How Suburbanites Cheat Their Way Into Booker T. Washington (Dallas: apartment, rent)

[Walter Benjamin]

A very thorough story, lots of charts and numbers.

https://lakewood.advocatemag.com/201...-t-washington/

Also infuriating...

[TurtleCreek80]

Originally Posted by Walter Benjamin

A very thorough story, lots of charts and numbers.

https://lakewood.advocatemag.com/201...-t-washington/

Also infuriating...

It is infuriating. I live in Dallas and have officed on the Plano/Frisco border for the past 15 years. I cannot tell you the number of colleagues whose kids (or friends’ kids) have gamed their way into Booker T because I’ve lost count:

-the Starwood Dad who drives his dancer daughter to Booker T everyday since his office is across the street. They rent a West Village apartment that she crashes in a few nights a year. It seems like half her Booker T friends all live in Frisco or Plano too.

-the woman who is the Executive Director of Frisco ARTS (who’s other kids go to Frisco ISD) has a theatre daughter at Booker T. No idea how they gamed the system. Oh the Facebook posts about “how proud” she is that her daughter got into Booker T and is getting roles in productions there. Shameless.

-the famous 5 male dancers who all got into Julliard a few years ago all trained at Dance Industry in Plano. I believe I was told that none (or only 1) of them actually live in Dallas.

When I point blank have told these parents they’re cheating and as a Dallas taxpayer, it’s infuriating, they usually laugh it off or say “you would do the same for your kids once they’re older” or some version of “my kid was just more talented than they other applicants”....never mind the fact that they’ve spent $10,000 a year on music or dance or whatever lessons since junior was 4. It’s entitlement, plain and simple. No different than “Aunt Becky”.


It’s also interesting that these parents feel it’s a tit-for-tat with the district that Booker T wouldn’t be able to boast about 5 dancers getting into Julliard in the same year unless they had well-trained kids from the suburbs enrolled. And it’s hard not to believe that the district doesn’t feel the same way since they aren’t sufficiently vetting applicants or current students.


I agree with the article that DISD should just pull back the veil and charge $25,000-30,000 per year for out-of/district applicants, the equivalent of a Tier 1 private tuition package.

[Taub201]

Fascinating. It makes me wonder what rigor UT-Austin has for making sure that applicants are TX residents and not pretending to be. If someone graduates from a non-Texas high school, isn't it obvious? DISD needs to do a thorough review of new applicants and current students and clean house of anyone that's not living in the district. An even better step is to then prosecute parents who lied to get into the school.

[TurtleCreek80]

Originally Posted by Taub201

Fascinating. It makes me wonder what rigor UT-Austin has for making sure that applicants are TX residents and not pretending to be. If someone graduates from a non-Texas high school, isn't it obvious? DISD needs to do a thorough review of new applicants and current students and clean house of anyone that's not living in the district. An even better step is to then prosecute parents who lied to get into the school.

I wouldn’t worry about UT having a residency scandal. It’s fairly rigorous to prove residency for college. You have to prove your domicile was in place for 12+ months prior to applying. So graduating from a non-Texas high school would be a big red flag that the domicile criteria was not met for a freshmen applicant.

You also can’t claim an Austin domicile as an OOS undergrad to get in-state admission. Very few will meet the criteria and move from OOS to IS tuition.

[jiping]

DISD trustees approve this for obvious reasons.

Talk with Dallas ISD’s trustees, administrators and faculty, and there are a variety of responses to the issue of suburbanites blocking deserving Dallas ISD students from Booker T. and the other TAG and magnet schools in the district.

They all know the issue. They all have their opinions. There just doesn’t seem to be any real will or enough concern to do anything about it.

Dallas ISD Trustee Edwin Flores, who represents the North Dallas area, is an exception. One of his daughters attended Booker T., he has seen the problem first-hand, and he’s angry about the situation.

“If for every kid that Highland Park sends to Booker T., I could send one of my poor kids to Highland Park — do an even exchange — I’d be OK,” Flores says.

“If we had some kind of reciprocity. But this is not a county school— this is a DISD school, and it bugs me that we knock out kids with potential just because those kids didn’t have the access to the piano teachers, the dance teachers.”

[UnfairPark]

This is infuriating indeed and Dallas ISD should stop this system abuse. Same way suburban districts need to tighten up their policies to stop reverse influx, which is even higher. All these parents on both sides are manipulating the system and cheating taxpayers.

[WorldKlas]

An even more outrageous scandal is how many Collin country residents use Parkland on my Dallas County tax dollar.

[UnfairPark]

Originally Posted by WorldKlas

An even more outrageous scandal is how many Collin country residents use Parkland on my Dallas County tax dollar.

No. They are using it because Parkland gets our federal tax dollars.

[NP78]

Originally Posted by UnfairPark

This is infuriating indeed and Dallas ISD should stop this system abuse. Same way suburban districts need to tighten up their policies to stop reverse influx, which is even higher. All these parents on both sides are manipulating the system and cheating taxpayers.

LOL. Your posts read like a parody.

[CMC_TX]

My favorite was always driving on Lovers (west of 75 in HPISD) and seeing the BTW student sign in a yard facing the street. Kind of brazen display and made me laugh.

Lovejoy charges tuition for out of district students who want to attend. Unfortunately, as the article pointed out, DISD schools are by & large so undesirable that this problem is isolated to only a handful of their campuses & the district has bigger issues to worry about and scant resources to police this.