It’s your second (okay, maybe third…or fourth) favorite time of year, and we’ve got all the goodies/things you need to make this as painless as possible. It’s here! That most buzzy and slightly-nerve-wracking time of year that for some reason overlaps with all the holidays. But now that you’ve survived the holidays (and hopefully gotten…
Last month, San Antonio ISD adopted a new code of conduct and student bill of rights. The new policy moves the district toward a more restorative approach to discipline, and encourages teachers and administrators to consider the emotional and social health of the child when conflict arises. The idea is to reduce the number of…
A community redesign revealed that parents and students who said good-bye to Rodriguez Elementary want something big in its place. The West Side is getting a new school. Or rather, a rebooted school. In the fall of 2020, Rodriguez Elementary will re-open its doors as a dual language Montessori school. San Antonio ISD announced the…
On August 12, we put our kids in a public school committed to socioeconomic diversity, where they are among the 6 percent of kids who look like them. It’s going very well. They are learning how to speak Spanish while half of their classmates learn English. My kindergartener is adding, subtracting, and reading up a…
My journey toward understanding and believing in integrated schools is well-documented. I’ve reported, opined, and emoted publicly. But until now, my personal relationship to integration has been theoretical. When we signed up our kids for Mark Twain Dual Language Academy, a socioeconomically integrated school in our home district, I was excited…and nervous. One of the…
San Antonio ISD may have just found the cure to what ails it. The district announced a partnership with SA Rise to lead efforts in restorative justice and diverse cultural curriculum, especially in celebration of immigrant communities. These issues have been near the core of SA Rise’s efforts for most of its two year organizing…
At tonight’s meeting the San Antonio ISD board of trustees unanimously approved management agreements for 18 district schools, and new in-district charter applications for 13 schools. Nineteen schools total were a part of SAISD’s newest generation of autonomous schools. The applications go to the Texas Education Agency on April 1. The charter applications are the…
It’s here! It’s here! No, not the phone book. The Texas House’s bill, “The Texas Plan” to overhaul the State’s love-to-hate school finance system. Now, every public school advocate will tell you, “this is a start.” But it’s also the best start Texas has seen in decades, and before horse-trading with the ultra-conservative Texas Senate…
Just the other day I asked a member of the San Antonio Alliance, the San Antonio ISD teachers and support staff union, whether relations with the district administration had improved at all. She demurred. But today I got my answer. They have not. The Alliance distributed a questionnaire, printed below in its entirety, to vet…
Applications are in for our three choice schools. It was super easy. Everyone should do it. While we applied, we were automatically registered for our neighborhood school, Hawthorne Academy. It’s a valid option. It’s the kind of school where our kids would be fine. We’d be fine. Everyone at Hawthorne is giving it their all, from…