OPINION: SOUTHERN DALLAS

How does DISD turn around its lowest-performing high schools, most of which are in southern Dallas, if -- for example -- 70 percent of students who arrive are not ready for high school?

The front page of our newspaper Sunday carried this article about chronically failing schools. The report set off quite the debate in our staff meeting about what the best solution is. The jury's still out on exactly what we will say, but I'm curious what blog readers think the answer is.

We can close schools and figure out how to put these middle-schoolers in better schools with better teachers (although that's a gargantuan undertaking) or put them in different kinds of schools. However, if those entering ninth graders aren't "high school ready," you are talking about a massive remedial effort wherever they wind up, not unlike the remedial efforts that go on at community colleges with incoming freshmen. Is remedial boot camp the solution?

I don't think so. While I'm sure all of these high schools aren't doing as much as they could, I think the emphasis needs to be more on getting the incoming students up to speed before they arrive at the high schools.

I'm still of the mind that this is a birth-to-age-four issue. What happens during those first four or five years is a huge predictor of whether a child can stay on grade level. And this takes us to the issue of parental involvement/responsibility. I'm not sure how reconstituting high schools into new instructional programs and having them act as satellites to magnets at Townview solves the problem.

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After reading all the accusations recently leveled against District 100 state representative candidate Eric Johnson, a familiar trend seems to be surfacing. You're a young, upstart politician. Smart, well-educated, but not a member of the ruling elite. It's very hard to break through -- maybe especially because you're neither from the old guard that's run things a certain way for decades, and also because you're still dealing with longstanding minority biases.

Johnson's biggest battle turned out to be the fight against machine-style politicians who wanted to block his primary election and muster enough votes for Terri Hodge (an admitted felon who was ineligible to serve) to force the Democratic nomination to a vote of precinct chairs. Clearly, the old guard establishment was maneuvering to install a different candidate, someone not quite so fresh, so upstart, so well-educated, so ... dangerous ... to their personal interests.

So they went for the low blow. They looked at his funding (which certainly didn't come from them). They saw significant donations from Harlan Crow. They put two and two together and arrived at the Great White Conspiracy. Eric Johnson was a sell-out, according to this theory. He was being used by the big northern Dallas developers to get a foothold in southern Dallas and force poor, old black residents out of their homes.

We can play this game with just about any candidate out there, because you can't run a winning campaign without generating lots of cash. And people with money tend to be the ones who donate the kinds of cash you need. And people with money don't always tend to be held in the highest regard by people who don't have a lot of it.

So why is this so familiar? I just finished reading a column by former Dallas Morning News (and New York Times) reporter Chris Hedges. Lo and behold, he's leveling the very same type of accusations against Barack Obama.

One thing is certain in southern Dallas: Change must come. Smart developers will find a way to do it using the zillions of acres of already vacant land instead of displacing people from their homes. This development needs to happen, because that's what will create jobs, improve neighborhoods, raise school performance and attract the kinds of retail investment southern Dallas needs.

There will always be people trying to find evil in that. Others will come a-visiting with palms extended, demanding that the developer "give something back to the community." But the worst approach is to denigrate people whose only goal is to make things better for the people living there.

Regular blog readers know that one of the best teachers I've sought out in recent years about the history and politics of Dallas is Gerald Britt. I'm also enormously thankful that he listened to our Editorial Department when we approached him in 2007 about how to help in southern Dallas. I owe a lot to him and am blessed to consider him a friend as well as a mentor of sorts. (He probably would laugh at my using the word "mentor" for he's a tad younger than me I believe.)

So let me turn over today's commentary regarding Eric Johnson (pictured here from his Tuesday night victory party) to Gerald. Read here what he's saying about this election on his own blog.

Here's an excerpt (although I strongly urge you to read the entire post above because he puts this election into a context that is lacking in my short post here):

I am appalled that some southern Dallas leaders denigrate Eric because he is young or educated. I am extremely disappointed if its true that there were those who may have pandered to the fears of some elderly people that Eric's election would mean the gentrification of black neighborhoods. For generations we've encouraged young people to "get their education," "get involved," "give back," "become leaders."

