Extra Credit

Arlington students get treated to Cowboys game

The students in Carla Winslow's fourth grade bilingual classes at Arlington schools' Crouch Elementary probably already had lots of reasons to like teacher Carla Winslow, but she gave them a really, really big one last weekend. Winslow won 60 tickets to the Dallas Cowboys Oct. 26 game against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in a contest sponsored by the Movin' 107.5 radio station and Albertsons.

The children got a visit in their classroom from the Cowboys' mascot, Rowdy, last week. And then, on Sunday, 47 children and parents and 13 staff boarded a chartered bus to Irving to watch the Cowboys win. The group even got free food, tee shirts, foam fingers and pom-poms to help them get revved up for the game. (That's Winslow and a few of her students in the picture.)

Their seats were near the tunnel. So, players were walking by throwing the lucky students some souvenirs on their way off the field, Winslow said.
"The kids came to school on Monday wearing these huge gloves on their hands from the Dallas Cowboys players," she said. "It was a blast. we couldn’t have asked for better seats. It was great.”

- Traci Shurley

Mock elections underway at area schools

Students at J.P. Elder Middle School in Fort Worth (pictured at right) had short but steady lines for the ballot box during lunch today. The constant flow of voters surprised sixth grader Tiffany Ordonez.

"We had over a million people," she said, jokingly. "Really, I thought only 50 people would show up. Some people think about their lives and want to vote. Some don't. But there were a lot that did care and voted." Check out our roundup of area mock elections in Saturday's paper. You can see election returns from schools around the country, including Elder's, at www.nationalmockelection.org.

-Eva-Marie Ayala

Tarrant County College continued restructuring its leadership this week in preparation for next year's opening of the new downtown Fort Worth campus. Bryan Stewart, most recently dean of math and sciences at the Southeast Campus, was named vice president for teaching and learning at the downtown Trinity River Campus. He has worked at TCC for 23 years, according to a college news release, and recently co-chaired a committee that redesigned the college district's math curricula.

Stewart has an master’s degree and a doctorate in mathematics from the University of North Texas, the news release states. He also earned a bachelor’s degree in mathematics from Tarleton State University.

Last week, the college named Mark E. Workman vice president for teaching and learning services at the Southeast Campus. He was hired from the University of Arkansas at Little Rock, where he was dean of extended programs.

Workman earned his doctorate in community college and university administration from Texas Tech University and master's and bachelor's degrees in biology from West Texas A&M University, according to a TCC news release. He has also completed graduate work in computer science at the University of Central Oklahoma and in chemical oceanography from Texas A&M University. His work history includes stints at New Mexico State University at Las Cruces; New Mexico State University at Alamogordo; Northland Pioneer College in Show Low, Ariz.; Blinn College; and Frank Phillips College in Borger. Workman also served as executive director of the Higher Education Consortium of Texas, Oklahoma and Kansas.

-Mark Agee

Arlington trustees edge closer to superintendent search

A group of three Arlington school board members is set to begin gathering proposals from "potential superintendent search consultants," according to a press release the district issued early Wednesday evening.

The board, which met in a closed session Tuesday night, hasn't decided yet whether it will actually hire a firm to look for a permanent superintendent. A vote on that decision will come at a later date, the statement said.

Hector Montenegro, Arlington's former superintendent, left in July, after questions came up about his financial involvements with nonprofits that did business with the district. He was on the job about six months. Montenegro's hiring followed the retirement of longtime Arlington Superintendent Mac Bernd. The district paid a search consultant $27,269.14 last year to help find Montenegro.

Earlier this week, trustee Wayne Ogle (left) said he didn't believe the district should conduct another national search. He thinks trustees would do just fine hiring from within the district's own administrators.

Ogle's not on the committee gathering information about consultants. Board president Jim Ash, board secretary Gloria Peña and member Peter Baron are.

