State of Texas – Dispatches from Dallas

The week in Metroplex news – 2025 04 04

Some area news that happened over the last week or so:

KERA: Tarrant County Judge Tim O’Hare highlights economy, tax cuts in State of the County address. He wants to get the Stars and any businesses he can to move to Tarrant County from Dallas County. He didn’t talk about his reactionary activism, though.
Star-Telegram: Legal fee bill for jail death lawsuit grows. Tarrant County approves up to $30k more
Star-Telegram: Tarrant County takes step to redraw commissioners’ precincts. This is going to be the subject of a longer piece at some point, but the gist is: the county doesn’t need to redraw the precincts, but County Judge Tim O’Hare and his two Republican cronies have hired a known “election integrity” firm with a record of defending racist redistricting here in Texas, and two commissioners and O’Hare are up for re-election in 2026. You do the math.
KERA: Tarrant County judge, commissioner vote against honoring Cesar Chavez and Dolores Huerta Committee. This was Tim O’Hare and Matt Krause, who wouldn’t vote for anything that said socialism. It passed anyway because the other Republican Commissioner is Manny Ramirez.
Fort Worth Report: Tarrant County Democratic Party lays off all paid staff, declines to share details. I recently learned that the Texas Democratic Party doesn’t run things top-down from the state level; all the local parties are independent. So this is bad, but it doesn’t reflect on the state party or any other area parties.
Star-Telegram editorial: From FIFA soccer to streets, Plano transit pullout could drive gridlock in Fort Worth | Opinion. Fort Worth is noticing that the problems with DART might affect the Dallas-Fort Worth railroad (the Trinity Express) and the FIFA World Cup that’s coming in 2026. I personally think the World Cup is going to be a bust; big events like that never make as much money as proponents claim they will. Even beyond that, though, we have to deal with the international travel climate fomented by the current federal administration. We’ll be lucky if FIFA doesn’t cancel the whole thing. If the games occur, they’ll be playing in nearly-empty stadiums because no foreign tourists are going to come to the US for a long time.
Dallas Morning News: Here’s who was behind the mass texts about the Las Vegas Sands casino plans in Irving. Big surprise: it was a PAC funded by the Sands people. The DMN did the work and came up with the PACs funding media and advertising on both sides of the issue. Irving City Council wouldn’t approve the casino part of the Sands resort plan last month; the plan submitted and approved doesn’t include a casino.
DMN: How a temple spire put a small Texas town and the LDS church’s religious rights at odds. An explainer about the Fairfield vs Mormon temple case, which has been ongoing for about a year. The Mormons want to build a temple, which has specific ritual meanings for them, to accommodate their congregants in the area; the town thinks the steeple they want to build is too high compared to the rest of the town.
DMN: Tesla owner sues for $1 million after car keyed at DFW Airport. The alleged culprit was arrested for criminal mischief and is in the Tarrant County Jail already. The civil suit is for property damage, emotional distress, mental anguish, fees, and costs. I don’t endorse property damage but I cannot imagine being a million dollars worth of distressed over my car getting keyed. On the other hand, my identity is not tied up with my motor vehicle.
DMN editorial: How much parking does Dallas need? Dallas has been considering revising its parking ordinance for a while. The particular version that the DMN likes is going to kill minimums downtown and in certain business and industrial areas, and reduce it elsewhere. The Powers That Be have spoken, so now we see what Dallas HERO has to say.
D Magazine: Dallas County Will Consider Independent Review of Roberson Case. Also in the DMN: Dallas County commissioners approve review of medical records in Robert Roberson’s capital murder case. We’re about to pay $20,000 to have those autopsy reports reviewed because Roberson’s daughter was airlifted to Dallas and died here, so our medical examiner did the autopsy. That was back in 2002, when shaken-baby syndrome was considered real and not junk science, as it is now. Roberson, you may recall, came very close to execution last fall and only survived because two of the members of the Texas House caused a constitutional crisis by trying to get him to appear before their committee.
DMN Watchdog: Are you overpaying on your Atmos gas bill? A customer tries to find out. The answer is: the watchdog and the customers can’t get a straight answer because Atmos gives non-answers to questions. As a customer myself, I assume I’m getting screwed.
Companies affiliated with Republican Mayors Association execs have scored business. The Republican Mayors Association was founded by Dallas Mayor Eric Johnson in 2023 after he won his second term and switched parties. Financial reports suggest senior officials in the association who are also political consultants are self-dealing.
Texas Observer: Congressman Denounces ICE Response About Prosecutor Operating Racist X Account. Steve Monacelli of the Observer and several other sites found out an ICE prosecutor here in Dallas was behind a gross, racist Xitter account. Congressman Marc Veasey of Fort Worth demanded information from ICE. This is the part where they say they’re doing an internal investigation and talk to them in six months. The DC Bar, where the prosecutor was admitted, is also fobbing Veasey off. It’s going to take lighting a bigger fire under ICE than Veasey seems to have firepower for to get some action here.
DMN: Rocket acquires Coppell-based mortgage company Mr. Cooper in deal valued at $9.4B. In addition to the local angle, this is also my mortgage company. Rocket, the buyer, also just bought Redfin, so this is some vertical consolidation in the real estate market.
D Magazine: The New Billionaires: Meet the DFW Leaders Among the World’s Richest People. Also the Dallas Observer: 34 North Texas Billionaires Makes 2025 World’s Richest List. This is the Forbes list. Related in the Star-Telegram: Is Alice Walton still the richest person in Dallas-Fort Worth? Here’s Forbes 2025 list. Yes. She’s also the richest person in the world, and Fort Worth is proud she calls it home.
DMN: Congressional task force explores question of who killed JFK. Dallas will never get over 1963.
Fort Worth Report: Texas State Veterans Home named for Tuskegee Airmen opens in Fort Worth. Glad they’re honoring the Tuskegee Airmen.
KERA: ‘The healing process can actually begin’: At last, marker for 1930 Sherman race riot to go up. Sherman is up near the Oklahoma border; the article is worth reading if only for the interview with a descendant of a survivor of the 1930 lynching and riot, which destroyed the Black business district.

