, including health care, education, the workforce, the justice system and more. 

The U.S has been contending with a deadly virus that disproportionately impacts people of color, historic protests for racial justice that manifested on a global scale in the Summer of 2020, and now, the new presidential administration is taking steps to confront systemic racism. 

When Worcester Polytechnic Institute wanted to attract more Black, Hispanic and female students, it became the first nationally ranked science university to make the ACT and SAT standardized tests optional for admission.

Eliminating the test requirement can raise the numbers of low-income and first-generation students and those from underrepresented racial and ethnic minority groups without affecting graduation rates, according to research conducted in collaboration with the National Association for College Admission Counseling, or NACAC.

Rep. Joaquin Castro, D-Texas, is urging President Joe Biden to allow DACA recipients to get health care coverage under the Affordable Care Act, particularly the more than 200,000 who are essential workers.

Castro and 93 other House members signed a letter dated Tuesday pressing for the change as part of the response to the Covid-19 pandemic, saying it would benefit not only participants in the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, or DACA, but also the general public.

On Tuesday, Jan. 26, the Department of Justice revoked the Trump-era memo that enforced a “zero tolerance” policy to prosecute any migrants caught crossing the U.S-Mexico border illegally.

Under the policy, which went into effect from April to June 2018, all adults, including those traveling with children, were referred for prosecution. 

Because children cannot be jailed with their family members, more than 5,000 children were separated from their parents and put under the custody of the Department of Health and Human Services. 

As an attorney working on school desegregation cases in the South, GeDá Jones Herbert is intimately familiar with inequities and discrimination that Black families face on a regular basis. And when schools began shutting down in-person instruction last March due to the pandemic, she heard from many of her clients.

“We knew that [the pandemic] was going to have a huge impact on the lives of our clients and students across the country,” said Herbert, who is based in New Orleans and works primarily on cases in Louisiana and Alabama. “As we were assessing the closures, the things we were really looking at were access to distance learning . . . and food and nutrition.”