This antipathy toward Johnson's campaign suggests, people meant it, but only in proscribed, low level ways that don't threaten the old guard, or their supporters.

And equally enlightening, read his comment on this blog post.

I'll have more to say on this later today. For now just consider that not only did Johnson win the 100th District seat in a landslide, but he beat Terri Hodge by 70 percent in South Dallas. I owe an apology to all those older residents whom yesterday I worried would let fear keep them from voting for Johnson. Clearly, they saw through the robocall stunts.

I don't mean to paint Johnson as Superman, but I believe this is a day we'll look back on as one when new leadership began doing some really important things for the southern half of our city. That is not to take away from good works by good leaders of past generations. But things can only get better with the injection of talented, well-meaning leaders from the younger ranks. There are others out there and this sends a powerful signal to them as well.

The fact that people who were raised in southern Dallas are returning to this part of our city, are seeing both its hopes and needs and are giving back -- for instance, Johnson's push in the critical area of the education gap in southern Dallas -- is the best thing that's happened in quite a while.

Here's what we said on our editorial page today.

Separately, I have posted some additional thoughts on our main Opinion blog.

Update: While I've used a lot of glowing adjectives to express why our "Bridging Dallas' Nortrh-South Gap" team is so pleased to have Eric Johnson in office, some readers may be looking for more specifics. So in the words of the expert I quoted in the opening of this blog post, here's why Eric Johnson will make a difference for the better:

1. Bring more openness and inclusiveness to the political culture, especially by involving more young people.

2. Begin to create a climate in which companies are not deterred from operating in southern Dallas by fears of being shaken down.

3. Make sure the community's best interests are front and center as the state and city move forward on rebuilding SM Wright.

My money has remained on Johnson since the Hodge plea deal ... until I read this. Sam Merten, on Unfair Park, does an excellent job explaining what so many people who live north of Interstate 30 don't understand: The Fear Factor. That is, the very real fear among older residents of the district that the city is moving toward a gentrification program and they will lose the homes they own.

As Merten points out, it doesn't matter whether the fear's true or not, it's out there. And what concerns me is that Dallas County Democratic Party chair Darlene Ewing says she expects Johnson to lose because of that fear.

Now let me be clear. Crenshaw and Ragsdale probably are feeding that fear. And judging from some of the comments, there's lots of dirty politics. But the anti-Johnson folks didn't create The Fear Factor.

It's an honest reaction that comes from generations of discrimination and unfair treatment by the city -- particularly back when Dallas swooped in and took many homes to create all that State Fair parking. And so before all my colleagues start bellowing about "people deserve what they get," let's all try to remember that the fear of "outsiders" and "of change" comes from getting badly screwed in the past.

I hope the voters of the 100th District will take a gamble on Johnson, but I can understand why they might not.

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Anyone who is familiar with the work of the Annie E. Casey Foundation on the "cradle to prison pipeline" would be interested in this report from Houston about the ways Harris County is tackling the vicious cycle that puts kids on the pathway to prison at an early age.

Why is this important? Because there is a huge disparity in the opportunities versus outcomes for minority youth versus whites. One in three black boys born in 2001 is likely to wind up incarcerated in his lifetime, compared with one in 17 for whites. Among black fourth graders in Texas, 83 percent cannot read at grade level -- and educational attainment is a crucial factor in affecting the route a child takes toward or away from incarceration. The list goes on, and you can read it all in this report.

What's important is the action being taken by a number of agencies in Houston/Harris County to break the cycle. I'd be curious to know how many of these programs are in place or being considered in Dallas. It's important to note that this Houston report also contains cost-savings that result from these new approaches.

In other words, it's cheaper in the long run to address these problems rather than leaving them on the back burner. Is there a lesson in this for Dallas?