School District Sunday – 2025 03 30

Normally this is a Saturday event, but this week we’ve had to delay to Sunday evening.

Texas Monthly: “We Might Have a Mutiny on Our Hands”: Why One Texas District Won’t Abandon the Four-Day School Week. An interview with the superintendent of Athens ISD, which is about an hour and 15 minutes from Dallas in East Texas. They’ve been running a four-day school week for six years. Since a lot of rural districts are now looking at moving to four-day weeks for retention reasons, this is a preview of the rural future.
Texas Tribune: Texas schools have leaned on uncertified teachers to fill vacancies. Lawmakers want to put a stop to it. Almost 40% of new teachers in Texas are uncertified this year. The state will pay to help them get certified, but there will still be a shortage, and according to the article, teacher salaries in Texas are about $9,000 less than the national average. All this explains why rural districts are willing to go to four-day weeks to retain the good teachers they have and attract new ones.
Fort Worth Report: Fact brief: Can Texas school districts use voter-approved bonds for budget deficits?. Answer: NO.
Texas Observer: ‘We’re Not Just Some Bureaucrats’: DOE Employees on How Their Work Helps Texas Students. Former employees from the Dallas office of the Department of Education talk about what they did until their office was shut down by the current administration.
Dallas Observer: North Texas School Districts Among The Wealthiest in Texas. Our area took seven of the top ten spots, including Highland Park and Southlake-Carroll, which are tied for first place.
Moving into local districts, we have news from Coppell ISD (which is one of those top ten districts). From KERA: Texas AG sues Coppell ISD in response to undercover ‘critical race theory’ video. This is Accuracy in Media, and “edited” may be doing a lot of work there along with “critical race theory”, which often means any accurate history of how badly America has treated her Black citizens, during and after slavery. Also in the Texas Tribune: Texas AG Ken Paxton accuses Coppell ISD of violating Texas’ “critical race theory” ban.
We have two stories from the Fort Worth Report about Eagle-Saginaw ISD. First, Eagle Mountain-Saginaw ISD looks to lower student-to-teacher ratios despite $10M deficit. Even if they lower the ratios to 24:1, they’ll still be above the state requirement of 22:1 and need to get a waiver. Second: Why Eagle Mountain-Saginaw ISD’s new superintendent is hopeful about public education. A bit of a puff piece but note, as a piece of the larger pie, that the new superintendent calls out the Lege’s refusal to increase the per-pupil allocation for schools since 2019.
KERA: To cut costs, Euless charter school to lose middle, high school grades. They’re also going to a four-day school week next year to keep their teachers.
There’s a lot of news about Fort Worth ISD and its new superintendent, mostly but not all from the Fort Worth Report.
- Fort Worth Report: How much will Fort Worth ISD’s new superintendent earn? Here are the details from her contract? $360,000 annually for the next three years, without the bonus structure that the previous superintendent got.
- Fort Worth Report: Q&A: Superintendent Karen Molinar outlines Fort Worth ISD’s turnaround efforts. Also: Transcript: Newsmaker Q&A with Fort Worth ISD Superintendent Karen Molinar.
- Fort Worth Report: Educators vie to represent southwest Fort Worth ISD on school board. This is for the District 7 election.
- We have two stories on literacy efforts in FWISD. First, from the Star-Telegram: Fort Worth ISD wants to redirect $22.7 million toward reading, which will mean job cuts. And, related, from the Fort Worth Report: Fort Worth ISD looks to spur reading renaissance through literacy-infused budget. There are a lot of statistics and charts about FWISD’s performance in this one.
