Dallas ISD Superintendent Michael Hinojosa can play to a crowd.
And he did exactly that during Friday’s State of the District presentation, held at the Dallas Omni Hotel in front of a crowd of 850 educational, business and community leaders from around the area.
In a 25-minute presentation — interspersed with videos and closing with the superintendent donning sunglasses and high-fiving a group of students while Drake’s “God’s Plan” played on — Hinojosa walked the audience through his key initiatives for the next five years.
Not coincidentally, five years is the length of his contract, thanks to a recent extension.
Nestled among a raft of jokes, Hinojosa expressed excitement about how transformational some of the district plans could be.
He also expressed — by the way of funny asides — a bit of concern about how much the district still has to do in the coming year, particularly with its upcoming bond package that will be put to voters in November. The bond, which could range from $2.7 billion to $3.7 billion, will likely be the largest ever issued by a local entity in Texas history.
“If we can just pass this bond election … ” was a common refrain.
The bulk of Hinojosa’s presentation addressed the district’s four areas of focus: racial equity, early learning, strategic compensation and public school choice.
“The reason for our success is we came up with some initiatives and some focus,” Hinojosa said. “If everything’s important, then nothing’s important.”
With racial equity, Hinojosa pointed to a wide variety of different efforts, ranging from the district’s development of an African American Studies curriculum that has now been used as a model statewide to its cavalcade of acronym-heavy turnaround and support programs for students (FARE, ACE, AIM and CAP).
On teacher pay, Hinojosa said the state’s recent decision to reward districts with merit pay systems, along with the district’s recent tax ratification election, gave DISD some breathing room for affording its merit pay system that it didn’t have when he returned to the district in 2015.
“Very controversial, but very successful,” is how Hinojosa described the merit pay system during his presentation, drawing applause when he pointed to 1,100 teachers that would make over $70,000 in base pay under the plan for the coming school year. (The district has about 10,000 teachers in its merit pay system.)
For public school choice within DISD, Hinojosa admitted that it was a necessity for the district to offer families more options, given the current educational ecosystem.
“Our parents vote with their feet,” Hinojosa said.
After touting the work of the district’s early college high school efforts, which will see almost 600 students graduate this year with a high school diploma and an associate’s degree from the Dallas County Community College District, Hinojosa expressed genuine excitement about the district’s career institute concept.
The district currently has two career institutes in the northern and southern parts of the city, offering instruction on trade and technical jobs such as aviation, HVAC, plumbing, electrical and interior design.
With or without the bond’s passage, Hinojosa said, the district’s plans to open four career institutes spread across Dallas are a must, adding that he’d be willing to dip into the district’s “rainy day fund” to make it happen.
“This is a life-changer,” Hinojosa said, calling the programs the “lifeblood” for the bulk of DISD students who aren’t college-bound.
“I keep telling Mayor [Eric] Johnson, to grow southern Dallas — when these kids get out, make a good living, and they can buy a house in Pleasant Grove, South Dallas, Oak Cliff, now they have disposable income, and they’re going to demand to a Starbucks, they’re going to demand a grocery store.
“That’s how you build southern Dallas, and we’re going to get there.”
At the start of the event, Mita Havlick, head of the Dallas Education Foundation, thanked the community for its support in the foundation’s first year back in operation. The district revamped the non-profit foundation at the start of 2019, and it has raised over $5 million in its first year, with much of the support coming after October tornadoes severely damaged three of its schools, including Thomas Jefferson High School.
“As devastating as those storms were, the outpouring of community support was astounding,” Havlick said.
After the presentation, Hinojosa said that while the district had made some mistakes in the past, he believed that it was trending in the right direction.
“I want people to understand that we’re in this for the long haul,” Hinojosa said. “While we stumbled through some things, in the end, we have an opportunity to become a premier urban district. We haven’t transformed yet, but that’s our goal.”