As a young man, I had a conversation with an older fellow from Fort Worth and remember asking about a specific neighborhood there, "and can you buy beer there?" He looked at me like I'd lost my mind and said, "Son, the only thing dry in Fort Worth is the bottom of your shoe."

Not if it's raining, I thought, but quickly explained that in Dallas, where we were at that moment, some parts of town were "wet," meaning a person could buy a six-pack at the 7-Eleven or even get a drink at a restaurant. Other parts, like Oak Cliff, where I grew up, were "dry," meaning one had to cross the river to buy alcohol. (Where you drank it was another story.)

"Heard about that," the Fort Worth guy said. "That's why I'd never live over here. Wouldn't work here, either."

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Jim Schutze, in his writings at the Dallas Observer, has made it abundantly clear that he's no fan of the board's "Bridging the Gap" project intended to raise living standards in southern Dallas. He's certainly entitled to his opinion.

So it was with some special interest that I plowed through his latest for the Observer's print edition, "Oak Cliff Becomes Cool Embracing What Other Parts Of Dallas Have Fought: Builders, Bikes And Immigrants."

Set aside some time this weekend and give it a read. (Actually, set aside a lot of time. At 5,800 words -- jeez, doesn't the Observer have any editors -- it's a lot to absorb and digest. Then again, written in the unique Schutze style, it's an entertaining and illuminating read.)

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Colleague Mike Hashimoto blogged this morning on this troubling story about some Dallas high schools chaining their doors shut during the school day.

Sorry that I can't reproduce the map here, but out of 31 DISD high schools inspected this week, the eight schools cited for keeping exit doors locked were all in the southern half of the city. So I hope those who read this blog will speak up and spread the word of this outrageously dangerous practice.

I don't agree with several points Mike makes in his post -- particularly his questioning how Hinojosa could not know, especially at the "learning community" schools that he personally focuses on. My experiences at Spruce (the high school I focus most of my time on; it was not cited on the list) is that there are many, many doors. And I'm not sure "chains" jump out at a touring person who may be more focused on students and teacher performance. Again, maybe I'm too quick to give Hinojosa the benefit of the doubt.

That said, I agree with Mike's fundamental point: "Making sure everyone can get out of a burning building is about as black-and-white an issue as you'll find." I hope southern Dallas parents and others who care will raise their voices to find better solutions for balancing fire safety issues with other security challenges.

To read more and comment, click here.

I've not been a member of the Terri Hodge Fan Club. But I give her credit for doing the right thing and urging her supporters to abandon ill-conceived efforts to round up votes for her. Of course, Hodge is now a felon and can't serve in the seat. But for some reason, former City Council member Diane Ragsdale and others have been trying to convince District 100 residents to waste their votes on Hodge and let precinct chairs decide who will represent the area. Bad idea.

Thankfully, Hodge has finally said what she should have said the moment she pleaded guilty: Stop it. Don't vote for me. Don't urge your friends to vote for me. Hodge released a statement yesterday, making clear that she does not support any effort to round up votes for her. "I urge that these activities cease immediately," she said.

I hope that Ragsdale and others are listening. And I hope that Hodge is sending the same message privately as she's conveying in her public statement.

Of course, Hodge did not suggest that her allies actually vote for the only candidate on the ballot who is eligible to serve in the Legislature -- Eric Johnson. I guess that would be asking too much.

The more I look at the ridiculous state of politics in southern Dallas (the latest of which is the Diane Ragsdale robo-call on behalf of admitted felon Terri Hodge), the more I think it's time for an enormous political shakeup.

The one thing that's been consistent over the past 50 years is that southern Dallas has been staunchly Democratic. And I really do have to ask: What has your loyalty to the Democratic Party gotten for you? It has fed corruption. It has fed incumbent politicians' attitude of entitlement -- as in, How dare you, Eric Johnson, even consider coming in here and challenging Terri Hodge for her state House seat? And in terms of actual development, I don't see where the Democrats have done much to change anything for southern Dallas residents. Maybe they'd start to deliver if they knew the Republicans are standing by, ready to give it a try.