- Last, but not least, a follow-up to a story from last year in the Fort Worth Report: Fort Worth ISD apologizes to North Side cheerleaders following fall racist incident. Last year, during the previous superintendent’s tenure, North Side high cheerleaders were insulted with (anti-Latino) racial slurs by Arlington Heights students. The district can’t pin down exactly who said what so nobody’s getting punished and the cheerleaders are unsurprisingly unsatisfied.
We also have a lot of fallout from the Keller ISD situation even after the board made the decision not to split the district. Most of the news is from the Star-Telegram.
- Star-Telegram: ‘It’s not over’: Opponents of squashed Keller ISD split rejoice, but demand transparency.
- Star-Telegram: Keller ISD’s pursuit of a split district is over, but the school board’s legal woes aren’t.
- Star-Telegram: Keller school board may have violated open meetings act with decision to kill split. Unsurprising, since they’ve been violating it all along.
- Star-Telegram editorial: Effort to divide Keller schools was sneaky to the end. How do we prevent a repeat? | Opinion. The answer seems to be “throw the current board out”, which is probably a good idea. I’ve heard but haven’t seen proof that the board members behind the plan were Patriot Mobile candidates, so they need to go if that’s the case regardless of their position on the split.
- Star-Telegram: Keller trustees who were ‘blindsided’ by split plan surprised again when plan is called off. This is my lack of surprise face.
- Fort Worth Report: Council approves new zoning for planned Cultural District hotel, Keller ISD properties. This is about the properties in the Fort Worth city limits that it really looks like the district-splitters wanted to sell off to make a bunch of money.
- Two on the same move by the Heritage HOA, one of the groups opposed to the Keller split. First, from the Fort Worth Report: Heritage HOA demands removal of Keller ISD trustees over alleged open meetings violations. Also in the Star-Telegram: Keller school board member calls latest legal move a ‘publicity stunt,’ waste of money. I hope all the board members involved end up out on their ears in May and that part of the lawsuit is rendered moot.
Fort Worth Report: Mansfield ISD trustees approve library books every month. Now, the policy might go statewide. This is about SB 13. You’d have to have a small district and the number of library books you add each month would have to be small for the policy of taking individual book choices to the trustee level to make sense.
Fort Worth Report: Northwest ISD is spending $3 billion on new schools, stadiums. Here’s where projects stand. Mansfield currently has 33,000 students and is expecting another 18,000 by 2033, so they need more facilities.
Dallas Morning News: Plano arts center: $67.5M building offers new amenities in Dallas suburb. I attended a couple of events in a Plano ISD auditorium when my niblings were in high school there, so I’m glad to see them building something nice(r) for the kids. I’m interested in this venue for non-school shows, too; I’ve been to shows at the Eisemann, which is one of their comparison halls, and I’m happy to see some competition for shows. I hope it means we’ll get more acts in suburban venues.

Resources: Calling your reps (federal and state)

If you’d like to do something about whatever your representatives in Austin are doing and/or not doing, one of the things you can do is call to tell them what you’re thinking. It’s not that hard, especially if you have a script to tell you what to say on the issue you care about. But first you have to find those scripts!

