Category Archives: education news

education news

Trump at war with First Amendment

Let there be zero misunderstanding about this truth, which is that Donald J. Trump has declared all-out war on the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

Yes, the ignoramus in chief has taken every provision in that amendment and subjected it to the whims of his desire to create an autocracy in the land founded on the principle that it never should become what Trump desires.

Let’s look at it, one clause at a time …

“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof …” Trump has ordered the placement of the Ten Commandments in federal buildings and argued for the placement of them in public schools. Clearly a violation of the church-state separation clause.

“or abridging the freedom of speech …” Trump is jailing people who are speaking out against government policies initiated by the Trump administration. He signed an executive order declaring that anyone who burns Old Glory is subject to a year in jail, despite the U.S. Supreme Court ruling that declares that flag-burning is protected political speech.

“or the press …” Trump has banned certain newsgathering organizations from the White House press briefing room. Why? Because they decline to use certain terminology favored by Trump — such as the continuing to call the Gulf of Mexico by its long-standing name, rather than referring to the Gulf of America.

“or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances … “ Trump has deployed Homeland Security personnel to arrest people for assembling to complain about government policy. He has declared that they are traitors to the government if they disagree with the lame-brained policies put forth by the administration. Any third-grade student in the United States has been taught that this country was founded on the principle of dissent, that our founders were a collection of dissenters intent on creating a government that cherished political dissent as part of the our national fabric.

The first 10 Amendments to our nation’s Constitution were intended to protect our civil liberties. They are the basis for this nation’s very existence. Donald J. Trump is out of what passes for his mind!

business news, education news, local news

Growth explosion: brand new to me

I have lived a long life and I intend to keep living it, but I want to take a walk back briefly through the communities I once called home and explain why my current hometown is so different.

I was born in Portland, Ore., a city that seemed stuck on a certain population of about 375,000 people through the 1950s and 1960s. The Army called me into active duty in 1968 and I returned to Portland, where the population stayed more or less the same through the 1970s and much of the 1980s. My career then summoned my family and me to Beaumont, Texas, a nice city to be sure, but one trapped in the era of “white flight” of residents to the suburbs. The population of Beaumont declined during our nearly 11 years on the Gulf Coast, falling from about 120,000 residents to around 115,000. Opportunity knocked again in 1995 and my wife and I moved to Amarillo, way up yonder in the Panhandle. The city enjoyed slow, but steady growth during our 23 years there. The city grew from about 180,000 residents to just less than 200,000. In 2019, I was retired from daily journalism and Kathy Anne and I moved to Princeton, Texas, a Dallas suburb about 25 miles northeast of Dallas. Then it came, a population explosion the likes of which I never had experienced. We bought our home at the right time, securing a loan for a ridiculously low interest rate. New residents came pouring into our city. The population exploded from 6,800 residents in 2010 to 17,027 in 2020. Today the city estimates the city is home to 40,000 residents. Forty thousand people now call Princeton home! That number is continuing to explode. The city council has invoked a ban on residential construction permits, but it must honor the permits already granted and the housing construction already underway. I am filled with anxious anticipation as Princeton grapples with this growth. Texas highway planners have big projects set for U.S. 380. City public works crews have to install new water and sewer lines. Police and fire departments need to hire more personnel. The school system is building campuses as quickly as it can but they are being overwhelmed by new students pouring into the district. The city desperately needs more commercial development to serve the thousands of new residents who are moving here. Those of us who already are here must watch as the city grapples with solutions to the “problem” officials face. How to cope with the tide of people who realize what many of us knew all along, that Princeton is a nice place to call home. City Hall’s challenge is to maintain Princeton’s desirability.
education news

‘Yes!’ to schools cracking down on cell phone use

I shall refrain from the lament that it took a long time to do the right thing, so I will applaud school districts throughout Texas that are taking direct measures to restore some decorum in our public school classrooms.

They are ordering students to ditch their cell phones when the bell rings to start the school day.

They’re doing it here in Princeton, where I live. Fort Worth is as well. Same for Dallas. And same for a whole lot of other districts acting on legislation approved by the 2025 Texas Legislature and signed into law by Gov. Greg Abbott.

Classrooms must be a place where students are focused solely on the lessons being taught. Teachers deserve that respect. Sadly, they don’t get it when students are sitting in their chairs, cell phones in their laps as they send messages back and forth. The law empowers individual school districts to use whatever disciplinary measures they deem appropriate to punish violators.

And to be sure, this initiative drew plenty of resistance from parents who insist foolishly that they must be in contact with their little darlin’s 24 hours each day. As Col. Sherman T. Potter would say: Buffalo bagels!

education news, local news

Texas GOP goes anti-rural

Glenn Rogers writes a column for the Dallas Morning News and in his most recent submission he makes an astonishing assertion about the direction of the state’s Republican Party.