Anyone who knows me would be shocked to read the words above, because I'm no Republican. But I wonder if the Democrats would take politics in southern Dallas so cavalierly if they actually faced some competition. And Republicans wouldn't continue to ignore southern Dallas if they felt they actually had a fighting chance to win there.

If you had real competition among the major parties for southern Dallas votes, I'm convinced that the level of corruption would decline dramatically because we would have an element of watchdog politics that currently doesn't exist. Representation would improve because incumbents would understand that they can and will be unseated if they don't perform. And besides, competition is just generally healthier than one-party rule. Ask the Mexicans what it was like under the PRI for seven decades.

This time around, southern Dallas residents, I think you should shake things up. Vote Republican and watch how quickly both parties turn their attention to you.

I missed this obituary in our own newspaper this morning, but caught up with the very sad news on Dallas Progress: Bishop Larry McGriff, pastor of the Church of the Living God and a "walk the talk" southern Dallas leader passed away overnight. (Thank you, Michael Davis, for a heartfelt tribute in a writing assignment I know you wished had not come to pass.)

Bishop McGriff had married another prominent pastor, Karen Hollie, of Lifeway Church in Red Bird, in December and our newspaper covered the ceremony in a story you can read here.

I never met Bishop McGriff, but reading these various reports, it's clear that his loss will be felt not just by family and friends but many, many people he helped -- both in his work to improve quality-of-life issues in southern Dallas as well as his work with his wife Karen to find common ground between people of different religious faiths.

Alert Reader Lorlee Bartos sent me the following message today:

Last night, I got a robo call from Diane Ragsdale urging me to vote for Terri Hodge -- who she advises is still on the ballot -- and this will be our way of thanking her for her 14 years of service and will give us more opportunity and choices.

Man -- I simply don't know what to say, I was so furious.

Imagine that: A former City Council member from South Dallas, who currently runs a community development corporation that receives taxpayer funding, is calling for voters to choose Hodge, an admitted felon, over the only law-abiding and eligible candidate on the Democratic ballot -- Eric Johnson. Since this was a "robo-call," someone has put up a lot of money to get Ragsdale's message out -- a message that effectively says, "Vote for Crime!" and "Waste your democratic privilege and waste your vote on someone who will never serve a day in office because she cannot legally be seated. Waste it as a way of saying thanks to Terri Hodge for her service."

This is a supreme act of irresponsibility by Diane Ragsdale. If voters heed her robo-call, well, they will get what they deserve, as I've said before.

Several times in the past year, I've written about efforts to establish a charter school in West Dallas.

Since it is now a done deal --Uplift Education is now accepting applications for sixth- and seventh-grade West Dallas students for the 2010 -11 school year -- this seems like a good time to remind parents that the school is conducting an application lottery for students. The deadline for that is March 31. The West Dallas Preparatory School is located at 2650 Canada Drive in a building made available under an agreement with the Dallas Housing Authority. The lottery will focus on attracting students from key West Dallas zip codes - 75212, 75207 and 75247

And as another reminder, Uplift plans to hold an information meeting for parents Tomorrow, (Saturday,. Feb. 20) 9 a.m. at Williams Preparatory, one of Uplift's Dallas-area campuses, which is located at 1750 Viceroy Dr.

The Williams campus, which opened in 2007-08, has about 650 children and will graduate its first class next year. More significant, the kids from the West Dallas charter eventually will feed into Williams, which enjoys a partnership with the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center. UTSW provides access to its campus and laboratories. Williams is also a Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) school by the Texas High School Project.

So what does all this mean for West Dallas? A lot, namely that a new educational avenue are opening up.

I was just up in Frisco a couple of nights ago, enjoying a fantastic dinner and theater experience. On the long drive up from Dallas, I found myself wondering what it must be like for Dallas residents -- particularly those in southern Dallas -- who have to commute that distance every day, twice a day, to reach their jobs in the ritzy shops and restaurants like the one I was at.