- Traci Shurley      

Teacher for Obama can't wear shirt showing support

One Longview elementary teacher had been wearing his Obama T-shirt every day to school. But KLTV reports that prompted the school district to ban all teachers from wearing any political paraphernalia during instructional time. They quote district officials as saying this is the first time they have asked teachers not to wear political-related items because "there does seem to be more interest, more excitement, maybe even more controversy nationwide on the presidential race. If we didn't put a stop to it now, pretty soon or later, it was going to be a distraction whether it was with this employee or someone else." With so much excitement building in Tarrant County -- we've already broken early voting records -- I wonder what folks around here think about this. Thoughts?

-Eva-Marie Ayala

Children write to future president with their priorities

What issues would our youth want to head the president's agenda? Read letters and essays by students across the country created as part of an online project.

"Letters to the Next President: Writing Our Future" asked students ages 13 to 18 to write about topics that are central to their future and issues they want the next U.S. president to act on. Students addressed many areas, including the economy, college tuition, the Iraq war and global warming. They published their work on the Internet using the Google Docs online writing tool.

Letters and essays, including ones by students from Arlington, are posted at www.letters2president.org.

The project was sponsored by Google and the National Writing Project.

Jessamy Brown

Rockin' the rook

The Kirkpatrick Elementary chess team won this weekend's St. Vincent's Scholastic Chess Tournament for their division while earning several individual medals. The mean team of five (pictured below) is determined put competitors in checkmate across the state. Click here for a list of upcoming tournaments. You may find one of these guys sitting across from you.

-Eva-Marie Ayala

DC school leader still holds the national spotlight in education

Michelle Rhee probably is the person most people think of when they hear rock star superintendent. The  Since taking over as chancellor of Washington, D.C., schools in 2007, the 38-year-old has made national waves in the education world by trying non-conventional and, some say, radical changes. And while this year's presidential race has hardly touched on education, the last question of the last debate was education related. That lead to both Obama and McCain praising Rhee and trying to align themselves with her. Here's The Atlantic's November profile story on Rhee where they say she has made "a city with possibly the country’s worst public schools ground zero for education reform."

-Eva-Marie Ayala

Fort Worth officials are laying out their game plan for Austin

Tonight trustees are discussing their priorities for the next legislative session set to begin in 2009. School finance, of course, tops the list. Surprisingly, a good deal of discussion is focused on dropouts.

District officials included in the priorities advocating for the simplification of dropout formulas and to allow a school or district to maintain its accountability rating if the dropout or completion rate (which are, oddly enough, two different calculations) is the only unacceptable indicator. When state ratings are released next summer, the state is expected to start counting those rates against schools and districts if dropouts are high. Fort Worth would have been rated unacceptable if the rates counted this year.

Trustee Carlos Vasquez said districts and schools should be counted as academically unacceptable if students are dropping out. "It's important for us to keep in the forefront that we are not doing a good job, especially with minorities, of keeping them in school," he said. Superintendent Melody Johnson agreed schools must be accountable for dropouts but said the problem is schools are getting rated on data that is two years old. She suggested the district support a separate dropout rating for schools.

Meanwhile, trustee Jean McClung is worried that the state classifies students who turn 18 and decide to leave school when they are adults as dropouts. But more than that, she wants the state to address students who dropout and return to school only to dropout again. Those students are currently counted against districts twice. "There isn't an incentive for (districts) to work on recovery if they could count against us twice," she said.

-Eva-Marie Ayala

TCC names new vice president

    ARLINGTON _ Tarrant County College has named Mark E. Workman vice president for teaching and learning services at its southeast campus, where he will develop and direct teaching and learning policies and programs. He was previously dean of extended programs at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock.      

   "We feel very lucky to have Dr. Workman as our first vice president over teaching and learning services," said Judith Carrier, TCC southeast president.  “We searched for three years to find exactly the right person to lead our campus to the next level.”   

    Workman has also served as assistant vice provost of the College of Extended Learning at New Mexico State University at Las Cruces and vice president of academic affairs at New Mexico State University at Alamogordo. He also served as dean of business and technology at Northland Pioneer College in Show Low, Ariz.

   _ Gene Trainor