He said the party has become “anti-rural” in its outlook and its policy priorities.

He writes: Based on my personal experience and discussions with rural-focused organizations, I would say the top priorities for rural Texas are supporting public schools, providing access to quality health care, improving the quantity and quality of water resources, and improving communication capabilities.

I want to focus on the first item he lists, “supporting public schools.”

Texas public education is taking it on the chin, in the gut and maybe even in the groin by policies that strip public money from public school classrooms. The GOP-dominated Legislature recently enacted a bill that allows parents to spend public money to send their children to private schools. I consider that a direct affront on the public school system that, in my view, has served Texas families well since, oh, maybe the beginning of time.

Lawmakers tried to foist this issue onto the books in 2023, but Republican lawmakers representing rural school districts resisted. Many of them represent districts here in North Texas, where life revolves around the health and well-being of the independent public school district.

Something or someone got to those folks during the current Legislature and they climbed aboard the school voucher bandwagon to approve it and sent it to Gov. Greg Abbott’s desk for his signature.

This is the kind of action that destroys rural communities. Rogers, a rancher and veterinarian in Palo Pinto County, served in the Texas House from 2021 until this year. He writes that public education is the “backbone and leading employer in rural communities.” He adds that “without their public schools, small towns … would be devastated.”

So, why do Republicans in the Legislature insist on gutting these communities? Why do they knowingly take money needed to bolster public education and allow parents to send kids to private schools?

This is a turn that a once-great political party has taken. I believe it will bite the Grand Old Party squarely in its backside.

education news, local news

Toughest job in North Texas? Yeah, probably!

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Donald McIntyre’s name possibly isn’t known much outside of Princeton, Texas, where I have lived for the past six years.

I am going out on a limb, though, with this post and declare that McIntyre might have the most challenging public service job in North Texas. He is superintendent of schools of the Princeton Independent School District.

Where is the challenge? Two words sum it up: rapid growth.

Princeton ISD is on the cusp of a growth explosion many of us have never seen. The school system keeps seeking to project what it believes will be its student population in a given academic year only to have those numbers blown apart by reality.

McIntyre — known as Mac to his friends — has to calculate those numbers and present them to the school board to enable the elected board to decide on how to respond to the growth.

A slight bit of personal history. My wife and I moved to Princeton in early 2019. We bought a home here. The population sign at the edge of town said Princeton was home as of the 2010 Census to 6,800 people. The 2020 Census figure was posted and the sign was changed to 17,027 residents. The 2020 Census figure was outdated immediately. Just recently, I heard Princeton City Manager Mike Mashburn say that, based on the number of water meters on line, the city population today stands at about 43,000 residents.

So, from 2010 to 2025, Princeton has grown sevenfold. Wow!

What’s more, most of those new families are bringing children with them. The kids have to attend school. Princeton ISD, therefore, must provide those students a place to learn.

McIntyre must ensure the kids can attend school. He is the chief administrator of a growing public school system and, believe this, he has expressed a hint of frustration at the many challenges he has to confront. The school district’s voters have stood with the district when it asks for money to build the schools it needs. The problem, though, is that the school system cannot build them quickly enough.

The elementary school built in my neighborhood in 2020 had two portable classrooms installed in the first year of its existence because the school had exceeded its capacity.

I want to doff my proverbial cap to Superintendent Don McIntyre for the examplary job he is doing just to keep pace.

education news

Public ed faces the axe

The Texas public education system is about to feel the budget axe as the Legislature prepares to approve a school voucher plan and send it to Gov. Greg Abbott’s desk for his signature.

What a crock of steer manure!

House Speaker Dustin Burrows says the House has enough votes to approve a measure that would allow the state to siphon off public education money and set it aside for parents to use to pay for private education for their children.

Burrows, a Lubbock Republican, is serving his first term as House speaker. I had a glimmer of hope he might have followed the lead of two former GOP speakers — Dade Phelan and Joe Straus — in resisting this gutting of public education.

Frankly, the move to gut public school districts of money runs totally counter to traditional Republican support in rural areas of the state. Many communities represented in Austin by GOP lawmakers, depend on healthy and vibrant public school systems to hold their towns together.

Those systems will be deprived of funds they need from taxpayers’ pockets once this goofy idea becomes law.

Abbott, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick and many MAGA Republican lawmakers are dead set on depriving public schools of the money they need to strengthen themselves and provide quality education to our public school children.

My wife and I brought two sons into this world and they attended Texas public schools until the early 1990s. I believe they both received good educations that enabled them to attend and graduate from higher education institutions. They both have flourished in their professional lives as a result.

I only can hope that future generations of Texas kids can enjoy the fruits of a solid public education. I don’t feel good about where the state is going.

education news

Why damage public ed?