When you look at the commute times for residents in our five southern Dallas bases, and look at the map of the places those workers commute to, then you realize that there's a big problem. When places like Frisco, with lots of wealth and lots of places in need of low-cost labor, fail to construct adequate low-income housing for those workers, they have to live in places that do supply such housing (like Dallas). So it only makes sense that Frisco should make the responsible choice of building the housing that suits the people working there.

Sounds logical, but I was amazed at the angry comments from more than 100 Frisco residents at a Frisco City Council meeting Tuesday who flat-out didn't want any semblance of affordable housing in their community. There's a threat of a lawsuit to stop the City Council from proceeding after a vote yesterday to approve new affordable housing, which would include some Section 8 housing.

"If Dallas can't handle its own problem, it shouldn't become Frisco's," resident Dody Brigadier said Tuesday.

Amazing. The message here is: We love the cheap labor you send our way, but hey, we don't want those people actually living among us. Isn't that how the entire problem of the north-south divide got started in Dallas? Good for the Frisco City Council that they didn't let the protesters sway the council's better judgment. The fact is, all communities need to be balanced economically, racially and even politically.

If you want to know where the "island unto ourselves" mentality leads, just look at the north-south problem in Dallas. When you concentrate poverty in one area and wealth in another, you create enormous problems that endure for generations. Social segregation doesn't work. Never did, never will.

Justice of the Peace Thomas G. Jones has had a reputation of running a pretty chaotic courtroom, so chaotic ,that he's been sanctioned several times. And that doesn't begin to touch the surface of complaints about poor service and muddled legal interpretations.

But in his heavily Democratic southern Dallas district, voters have returned Jones to office - over and over again. Despite his record, he's been in this office an astounding 18 years.

With early voting underway and the March 2nd election day rapidly approaching, Jones is facing another paperwork challenge, this time from opponent Sylvia Rhodes-Bradley, who is disputing the voter signature petitions that Jones filed to be placed on the Democratic primary ballot.

Rhodes-Bradley contends that the Democratic party chair Darlene Ewing allowed Jones to amend his petitions after the filing deadline in violation of election code. She had begun to challenge that do over, but has been told that she needs to re-serve the Democratic Party.

Challenging the validity of an opponent's petition is Politics 101. It's an easy way to trip up a candidate. But a quick perusal of Jones' documents indicate that Rhodes-Bradley may have found a problem with Jones paperwork.

Be that as it may, Jones' fate rests with the voters in JP Precinct 1, Place 1, who after all these years of tolerating Jones, need to elect a new JP. This newspaper has taken the rare step to recommend in this race based on our deep concern that voters don't know that they have a viable choice this year -- Rhodes-Bradley.

Winning on a technicality is one way to oust an incumbent. But if voters really want to hold incumbents like Jones accountable, then they need to do it at the ballot box. And that means turning out to vote Jones out of office.
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The Center for Public Policy Priorities has launched a neat new interactive database that allows you to compare and contrast all kinds of statistics on children's health issues across the state. I compiled the following two charts for Dallas County. We outpace the state in terms of the percentage of children giving birth to other children. We particularly outpace the state for unwed teens 17 and younger, although the state pulls ahead for 18-19 year olds. As for inadequate prenatal care, again, we are higher than the state average.

We also outpace the statewide average for overall poverty and children living in poverty. And we outpace the statewide average for high school dropouts. Some of these statistics show wide gaps that run counter to the very narrow gap in median household income for Dallas County versus the statewide average.

I can't say I'm surprised by these figures, but it sure would be nice to see our numbers improve. Click on the images below to see them at full size.

The results of the Danny Defenbaugh-led investigation into Precinct 5 Constable Jaime Cortes are front-page news today. This is particularly bad stuff for southern Dallas -- and southern Dallas County. That's where Precinct 5 is located and, thus, where a lot of this alleged funny business is going on.

