Former educators and community members spoke out against perceived safety issues and managerial retaliation against teachers and staff at Dallas Independent School District (ISD) schools during a Thursday board of trustees meeting.
During the public comment period of the meeting, DeNita Lacking-Quinn, chair of DISD’s Site-Based Decision Making Committee and a former teacher, claimed that teachers at Justin Kimball High School regularly receive death threats, have their vehicles vandalized, and have their catalytic converters stolen.
Kimball is the same high school where a hall monitor has been accused of striking a student multiple times, as reported by The Dallas Express, but Quinn suggested that the video of the incident was doctored and the hall monitor’s actions were in self-defense.
Quinn said there was a definite safety issue at the school, including weapons being brought onto campus and students on social media posing with guns.
Robert Ceccarelli, a former teacher who regularly speaks about safety issues at Dallas ISD, said that he had not heard any satisfactory responses from school officials after bringing up the lack of metal detectors at a sporting event at South Oak Cliff High School last month.
“I want to know what will be done about it,” Ceccarelli said, asserting that he believed there were more than 1,500 people at the sporting event at the high school.
He said school officials had stonewalled him when he tried to ask about the perceived problem.
“Why didn’t you tell people about that?” he asked the trustees. “We’ve got three people covering up something that should be easily resolved.”
He concluded by asking the trustees for more transparency.
As previously reported in The Dallas Express, a poll conducted back in January found that a majority of DISD parents think the district should be more transparent.
Retaliation against employees has also been an issue at the district, said Anthony Peterson, a bus driver at DISD, claiming that retaliation by managers for speaking out against issues was commonplace.
He called the schools a “well-oiled, oligarchical system of management” and described management as “straight gangsters.”
Peterson said that managers retaliating against staff happened “several times during the week” and that bus drivers are told that if they do not like their jobs and find them unsatisfactory, they should just quit.
DISD has had a reputation for retaliation for years now, with multiple whistleblowers apparently finding themselves drummed out of a job for daring to speak up, as previously reported in The Dallas Express.
Widespread sentiment exists that the dysfunctional issues and history of poor student outcomes at DISD are a result of serious leadership issues, at least according to a poll conducted by The Dallas Express back in September 2022, which found that 49% of respondents blamed “mismanagement” for the district’s dismal academic performance.