A few things about calling your reps (state or federal): only call your reps, because they only care about people who can vote them out of office. Sometimes you’ll see requests to call chairs of committees, but unless they work for you as a constituent, that’s not going to help. With a lot of scripts, you’ll see “I’m a constituent at [address/zip code]” which is to tell them you can vote against them.

If you haven’t done it before, you don’t have to worry about what to say to the staffers beyond the script. They just want to report to their boss what the constituents are calling about and how many are for or against their boss’ position. Very rarely will you get a staffer pushing back; I’ve been calling for years and only once has it ever happened to me. If they do that, remind them they work for you or just hang up and call back later.

Federal level scripts:

5 Calls, which has a web page, an app, and an email newsletter, is a great resource for scripts by issue. They’ll find the numbers for your congressperson and senators with your address and walk you through the process. It’s very easy even if you’ve never done it before.
Indivisible, the activist group, has a good resource list that includes call scripts for a bunch of issues at the federal level. They have a newsletter and they’ll send you to-dos every week.
Resistbot is a chat bot you can use with your message app on your phone to generate faxes, postal mail, or emails to your representatives. They also have a function to check your voter registration. Resistbot used to be free (the voter registration still is) but now requires donations to keep going because it gets so much use. They also have an app, but I haven’t used it.
Home With the Armadillo, the blog of journalist and activist Andrea Grimes, has started a series of Red State scripts. Useful for those of us who live in places like Texas (she’s in Austin).

State level scripts in Texas:

Howdy Politics has both Texas and federal call scripts. I know Substack is problematic (to say the least) but this is where the information is in this case.
The League of Women Voters has letters/emails to send to your representative which you can also use for call scripts.
I also see state scripts in Reddit’s Texas Politics subreddit. Reddit, like Substack, has its problems but if you’re just skimming and not getting into fights in the comments, even the Texas politics subreddit can be usable.

A lot of these folks are going to want your money (Indivisible, LWV, and of course Substack is constantly pushing readers to upgrade their pledge). The only one that’s pay to play at the time of writing is Resistbot, which is understandable since they function on text messages.

There are plenty of other ways to get into activism at the federal and state levels. This is just a starting point and a post I hope to revisit and update as I find more resources.

The plague years

The spread of measles in Texas has been on everyone’s mind since the first case showed up in Gaines County. This week, we’ve had three developments, all of which are trouble.

First, measles may have spread from west Texas to central Texas, specifically San Antonio. Someone from Gaines County toured UT San Antonio and ate and hung out at locations in town. I found this out just after we got back from Austin; the number of times we took day trips down there when we lived in Austin has been much on our minds this week. Health authorities think the possible contact got measles after the San Antonio trip but they’re being proactive.

Second, tragically, one of the unvaccinated kids in the Gaines County outbreak has died. It’s the first measles death in a decade. Unfortunately it’s probably not going to be the last.

Third, and most relevant for Dallas area folks, we now have a confirmed measles case in Rockwall County, on the eastern end of the Metroplex. It’s not believed to be connected to the Gaines County cases, either.

Measles is highly contagious. If you’re not vaccinated, get to your doctor or health clinic. Older folks should also check with their doctors about being boosted; in the 1970s and 1980s doctors only gave one MMR (measles/mumps/rubella) vaccine and now the schedule calls for two doses. I already had a message in the system to my GP about possibly getting a booster. I’ll be elevating that to a phone call when the office opens.

Sources:

School District Saturday – 2025 02 15

There is regularly a lot of news about the school districts here in North Texas, which is because just as Texas is the national laboratory for bad government, North Texas is one of the state laboratories for terrible school district decisions. So I’m going to try to round up what’s going on with our local districts and what’s going on statewide (and nationally, if needed) that will affect our local schools.

