Extra Credit

#FirstBell Contest: Tell us about your first day of school

School is back in on Monday at most Tarrant County area districts and Star-Telegram reporters will be out and about at several campuses.

We'll be tweeting our observations on Back to School and we want you to join in.

Parents, grandparents, students and teachers: post your experiences and photos from the first day of school using the hashtag #FirstBell. And don't forget to include the name of the school and/or location in your tweet.

Tweets with the #FirstBell hashtag may be used by the Star-Telegram online or in print.

The Star-Telegram is running a contest, giving folks to participate the chance win a backpack filled with school supplies, Mom2Mom gear and 4 tickets to the Movie Tavern.

Jessamy Brown

 

Parents against school bullying to hold candlelight vigil

The Fort Worth/Dallas parent group Families Against Bullying will host a Tuesday candlelight vigil in Joshua to honor of bullied children who have been lost to suicide because of harassment and assault.

The location of the DFW Stand for the Silent event was held under wraps until this week. It is at 7 p.m. on Tuesday at R.C. Loflin Middle School (old campus), 520 Stadium Dr., Joshua.

The vigil is in honor of students Montana Lance, Jon Carmichael, Hunter Layland, Ty Field-Smalley and others, a group news release said.

"Please set this evening aside and come to share the love and prayers for survivors and support the local families who are tirelessly working toward effective implementation of safe Texas schools," the news release said.

The event is being held in conjunction with a similar one in Oklahoma City.

Jessamy Brown

Joshua 8th-grader commits suicide over bullying, family says

The family of a 13-year-old middle school student in Joshua says the eighth-grader committed suicide this past weekend because he was bullied at school, television station KDFW/Channel 4 reported.

Jon Carmichael hanged himself in a barn near his home, the station reported.

The family told the station that school officials knew what was happening and his mother said she believes that the bullying was too much for her son to bear.

Joshua school superintendent Ray Dane said the bullying may have happened during an athletic period and that district administrators plan to determine who may have known about it. He said the district would address the issues related to the incident, Channel 4 reported.

School bullying has drawn national attention with the recent case in Massachusetts in which nine people have been charged after a 15-year-old girl committed suicide following prolonged harassment and bullying at school.

-- Lance Murray

Tarrant County schools eligible for about $119 million in stimulus

If President Obama signs the stimulus package as expected today, Tarrant County schools could be in line to receive $119 million over the next two years. This House Committee on Education & Labor blog has a state-by-state list of district level estimates for special education and programs for low-income students.

The original stimulus package had targeted about $206 million for Tarrant County schools, about $70 million of which was for modernization and technology upgrades. The package now has $53.6 billion for construction and modernization efforts nationwide, which will be given to districts based on state and federal formulas. About $650 million will be available nationwide for technology grants.

Here's a breakdown of what area schools could receive as estimated by Congress:

District 
Aledo                                $594,000
Arlington                           $25,371,000
Azle                                 $1,747,000
Birdville                            $7,594,000
Burleson                           $1,775,000
Carroll                              $1,364,000
Castleberry                       $1,413,000
Crowley                            $2,813,000
Eagle Mountain-Saginaw    $1,798,000
Everman                           $1,533,000
Fort Worth                        $49,220,000
Grapevine-Colleyville          $3,653,000
Hurst-Euless-Bedford         $6,717,000
Keller                               $4,410,000
Kennedale                        $847,000
Lake Worth                      $1,098,000
Mansfield                         $4,336,000
Northwest                        $1,727,000
White Settlement             $1,594,000

- Traci Shurley and Eva-Marie Ayala

Joshua school district manages a tax rate cut

Amid a growing statewide school funding crisis, the 4,600-student Joshua school district in Johnson County managed an oddity tonight - voters were actually asked to, and agreed to, cut their property tax rate, from $1.46 to $1.39 per $100 of assessed property value.

The rate cut was possible because just as the district desperately needed to raise the portion of the school tax rate that pays for operations, such as turning on the lights and putting gas in the buses, the district also no longer needed so much money to pay off debt. So it cut the debt service part of its rate 20 cents while asking voters to approve a 13-cent increase in the "maintenance and operations" portion of its rate. Doing so was supposed to enable the district to get another $2.9 million from the state.

The whole thing was made more interesting by Saturday's election in the neighboring Crowley school district when two years after approving a giant bond program to build new schools, voters rejected a proposal to raise the tax rate 13 cents to operate those schools.

I don't know how Joshua school district voters figured out the ballot issue, but the 584 people down there who voted overwhelmingly supported the tax increase/decrease. When I reached Superintendent Ray Dane by phone tonight, he was sharing the good news with someone else on another line. "Hallelujah! It passed," he said, before turning back to me.

- Kristin Sullivan