Dallas ISD’s Board of Trustees convened Thursday evening for its final board meeting of the 2022-2023 school year.
The meeting’s official business began with the swearing-in of Joyce Foreman, who won re-election last month. Sarah Weinberg was also sworn in after defeating Jimmy Tran in a runoff on June 10.
Sitting board president Trustee Justin Henry, who was named The Dallas Express’ first Bad Apple of the Quarter back in April, was subsequently re-elected in a 7-2 vote to head the school board.
Superintendent Stephanie Elizalde then went on to give a report to the trustees. She spoke about how Dallas ISD is reorganizing its campus security staff and how her administration is “repurposing … how [the district is] aligning school safety resources” by placing four relevant departments under the supervision of Chief of Operations David Bates.
As previously reported by The Dallas Express, a shooting at a Dallas ISD campus parking lot in North Dallas in March raised concerns over school safety in the school district. Elizalde seemingly blamed the incident on Dallas’ serious crime problem.
“We all know that violence is up in our Dallas community,” she said at a press conference in the aftermath of the shooting.
Elizalde also touched on the statewide teacher shortage, claiming that Dallas ISD received the most teacher applications during the 2022-2023 school year it has gotten in the last five years.
Later in the meeting, Dallas ISD’s school board members went on to adopt a budget for the 2023-2024 school year, which totaled roughly $2.5 billion — about $200 million more in spending than the district logged during the 2022-2023 school year.
As previously reported by The Dallas Express, Dallas ISD’s budget has been growing even as enrollment has stagnated and even dipped in recent years. Despite the colossal amount of taxpayer money the district regularly spends, it has been unable to provide many of its students with an adequate education, despite the hard work of its capable educators.
Last school year, nearly 20% of the graduating Class of 2022 did not earn a diploma in four years, and only about 40% of all students scored at grade level on the STAAR exams, according to the latest Texas Education Agency accountability report.
It is unclear whether the bigger budget will yield more positive results in terms of student achievement outcomes next school year.