Dallas' Mata Elementary Has a Frighteningly Large Dungeon

By Eric Nicholson Thu., Nov. 6 2014 at 9:57 AM

It's far too early to render judgment on Superintendent Mike Miles' school-choice initiative. Eventually, he wants to open nearly three dozen specialized campuses that offer an alternative to neighborhood schools but aren't as selective as magnets. Thus far, he's opened just one: Mata Montessori, just south of White Rock Lake.

Six weeks and change into the school year, the experiment seems to be working. The school has pulled in a diverse group of kids, some from overwhelmingly Hispanic Mount Auburn down the street, others from richer/whiter schools in the Woodrow feeder pattern like Lakewood Elementary, whose badly gerrymandered attendance zone inexplicably encompasses the $300,000 homes in Hollywood Heights (i.e. directly across Grand Avenue from Mata), and a handful from other parts of the district. There is some predictable round peg/square hole tension trying to align the Montessori educational philosophy, which is big on individuality and self-directed learning, with the testing- and data-driven approach en vogue in public schools in general and DISD in particular, but the district appears committed to making it work. The teachers, whose Montessori training is being funded by the district, are fresh and eager and motivated. (Full disclosure: One of them is my wife.) The specialized Montessori equipment, which, as a cursory search of educational websites will show, is mindbogglingly expensive, is brand-new. The kids, by and large from what I can tell, are thriving in the freedom of the Montessori classroom. (Full disclosure: One of them is my 5-year-old son).

My only quibble with Mata so far is this: The school has a disturbingly large dungeon. Yes. A dungeon. It's clearly labeled on the floor plan you see above, which is prominently posted right next to the stairwell next to Mata's library. Insofar as architecture is the physical manifestation of an institution's values (Allen ISD's $60-million football stadium, anyone?) what does it say about Mata that by far the largest room in the school is named after a windowless medieval torture chamber?

I have never dared venture near the dungeon, so I can't speak first-hand, but I'm told that it's just an unfinished basement room used for storing books and equipment and is absolutely not used as a forum for student punishment. Some anonymous past administrator apparently decided it would be clever to refer to it as a dungeon, and the name stuck. For Mata personnel, repeated usage has stripped the word of its punitive connotation, rendering it little more than a bland adjective for storage room.

Dungeon may soon regain its fearsome reputation in the Mata community, however. My wife doesn't find the existence of a dungeon in the basement of her school nearly as hilarious as I do, and let's just say she wasn't thrilled with the idea of publishing its existence on the Internet. I'm not saying she's definitely going to express her displeasure through antique methods of torture, just that the dungeon might be a good place to check should I happen to go missing.

Send your story tips to the author, Eric Nicholson.

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Rumpunch1

To be fair, the success of Mata shouldn't be a surprise. The Montessori program started by DISD at Harry Stone has been around for many years with great success and also draws from a diverse group of status. A diversity that occurs naturally as there is no attendance zone.

The success of each of the schools has one common element. The students and/or their parents chose to be there. Regardless of race, economic level or family situation, desire is the element missing from poor performing schools.

RaymondWolters

" whose badly gerrymandered attendance zone." ... i.e., why DISD has a 1 percent white enrollment, rather than a .00001 percent white enrollment.

Unless you give college-educated parents a school where their children aren't going to be dragged down by the underprepared, underdisciplined illegitimate children of single mothers, they are going to leave/ go private.

We tried that once -- desegregation! -- leading directly to the wonders of today's DISD.

Hence, the badly gerrymandered attendance zones. If you want to give Lakehill and Thomas Aquinas a huge windfall in enrollment, and temporarily lower home prices in Lakewood Hills and Hollywood, by all means, rezone them to Mata.

LakeWWWooder

Woodrow has a rifle range in the basement (the school had the nation's largest ROTC program in the late 20s, 30s, 40s and nid 50s) The rumor mill says there's a pool under the original gymnasium (like the one in "It's a Wonderful Life") but it's just a very well-built basement. In the 60s a class got a VW Beetle down the ramp as part of the senior prank.

We've got lots of stories over many generations about our schools in East Dallas but apropos to the story is that we also have a very innovative director of the Woodrow feeder pattern, Tracie Fraley. She is the former principal of Booker T. Washington Arts Magnet and a large suburban school. A draft of her plans expanding IB/STEM/STEAM/Montessori appeared in the Lakewood Advocate last May: http://lakewood.advocatemag.com/2014/05/02/timeline-school-choice-woodrow-feeder-pattern/

ThePosterFormerlyKnownasPaul topcommenter

"The specialized Montessori equipment, which, as a cursory search of educational websites will show, is mindbogglingly expensive, is brand-new."

Wow!, I definitely went into the wrong business. Slap a multisyllabic French origin word on it and the price goes through the roof.

PS: All schools should have a dungeon.Where else are you going to detain the students for detention?

Myrna.Minkoff-Katz topcommenter

Rumor has it that King Edward II is entombed in that dungeon.

TheRuddSki topcommenter

It's where you go to catch metacarcinus magisters, but being Dallas, they misspelled it.

mavdog topcommenter

Now we know the real reason there have not been any discipline problems at Mata Elementary.

wcvemail

Oh, great, now this headline will attract Goth kids, Juggalos, semi-pro vampires, and miscellaneous "crowd background" scenesters to the school. At least you didn't run the story before Halloween (note to writer: digitally dust off this story about next Oct. 30.)

ozonelarryb

Hold trustee mtgs there.

Does it have the same amenities as Mansfield's?

Greg820

How about "Dog House?"

Freddy

@RaymondWolters It's not really gerrymandered, which would imply very artificial boundaries and maybe a few zig-zags. It's the original attendance zone going back to the 1950s with a two sections added to the north and one to the south.

Rumpunch1

@RaymondWolters Look at the economic and racial makeup of the very high performing High Schools at the Townview Center (SEM, TAG, etc.) Poor brown kids haven't prevented those school from performing at the national level. If people want to waste their money on private school rather than looking at an actual program, then I guess that is their business.

For what its worth, DISD is 4% white not 1%, but I think you were just trying to make an uninformed exaggeration. Either way most of those white kids do not go to Lakewood Elementary. So even if those children were to flee, it would have little effect of the total numbers therefore making the .00001 percentage white enrollment mathematically impossible.

MickeyFree

@RaymondWolters You DO know it's not 1965, right?

observist topcommenter

Spoken like a true 75-year old white guy.

ivyhall

@Myrna.Minkoff-Katz Like sylvan nymphs, my pages shall be clad...Marlowe

wcvemail

@TheRuddSki

Finally got there. You could say I crab-walked to the definition. Try not to do too much more of that, please.

rke749

@TheRuddSki Well done. The thought process must be a little scary , but well done.

wcvemail

@mavdog

Yep, as Springfield Elementary had no problems -- and soon, no students -- when the teachers discovered the joys of cooking students in that Simpsons Halloween episode. ("Treehouse of Terror V," Google tells me.)