TALAS E-newsletter – May 3

Educators know there are no quick fixes: especially now.

“The post-pandemic era is going to call for a type of leader that we’ve never seen before,” says Supt. Ricardo Lopez, Garland ISD. “They’re going to have to close achievement gaps that have widened through this pandemic. They’re going to have to be able to facilitate the social emotional needs of all children, because it’s affected everybody so differently.”

The Texas Association of School Administrators announced that Donna ISD Superintendent Dr. Hafedh Azaiez was elected to serve on TASA Executive Committee representing Region 1.

Azaiez will serve his term from June 1, 2021 to May 23, 2023, and will replace Gonzalo Salazar, Los Fresnos CISD superintendent.

The Texas Tech Principal Fellows program is funded by a grant from the Texas Education Agency and provides teachers an opportunity to enroll in the tuition free principal fellowship program.

The summer after her first year of undergrad at St. Mary’s University, Vanessa Sansone’s mom was laid off, and her dad had a heart attack. Hospital bills started piling up, and Sansone took on multiple jobs so that her family wouldn’t lose their house or their car. The only time she had to study was in the middle of the night.

“I thought I was going to have to withdraw,” Sansone said. “There were many times where I would, from a day-to-day, (think) ‘I don’t know if I can do this.’”

Now an assistant professor of education policy at the University of Texas at San Antonio, her experience informs her research on access to higher education.

The first official results of the 2020 census are in—and Texas has plenty to brag about. It grew more than any other state over the last decade, according to figures released by the Census Bureau on Monday. There are now 29,145,505 Texans, though as I type this another thousand migrants are surely packing up their belongings in Los Angeles, Lucknow, and Leon. That’s up from 25 million in April 2010, an increase of 15.9 percent, or four million—more than the total population of Oklahoma (which once again makes one wonder why UT has lost two-thirds of its football games against the Sooners over the past two decades). The only other states to exceed Texas’s population boom, in terms of percentage growth, were Utah (growing by 18.4 percent) and Idaho (17.3 percent).

In late March, the sun smoldered on the onion fields outside the city of Edinburg, less than twenty miles north of the United States–Mexico border. Dozens of migrant workers and their families partook in the annual harvest—el rebote de la cebolla, as they call it. Some were teens participating for the first time; others, in their late sixties, struggled to keep up with the pace of their more vigorous counterparts. A few supervisors in the field had legal residency status, but most of those picking onions were undocumented.

Breaking news: when a small business owner graduates to the ranks of big business leader, they don’t suddenly find time is plentiful and scheduling is a breeze.

That’s not how it works. But you probably realized that before you got in the game.

In fact, it’s your dogged efforts to maximize your working hours that have got you this far. Rest and relaxation are essential elements to thrive and succeed, but small business leaders try to fit at least 150% of what’s humanly possible into their schedule.

On Sunday, April 10, Viola M. Garcia of Texas’ Aldine Independent School District was elected as president of the National School Boards Association (NSBA), making her the first Latina to ever hold the position.

Anna Maria Chávez, NSBA Executive Director & CEO, congratulated Garcia for her historic election, saying that she, along with the other newly elected members of the leadership team, will contribute to the much-needed transformation within the public school system.

Attorney General Merrick Garland has rescinded a Trump-era memo blocking so-called sanctuary cities from receiving funding from the Department of Justice.

A memo limiting $250 million in funding to local police departments if they didn’t agree to work with Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials was issued by then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions in 2017 following an executive order by former President Trump.

Students newly accepted by colleges and universities this spring are being deluged by emails and texts in the hope that they will put down their deposits and enroll. If they have questions about deadlines, financial aid and even where to eat on campus, they can get instant answers.

The messages are friendly and informative. But many of them aren’t from humans.

Portia and her two boys were living at the St. Ambrose Family Shelter in Dorchester, Massachusetts, located in an old Catholic church, when the pandemic hit.

To protect her family from the virus, she moved in with her mother in a one-bedroom apartment. But with a baby brother in the same room and unreliable Wi-Fi, 13-year-old Quentin began to struggle in school. Then the landlord threatened to evict them, calling the arrangement a fire hazard.

In January, Rosa Bermudez brought home a colorful worksheet from Stansbury Elementary School, meant to guide her “power plan” for a safe, healthy relationship to technology.

But it was in English, and as the 11-year-old tried to fill in blank bullet points, some things got lost in translation — like when she described her family’s media rules as “picking up toys” and “sweeping and mopping.”

The lining of jazz is laced with the nectarous Latin flavor everyone yearns for, even if they deny it. Though birthed in New Orleans, Louisiana, and known for its French Creole influence, its flow also embodies Afro-Caribbean rhythms. More specifically, Afro-Cuban beats enriched jazz’s essence since its rise.

Jelly Roll Morton, one of the most prominent figures of this genre and its first arranger, loved the Cuban inspiration. Consequently, he coined the term, “Spanish tinge,” to place emphasis on the presence Afro-Latin sounds.