Dallas, TX
Dallas school district’s proposed budget cuts teacher pay while union declares “victory”
The Dallas Impartial College District FY 2022-23 finances makes additional assaults on lecturers and workers, utilizing inflation to chop pay whereas guaranteeing the continuation of the hated “Instructor Excellence Initiative,” which ties the administration’s analysis of a trainer’s efficiency to pay raises not years of expertise. Notably absent from any announcement by the district is any point out of well being care prices.
Underneath the finances, lecturers will begin at $60,000 per 12 months, up from $57,000 per 12 months for the FY 2021-22 faculty 12 months, a mere 5 p.c enhance. Academics with extra expertise can have even much less of a wage enhance; these with 5 years of expertise can have a base pay of $63,250, up from $61,210 per 12 months. Academics with 10 or extra years of expertise can have a base wage of $65,450, up from $63,400 per 12 months, a 3 p.c enhance. When factoring in inflation, which stands at 8.5 p.c, these are the truth is 3.5 to five.5 p.c wage cuts. This doesn’t even cowl rising gasoline costs which have elevated 43.6 p.c, in response to US Inflation Calculator in 2022, partially because of the US-NATO oil sanctions on Russia.
The district, which has been bleeding certified workers, has tacked on small “stackable,” one-time hiring incentives starting from $2,000-$5,000 in an piecemeal effort to make up for this loss.
Bus drivers will get even much less: A driver with a industrial driver’s license will make $25 an hour, $17.49 for an multi-purpose car driver, and bus screens solely $15. The union native, Alliance AFT, has praised particularly the bus screens’ pay as a “victory,” writing on Fb, “Nice work to everybody who has known as, emailed and lobbied the district to extend the minimal wage to $15/hour.” Beneath it’s a graphic studying “UNION VICTORY,” calling on lecturers to attend the Might 26 board assembly to voice their help for the brand new minimal.
The a lot hyped “$15/hour” was a poverty wage two years in the past, when Alliance AFT began its phony marketing campaign, and it’s even more true now. It’s an unoriginal rip-off, with comparable workout routines in deception having been pulled by the Democratic Social gathering in 2021 and the pseudo-left DSA years earlier.
For reference, the typical Walmart employee in Dallas makes $16 an hour, in response to Zip Recruiter. The decision by the Alliance AFT for educators to channel their efforts into groveling for poverty wages earlier than the DISD board, which has attacked wages and dealing situations for many years, is a useless finish. That the AFT is shouting “victory” whereas workers and lecturers are getting the shaft is an publicity of their false claims to signify the pursuits of lecturers and workers.
That is solely the tip of the iceberg. Additionally a part of the pay rubric entails slight will increase in pay as a part of the district’s “Instructor Excellence Initiative” (TEI), offering bonuses equivalent to trainer evaluations by faculty directors. TEI was applied in 2014 and is extensively hated by lecturers.
In keeping with this system, Dallas ISD lecturers are evaluated in eight graduated classes which decide their supplemental pay. Academics “usually” are solely in a position to enhance their pay yearly.
The entire construction is rigged is to shift the blame for low pay from the district onto lecturers, whereas guaranteeing that the overwhelming majority of lecturers are underpaid. The Nationwide Educators Affiliation-Dallas, in a submitting with the Texas Supreme Court docket in 2020, alleged that those that didn’t obtain TEI will increase, a really giant proportion of lecturers, successfully suffered pay cuts as a result of the price of medical health insurance elevated whereas they obtained no complement.
Throughout that 12 months, lecturers stuffed a Dallas faculty board assembly warning that TEI hits lecturers at high-poverty faculties worse as a result of they, by way of no fault of their very own, are much less more likely to hit efficiency targets and therefore much less more likely to be awarded the supplemental pay will increase. This was later vindicated by an investigation by the Dallas Morning Information “Dallas ISD’s pay-for-performance trainer mannequin raises questions on fairness,” which discovered that TEI did the truth is result in a stratification of evaluations alongside class strains.
As well as, “25% of lecturers rated throughout DISD had been what the district considers high-performing or ‘distinguished,’ with classifications of proficient II or larger” for 2018-2019. These correspond to the 5 highest supplemental pay grades, which means that as of 2018-19, 75 p.c of the district’s lecturers are paid on the three lowest pay ranges, with a complement to base pay of not more than $7,500 a 12 months.
That is by design, because the scoring is finished alongside a bell curve, with solely 2 p.c of lecturers allowed to fall into the very best supplemental pay degree, with the specific intent to restrict the variety of excessive evaluations following worries over saving cash. The Morning Information wrote in 2021 that “the district had depleted a lot of its financial savings lately. To launch a brand new compensation system, the district needed to restrict what number of lecturers may earn high salaries.”