For the ever-lovin’ life of me I cannot fathom why Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick and most of the Texas Republican legislative caucus want to tear the guts out of our state’s public education system.

They want to siphon taxpayer money that pays for public schools and direct it to private schools throughout the state. Why the warfare against the state’s public education system? They contend the public schools are doing a lousy job of educating our children; they say the schools aren’t safe places for our kids to learn.

The solution, though, should not be to yank money out of the system. They want to use public money for vouchers parents can use to enroll their kids in private schools.

Abbott and Patrick say they have enough votes in the Legislature to approve the robbery scheme that Abbott hatched two sessions ago. He ran into resistance from, get this, rural Republican legislators who said weakening public education would damage their communities, where lives revolve around public school activities.

Former Texas House Speaker Dade Phelan agreed with his GOP colleagues and let the measure die in the 2023 Legisalture. He got punished for letting the “will of the House” dictate the fate of the proposal. GOP operatives sought to launch a primary campaign against Phelan in 2024 … but he pulled out of the speaker’s race.

I agree that public education has issues to resolve, but dammit, taking money out of the system doesn’t provide a cure! It only worsens the conditions that our state’s leaders say they want to repair.

It makes no sense to me.

education news

Vouchers coming: get ready

Oh, how I wish Texas Republican legislators can do what they did a legislative session ago and kill a plan to gut the state’s public education system in favor of sending tax money to pay for private education.

It doesn’nt appear it will happen. During the 2023 Legislature, rural Texas lawmakers, including some in North Texas, railed against the idea of siphoning off public money to pay for private school vouchers. They said public schools are the heartbeat of their communities and they should be strengthened with more funding, not have it taken away.

The Texas House managed to kill the legislation. To their credit, the GOP legisltive caucus stood firm against Gov. Greg Abbot’s effort to gut the public education system.

I am a big believer in public education. I agree it’s damaged, but depriving it of valuable resources that can be spent to improve it is not the way to go.

I just wish the rural Texas GOP lawmakers can make the case once more that the state must not do irreperable damage to communities that rely on public education to hold cities and towns togeteher.

education news

Abbott to renew fight against public education

Gov. Greg Abbott is sharpening his long knives in the upcoming legislative fight against public education.

I will watch with intense interest at how his fellow Republicans, elected to their rural legislative districts, deal with the governor’s efforts to gut and dismember the institutions that long ago became the heart and soul of these lawmakers’ communities.

GOP lawmakers resisted the idea of peeling public money away from public schools and sending them to private schools. The effort failed in the 2023 Texas Legislature. The successful blockage cost House Speaker Dade Phelan his chance of returning as speaker.

I learned long ago, when I first moved to Texas in 1984, that rural districts breathe life into communities that otherwise might wither and die were it not for the strength of their independent school districts. Many of those districts produce dedicated legislators who vow to fight for them in the halls of power in Austin; and most of those legislators these days are Republicans.

Abbott and Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick want to mess with that political chemistry by vowing to siphon money for public schools and allow parents to redeem vouchers they can use to pay for their children’s private education.

Well, I can say without equivocation that from the Panhandle to the Piney Woods and from Texoma to the Valley that rural communities that depend on the strength of their public school systems are going to fight for their very lives.

Will it matter in the end? Probably — and tragically — not … as long as the Republicans in the Legislature remain wedded to the MAGA view that public education is not worth saving.

Baloney …

education news

Take all the phones away!

All the recent news reporting about local school districts “cracking down” on cell phones in public schools has me nearly laughing out loud.

Call me a hardline, no-nonsense conservative fanatic on this issue … but I have believed since the advent of cell phones that those devices have no place in a public school classroom. Zero. None.

I long have been advocate for school districts confiscating cell phones from students when they enter the school building at the beginning of a school day. Take ’em away, lock ’em up in a secure place and tell the kids they can collect the devices when the final bell rings at the end of the day.

Several school districts in the Dallas-Fort Worth metro area have been reported to be cracking down on the devices.

I wrote a column about this matter while working for the Amarillo Globe-News. The blowback I received from angry parents was a thing to behold. I didn’t get a lot of negative response, but much of what I received was nonsensical on its face.

One parent actually told me that her child needed to be available for instant communication and that depriving the student of a phone would put him or her in jeopardy. I reminded her of how parents used to get in touch with kids during a school day: They call the school, ask to speak to their little darlin’, the school secretary sent someone to the classroom and the student arrived at the office to take the call.

How long does that take? Five minutes?

Teachers have a difficult enough job as it is without having to cope with students sending text messages back and forth during lesson time. Students should be required to devote their undivided attention to the teacher. Yeah, I understand that such a requirement was impossible to achieve even prior to the advent of cell phones.

I am heartened to hear that districts report a decline in cyber bullying after the cell phone crackdown. How can that possibly be a bad thing?