Renew your membership today!
TASA’s online Member Services Center is the place to go to become a member of TALAS. Please read these step-by-step directions or contact Debbie O’Donnell at 512.852.2108.
Texas News
Rio Hondo ISD looks to future with new superintendent
The Board of Trustees with the Rio Hondo Independent School District recently announced a new superintendent of schools for the district.

Raul J. Treviño was selected as the RHISD Superintendent by the school board after serving as Interim Superintendent for four months, according to the Rio Hondo Independent School District website.
Advocates in Dallas push for free public transit for K-12 students
Sunrise Movement Dallas has launched an online petition, inspired by similar programs in other cities.

“Free fare is fair,” according to the advocacy group Sunrise Movement Dallas, which is campaigning to make Dallas Area Rapid Transit free for K-12 students.

The group points to similar programs in cities including Austin and Seattle.

LaStarya Boyd is a Dallas ISD educator. Her daughter is also a student in the district.
Houston schools tackling more food insecurity as costs increase
Officials from Houston Food Bank and Houston ISD said they’ve seen an increase of families inquiring about food assistance programs.

Before going through the check-out line in the grocery store, Christina Quintero adds up the prices of all her items on a calculator to make sure she’s within budget. 

She usually has to visit a couple of stores to find the specialty items she needs for her son, who is on the autism spectrum and has aversions to certain textures and foods, she said. With prices on the rise, affording what he needs has become increasingly difficult and her grocery bill has jumped about 40 percent from where it was earlier this year.
Panic buttons, automatic locks and bulletproof windows top the proposed safety rules after Uvalde shooting
These proposed requirements could take effect this school year after the Texas Education Agency takes public comment into consideration.

The Texas Education Agency announced Thursday a plethora of proposals that would, among other changes, require public schools to install silent panic alarms and automatic locks on exterior doors.
A Championship Season in Mariachi Country
Every year along the Texas border, high school teams battle it out in one of the nation’s most intense championship rivalries. But they’re not playing football.

On a hot Monday in late August 2021, Marcos Zárate was starting his second week as the lead director of the mariachi program at Rio Grande City High School in Texas. In his practice room, 17 students in jeans and school T-shirts stood in a half-circle, playing songs from memory. Dozens of trophies lined one wall, and across another, someone had hung a cheery hand-painted banner spelling out the team’s name, “Mariachi Cascabel.” The pandemic had kept the young musicians home the past 18 months, and now, fresh out of lockdown, they were eager to play as a group again — to feel the adrenaline rush and transformation that came with being on a stage.
Affiliate Feature
CTALAS, TALAS’ Central Texas affiliate, commits to continue TALAS’ mission to improve learning outcomes for Latino learners by providing leadership development, collective impact, advocacy, and a proactive voice for Latino and non-Latino leaders who have a passion for serving the fastest growing student population in the state.
Looking for a new opportunity?
Leadership opportunities available:
Take a look at who’s hiring:
National News
Study: Schools’ Facebook posts may violate student privacy
District and school Facebook posts that include students’ photos and names may violate privacy by allowing third parties to access data about the children and teens, according to a report released Wednesday by the American Educational Research Association.

Researchers looking at publicly available school system posts from 2005 through 2020 estimated that a small percentage of Facebook messages identified students by photo and first and last names. Nonetheless, the sheer volume of those posts — nearly 726,000 out of a total 18 million — meant schools shared a large amount of students’ personally identifiable information.
‘There’s Only so Far I Can Take Them’ – Why Teachers Give Up on Struggling Students Who Don’t Do Their Homework
Failure to complete homework leaves students in the lurch

Whenever “Gina,” a fifth grader at a suburban public school on the East Coast, did her math homework, she never had to worry about whether she could get help from her mom.

“I help her a lot with homework,” Gina’s mother, a married, mid-level manager for a health care company, explained to us during an interview for a study we did about how teachers view students who complete their homework versus those who do not.
Why schools’ going back to ‘normal’ won’t work for students of color
National test results released in September 2022 show unprecedented losses in math and reading scores since the pandemic disrupted schooling for millions of children.

In response, educational leaders and policymakers across the country are eager to reverse these trends and catch these students back up to where they would have been.

But this renewed concern seems to overlook a crucial fact: Even before the COVID-19 pandemic, many schools were failing to adequately serve children of color.
Four weaknesses in multilingual pre-K classrooms—and ways to fix them
Incorporating languages and cultures in the classroom can be simple, but teachers say they need more support from administrators

When teachers make an effort to incorporate a student’s home language into the classroom, multilingual children not only benefit academically, but they also feel a stronger sense of identity.

In a new study published this summer, pre-K educators in New York City saw clear benefits to students speaking multiple languages but found that more professional development and support was needed to fully embrace those languages and cultures in the classroom.
Why these students feel empowered being on superintendents advisory council
‘This committee gives students an opportunity to control their futures, and see their options and abilities,’ student Ava Zhang says.

Ava Zhang is learning to advocate for herself on the superintendent advisory council in the Seattle-area Mercer Island School District. “I know I have a say in making change,” says Zhang, a sophomore.

And the change she’s working toward is based on feedback she receives from other students. “We’re talking about tangible goals,” she says. “We’re talking about belonging and changing the curriculum for subjects like anti-bullying so people are more accepting.”
Las Tienditas
This Week’s Featured Sponsor
TALAS sponsors make this newsletter and other TALAS activities possible. Please support them. Click on the logo to learn more!
Siebert Williams Shank & Co., LLC (SWS) is an independent financial services firm offering, investment banking, sales and trading, research, and advisory services. The firm ranked as the #1 M/WBE senior managing underwriter in the nation, a ranking the firm has held for 23 of the last 25 years. SWS also ranks among the top‐4 senior managers based on average deal size and among the top‐10 senior managers in various sectors. The Texas team is led by Equity Partner, Honorable Henry Cisneros, the first Latino mayor of San Antonio and former Secretary of Housing and Urban Development under President Clinton. SWS provides customized, best-in-class solutions incorporating comprehensive financial advisory, capital raising and risk management, delivering the highest level of value-added services to our clients. Dually headquartered in New York and Oakland, SWS is comprised of over 130 diverse professionals spanning 19 offices across the U.S., including: Dallas, Houston, and Austin.