In keeping with Go Banking Charges, to reside comfortably in Dallas as a renter one must make an earnings of $70,000, whereas dwelling house owners want $84,000. Notably, the three lowest pay grades for lecturers depart them beneath these thresholds. They’re out of attain for the overwhelming majority of lecturers, and much out of attain for bus drivers, custodial, cafeteria and different help workers.
Who’s chargeable for all this? Nearly all of the DISD board consists of Democratic Social gathering-connected and NEA/AFT-endorsed candidates. So those that bear a lot of the duty for the implementation of the reactionary TEI pay scheme and the assault on wages are the commerce union bureaucrats and the Democratic Social gathering.
With additional hemorrhaging of workers from irritating workloads, low pay, the specter of coronavirus in faculties in addition to Lengthy COVID, a debilitating illness affecting a big proportion of those that survive COVID-19 infections, it’s probably that this quantity will enhance, additional miserable wages.
All of those situations have been compelled upon lecturers as a part of the bipartisan assault on training and on primary public well being on behalf of the ruling class, with each the fascistic Republican Social gathering and the Democratic Social gathering working to maintain faculties open at the same time as coronavirus deaths soared cross 1 million within the US. The intention is to maintain employees at their jobs so the monetary oligarchy can maintain enriching itself off their backs. Schooling funds are additionally being diverted to gas the increasing US-NATO proxy conflict in opposition to Russia in Ukraine.
Academics in class districts round Texas and across the US are going by way of comparable experiences: coronavirus infections, pay cuts, austerity, the destruction of public training, and the specter of world conflict. Academics searching for a approach to prosecute this combat ought to construct and be a part of the educators rank-and-file committees, that are unbiased of the unions and each events of the ruling class. To seek out out extra, click on right here.
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Dallas, TX
Like it or not, Dallas Cowboys coach Mike McCarthy is gaining ground for a contract extension from Jerry Jones
Late Sunday night in the Dallas Cowboys locker room, as players reveled in a 26-24 win over the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, head coach Mike McCarthy was making his way through a jovial scene when he spotted Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones near an entrance. Earlier in the day, the two had shared a conversation steeped in disappointment when they’d learned the Cowboys had been eliminated from the playoffs by a Washington Commanders win. But now, as McCarthy approached Jerry, the tenor of the day had changed.
Jerry smiled. And when McCarthy held out his hand for a shake, the owner instead opened his arms and drew his head coach into a hug. He then took a few moments speaking to McCarthy, one hand on the coach’s shoulder and another gently tapping him in the chest with a fist. As the dialogue subsided, Jones patted McCarthy on the shoulder a few times and pumped his fist. All of this, perhaps not by coincidence, unfolded in front of a “Sunday Night Football” camera that was televising the emotional exchange to whatever portion of the Cowboys’ audience that was still watching.
If you were going to gauge what’s going on with the Cowboys’ head coach and the franchise’s owner right now, this was a worthwhile snippet of video for two reasons: First, it’s clearly something that Jerry — still keenly aware of optics and the power of theater — wanted people to see. Whether it was a public display of pride or affection that McCarthy had earned or Jones just wanted to staple an image to his words that night, he knew where the moment would go. In a word, everywhere. And the second reason the moment matters? Jerry knows it’s coming in the midst of a time when the primary conversation about McCarthy is one of his job status, a situation Jerry created when he chose to make his head coach go into the final year of his contract with no discernible public mandate on how an extension could be achieved.
Let’s be honest about this joyous but complicated embrace as it moves forward: both of these men created it. Jerry by letting McCarthy play out this string of games with no clarity on what could be next for the Cowboys’ coaching staff. And McCarthy by arguably saving his best coaching for the portion of the season when there was nothing more to clinch other than the dignity of not quitting.
Make no mistake, that’s what we saw unfold last night. McCarthy showcased a locker room that is still galvanized despite having lost a postseason aim. They gutted it out with a massive spate of injuries on the offensive line and backup quarterback in Cooper Rush, not to mention wideout CeeDee Lamb, who played through a painful shoulder issue Sunday. Join that with a shorthanded defense that battered a good Buccaneers offense and literally ripped a win away in the final moments of Sunday night, when cornerback DaRon Bland pulled a fumble from the belly of Tampa running back Rashaad White. It was a moment that encapsulated a number of big-play stands on both sides of the ball, definitively halting a game-winning drive that seemed very achievable for quarterback Baker Mayfield.
The resounding feeling? The Cowboys’ playoff hopes are dead, but the attitude toward the remaining schedule is anything but buried. Instead, a narrative about culture is unfurling — about whether there is actually some kind of underlying strength Dallas can display in the final weeks of the season that say something about this team and coach. Maybe it’s enough to fulfill the hopes of the franchise cornerstones, including Lamb, quarterback Dak Prescott and edge rusher Micah Parsons, who have all (in some fashion) endorsed a McCarthy return in 2025. Surely, Jerry has heard that message, leaving him to look for reasons to keep McCarthy that goes beyond the three straight 12-win seasons that preceded 2024.
