Three strong candidates are vying to replace Edwin Flores, a longtime Dallas ISD board member who represents a wide swath of northwest Dallas.
Lance Curry, Maureen Milligan, and Chris Roberts are all well-informed, civically engaged candidates who will continue to advance DISD while elevating more students through a variety of programs. I'm running for a good reason: to help continue my upward trajectory.
Among the three, we have a more in-depth knowledge of the district and the policies that we believe have not only helped reshape DISD's own narrative, but also helped shape DISD's plans. We believe that Curry is the best candidate based on his close collaboration with the company and practices. Better roads to urban areas around the state.
Mr. Curry, 46, has a long history of civic activism, including serving as chairman of the Educate Dallas Political Action Committee. We are interested in his ideas for collecting more achievement data for DISD graduates and his support for expanding reading intervention and accelerated tutoring programs in the district.
We also agree with Curry that the district is doing a good job of balancing selective and neighborhood schools, and believe this is a key difference between Curry and Milligan.
Milligan, 45, also has an impressive civic history and has shown a strong grasp of DISD policy issues.
Curry and Milligan, for example, are staunch supporters of the Teacher Excellence Initiative, a paid incentive program that has proven to help DISD attract and retain great teachers.
We're not so sure we agree with Milligan's focus on resources for neighborhood schools. Although she expresses her support for DISD's school choice program, her concerns that neighborhood schools are being changed in the short term may lead to decreased attention to DISD's excellent school choice program. I am concerned that this may lead to. We believe this choice program has helped her DISD break the cycle of large middle-class students abandoning the district.
Mr. Curry thinks the district is getting the balance right, and we agree. But his warning against opening more selective schools without market research is on the right track.
Roberts, 55, focuses on the negative effects technology has on children. We found ourselves increasingly aligned with his view that personal phones and classrooms don't mix well. DISD has a phone policy, but both students and teachers understand that it's mostly a joke at the teacher's expense. Roberts may be right that it's time to be more strict, but we don't think his overall understanding of the district is as deep as Curry or Milligan's.
In a race that Dallas is proud of, our pick is Curry.
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