Your tax dollars appear to be funding a really sketchy operation headed by an even sketchier constable. Please take time to learn about it here and make sure you get out and vote. Here were our thoughts on this race and two others that affect southern Dallas.

Click here to read more and comment.

Today's editorial page contains a recommendation of Pastor Stephen E. Broden in the congressional District 30 Republican primary. We were a bit surprised during our interview with Broden when he was unequivocal about the role that race should play in this election. "Color matters," he told us.

The other two candidates, Sheldon Goldstein and Charles Lingerfelt, are both white, and Broden is black, as is the 17-year incumbent Democrat holding the seat, Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson. Goldstein and Lingerfelt took strong issue with Broden's remark.

"I'm surprised that race should be brought into this," Goldstein told us. In a separate interview by phone, Lingerfelt said he was upset at the notion that, decades after Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.'s appeal for all of us to judge people by the content of their character rather than the color of their skin, Broden appeared to be counseling exactly the opposite. Lingerfelt was particularly incensed, given the decades he's spent working with minority students and working hard to convince them that they should never regard their race as a barrier to success. Now he's being told by his opponent that, in fact, Lingerfelt should regard his own race as a barrier to success.

Broden called me after the interview to make sure I understood why he said what he did. To prevail in a political contest in which an African American Democrat has held the seat for 17 uninterrupted years, any viable GOP challenger will have to attack Johnson's record vigorously. (And there is lots to attack.) If a white GOP candidate does that, he will be vulnerable to charges that he's a racist because that's the way lots of District 30 voters regard such criticism. He said that if a white and black candidate tell people exactly the same thing, black voters will tend to listen to the black candidate but disregard what the white candidate says.

I'm not quite ready to endorse that kind of thinking, because the path ahead contains an awfully slippery slope. Besides, voters in New Orleans just elected a white mayor, Mitch Landrieu -- the first time that's happened since 1978. Apparently, they concluded that race doesn't matter. What do you think? Is Broden simply stating the unspoken facts on the ground? Or is he playing the race card just to get a leg up on his opponents?

In this Sunday's Points section, we'll be running an interview with David C. Wiley, professor of health education at Texas State University and chairman of the Texas Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy. Wiley also is president of the American School Health Association. In the interview, he addresses many of the issued regarding teen pregnancy that have arisen in our Gap research regarding the vicious cycle of poverty, dropout rates and teen pregnancy. If you look at our database, one of the most shocking statistics concerns the high rate of teen pregnancy in southern Dallas. So this is an important issue worth addressing.

Wiley argues that too many people are using statistics and studies for political purposes. Some say the statistics are "proof" that abstinence-only works. Other say the statistics show it doesn't work. The truth, Wiley suggests, is somewhere in the middle. What does't work, he says, is the idea of using scare tactics to frighten kids into not having sex. It also is counterproductive to suggest that condoms shouldn't be used because they fail. When used properly, they only fail 2 percent of the time. But all this talk of failure is giving teens an excuse for not wearing them at all -- which could explain why pregnancy rates are going up.

The text of the entire interview appears on the extended page. The edited version appears in Sunday's Points. It's well worth reading.

A few weeks ago I posted Green Line figures from DART that reflected the number of passengers delivered downtown during the morning rush hour. Those numbers tended to make ridership on the new Green Line look bad, by virtue of the relatively few downtown-bound riders.

For example, average weekday ridership for the morning rush:
-- Red Line coming south brought 3,316 downtown
-- Green Line coming from Deep Ellum brought 177 downtown

Now I have DART's overall station-by-station numbers for last year, and they tell a different story. If you look at total boardings, instead of the rush hour ridership that's typical for office workers, Green Line numbers are respectable. Fair Park ridership stacks up against many other, long-established stations.

Examples of average daily boardings by station from November:
-- Green Line's Fair Park station -- 1,467
-- Blue Line's Kiest station -- 1,204
-- Red Line's Forest Lane station -- 1,442

Away from the center city, the big numbers are at the end of both the Red and Blue lines, all of which top 2,000 a day.