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Afterward, Jerry was effusive in his praise of the effort in the win over the Buccaneers — making clear that it had stoked something emotional inside him.
“Those guys came out and played as though they were fighting in the championship game to go to the Super Bowl,” Jones said afterward. “I can’t tell you how proud I am of them and the coaching staff. It really shows me something.”
For his part, McCarthy tried to put a fine point on what that something was.
“I just think that [effort] shows you who they are,” McCarthy said. “I think everybody says the coach is always talking highly of the locker room — well, this is what I’m talking about. When I talk about, ‘It’s a great locker room,’ this is the definition of it. This is what a great locker room looks like. And it’s a mixture of men from all over the country, all over the world and different personalities. Obviously in circumstances [out of the playoffs] that we’ve discussed at length already. But when it came time to play, they played their asses off and I can’t tell you how proud I am.”
Of course, this peak of sorts — winning four of the last five games, getting to 7-8 with a chance at finishing the season at 9-8 — comes with measuring that goes beyond just a great locker room. There are fair questions to be asked about where this locker room culture was during a brutal five-game losing streak from mid-October to mid-November. It was an expanse that saw Dallas get obliterated in three of those games, against the Detroit Lions (a 47-9 loss), Philadelphia Eagles (34-6) and Houston Texans (34-10). And it wasn’t that long ago that Jerry was openly questioning some parts of the Dallas scheme, while also spiraling into sometimes odd postgame diatribes that lacked a cohesive connection to the here and now.
Those were the days of Bill Belichick possibly being the next Cowboys coach, and they weren’t that long ago. But times can also change quickly with Jerry. He rides Everest-ian highs after wins and Death Valley lows after losses. All of which typically result in McCarthy’s own roller coaster when it comes to his future employment.
Right now, the Cowboys are winning again — even if it’s too little and too late when it comes to the postseason. But as the victories have begun to stack onto the ledger and the support of vital players has ebbed into the public (and Jerry’s) consciousness, the disappointment has also started to soften where it matters. You hear it in Jerry’s words. You see it in the arms and embrace between an owner and head coach that seemed to be an intentional message to the fan base.
Things are changing. A 9-8 finish and the positive feedback of his players has Mike McCarthy pointed toward the one thing Jerry has avoided offering him thus far.
A contract extension.
Dallas, TX
Here is everything you need to know about Sunday night’s Dallas Cowboys game
The Dallas Cowboys are playing their third game in a row at home that is in front of a massive television audience as they are now going from Thanksgiving Day to Monday Night Football to Sunday Night Football. America’s Team and all that jazz. It is the first time that they will be playing a game in general though as a team eliminated from playoff contention.
This time around the Cowboys will be hosting the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and are underdogs even in their home building. While Dallas has won three of their last four, the Buccaneers have won all of their last four. Needless to say it is going to be a difficult outing.
We will see how well the Cowboys fare and if they are able to make it four out of five. The early parts of this season were extremely tough, but they have been playing very well for the last month or so.
This post will serve as our running recap throughout it all. We will update things on a quarterly basis and at the end of the game sort it so that it can be read in chronological order.
Let’s go Cowboys!
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Notable Recent News
This past week saw the trailer for the Netflix documentary chronicling Jerry Jones and the Dallas Cowboys teams of the 1990s release… if you are into that.
Injury Updates
We have known for some time that Trevon Diggs’ season is over, but the Cowboys formally placed him on injured reserve on Saturday.
Dallas signed Andrew Booth to the active roster in response.
NFL News Relevant To The Cowboys
As noted up top… the Washington Commanders beat the Philadelphia Eagles on Sunday and in the process they eliminated the Cowboys from playoff contention.
The Drought™ grows all the more large.
Up Next For The Cowboys
The Dallas Cowboys are set for their final road trip of the season next Sunday as they will visit the Philadelphia Eagles. After that they will return home to host the Washington Commanders before they wrap everything up.
Dallas, TX
Dallas police identify victim in Saturday morning shooting
DALLAS – Dallas Police have identified a man who was shot and killed before 5 a.m. Saturday morning.
Officers were called to a shooting in the 9000 block of Soverign Row, which is off of John Carpenter Freeway near Regal Row.
Investigators believe 21-year-old Joseph Ortega was shot by an unknown suspect.
Ortega died at the scene.
This is an ongoing investigation.
Anyone with information is asked to contact Detective Frank Serra at 214-662-4552 or frank.serra@dallaspolice.gov.
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