First, another piece of the Keller ISD puzzle from the Star-Telegram: Fort Worth City Council calls for zoning changes to 23 Keller ISD properties. Looks like they think some of the properties might be sold off for parts when the district breaks up, so they’re going to prevent that by zoning them all as community facilities (not commercial, industrial, or residential).
Second: our state government at work: KHOU: Yes, there is a lawsuit that could eliminate Section 504. This lawsuit is Texas v Becerra, which seeks to remove protections for gender dysphoria, but as a part of its arguments says Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, which protects folks with disabilities from discrimination, is unconstitutional. More on this case from the Disability Rights Education and Defense Fund, who are understandably unhappy.
Fort Worth Report: Fact brief: Did the Texas Lottery start as a way to help fund public schools?. The answer, which I am old enough to remember, is yes. Apparently people on social media think it was supposed to fund all of our public school needs, which is of course not true.
Texas Tribune: With vouchers fast-tracked, other Texas public education issues to watch this session. What we need to talk to our legislators about.
Texas Observer: Molly Ivins on School Vouchers (1997). We have been having this fight for a long time. Also, I still miss Molly.
Texas Tribune: In quest to infuse more religion into Texas schools, advocates say courts are now on their side. One of the bills to get more religion in school is from Sen Phil King (R-Weatherford), from just west of Fort Worth.
KERA: Majority of Texas school districts aren’t in compliance with armed security requirement. This was last session’s unfunded mandate placed on schools.
DMN: More North Texas teachers under investigation for alleged cheating and Star-Telegram: State identifies more teachers from North Texas districts in certification investigation. This is ongoing fallout from the big fake certification scandal in Houston. We’ll be hearing more about this for a while.
Dallas Observer: Every Texas School District Book Ban. This is about the PEN America report discussed in this Guardian article: Multi-level barrage of US book bans is ‘unprecedented’, says PEN America.
Fort Worth Report: Fort Worth ISD trustees discuss possibly closing as many as 25 schools to rightsize district and What are Fort Worth ISD’s school closure options? Here’s what’s on the table. Also, from the Star-Telegram: Fort Worth ISD gathers community feedback with school closure decisions on the horizon. Demographics and funding are a merciless pair.
Fort Worth Report: Northwest ISD cuts student programs as $16M deficit forces staff reduction, larger classes. At the same time, the Lege continues to want to send more money to private schools.
‘It Doesn’t Make Any Sense’: More Local Schools Proposed for Closure. This time it’s Carrolton-Farmers Branch ISD. Three of the four schools slated for closure are Title I schools, with 40% of kids qualifying for free/reduced lunches. Also more Black and brown kids.
Arlington charter school principal, 2 others charged in connection to child sex abuse. The two other adults are staff members at Newman International Academy High School in Arlington; one had the relationship with the child and the other two covered it up.
AP: DOGE cuts $900 million from agency that tracks American students’ academic progress. “Some of the biggest contracts were for long-term studies that track students’ learning from kindergarten through high school, a study evaluating strategies for teaching elementary school reading, and research on the effectiveness of supports for youth with disabilities, according to list of cuts obtained by The Associated Press.” Your tax dollars are not at work.
Fort Worth Report: Feds file lawsuit against maker of AI-powered weapons screener used in Mansfield ISD. Mansfield ISD stands behind the screening devices after spending about $2.3 million to put them in across 49 campuses in the fall.
KERA: Texas AG Paxton investigating two more school districts over trans athlete policies. One of the two districts is Richardson ISD, where I’m zoned. (The other is Hutto ISD near Austin.) I would like to think the Attorney General of the State of Texas has better things to do with his time than panty patrol on teenaged girls, but apparently not. Previously in the Dallas Observer: Ken Paxton Bullies Dallas, Irving ISDs Over Transgender Youths in Sports.
DMN: North Texas schools rebounding from pandemic learning loss, new rankings show. This is the Children at Risk (private) ranking since the TEA rankings are still in court.
KERA: Grand Prairie ISD approves separation agreement with former superintendent. I still have no idea who Jorge Arredondo pissed off within the first two months of his job as superintendent there, but whoever it was had the pull to get him out. That said, the agreement here is keeping all the details under wraps, so if he did something heinous, nobody will know.
Star-Telegram: With eyes on the future, Fort Worth Country Day unveils new $25M lower school. Fort Worth Country Day was, when I was in high school at St. John’s School in Houston, one of the schools in the same prep league. This is how the other half lives and where your voucher money is likely to go. I don’t begrudge more middle class kids getting into schools like Fort Worth Country Day–it’ll do both the rich kids and the less-rich kids some good–but at the same time, we need to fund our public schools fully before we consider putting extra money into private schools, most of which are not of the caliber of Fort Worth Country Day.