I've posted the full report over on the Dallas Transportation Blog.

Make no mistake -- every community needs a strong public school system.

But there are roles for charter schools. This editorial from the Detroit newspaper caught my eye. In particular, i noticed the turnaround by the state's governor on charters, and these paragraphs on how public schools and charters can provide results greater than the sum of their parts:

Chris Barbic, head of schools for the YES Academies, sees the relationship with the school system as "coopetition," meaning that charters and traditional public schools will compete to provide the highest quality education, and cooperate on methods that work.

YES gets those results by hiring highly qualified teachers -- it draws heavily from the Teach for America program, which has been virtually kept out of Michigan by teacher unions -- and by putting students through a rigorous course schedule over a nine-hour school day and a longer school year.
Detroit will be its first school outside of Houston. The University YES School will be a partnership with New Urban Learning, which operates the University Prep, Science and Math and Creative Studies schools in Detroit.

This certainly sounds to me that this kind of approach would work in West Dallas as well as other Dallas communities. West Dallas has a growing charter/private school base, but there is work to be done on the public school side. A key part of the YES program is that the kids get really good teachers.

Thoughts anyone?

An age-old question of economic development is how best to bring needed services to a community without adversely impacting families that live there. And West Dallas is not an exception. In fact, West Dallas is becoming a laboratory in creative modern urban design.

Late last week, the Dallas CityDesign Studio (a new city hall office) and a bunch of urban designers sat down to begin hammering out conceptional plans for West Dallas. Since late fall, they've been doing the footwork, talking with residents, developers and others is small groups.

And in the course of discussions last Friday, designers that included Larry Beasley, an internationally known designer from Vancouver, B.C. and Brent Brown, the design studio's director, took pen to a paper and came up with these ideas which they say balance the desire for residents in the Los Altos and La Bajada neighborhoods to have access to new shops and economic development without getting run over by out of control real estate speculation.

These ideas are a starting point and aren't cast in stone, but could be the start of something very special for West Dallas.

You don't hear a lot of good news these days from the four Dallas schools slated either for closure or re-tasking because of their repeated "academically unacceptable" ratings. But students at one of those schools -- L.G. Pinkston in West Dallas -- really stood out this weekend in an academic competition that has probably shocked and pleasantly surprised a lot of DISD insiders.

When you think of the performing arts, schools such as Booker T. Washington, Bryan Adams and Woodrow Wilson often come to mind as exemplary. They've got well established programs, a very active group of involved parents, and lots of good funding sources. Pinkston has none of these. But the school entered the Irma P. Hall Theatre Arts Festival on Saturday and went up against nine other Dallas schools -- including Booker T. Washington.

And Pinkston walked away with a gold medal in playwriting, a gold in acting and a gold in directing. The judges included various members of the Dallas Theatre Center and other notables within the performing arts community in the city. So it's quite a significant achievement for Pinkston, especially considering the high level of competition and all of the bad news that's come out of that school recently.

But more importantly, it sends an important message that's often overlooked within the academic community about the role that fine arts can play in stimulating the minds of at-risk students. (And they don't get much more at-risk than Pinkston, which is has one of the lowest income and highest drop-out rates in the city.) Very often, it's very hard to get these kids' attention long enough in any subject to nudge them all the way through to graduation. But as Dallas Theatre Center artistic director Kevin Moriarty noted in an interview with us published Sunday, the fine arts often can awaken at-risk kids in ways that core subject can't. The text of that interview follows.

Some interesting observations from a North Dallas resident who works in West Dallas as a director of a nonprofit literacy center. Freelancer Barbara B. Johnson proposes that perhaps material rewards for motivation -- something much more do-able in her North Dallas neighborhood than in the West Dallas neighborhood where she works -- backfire .

So which group of children is actually better off? Read more and comment here.