Cast Your Vote: Stay or Go?

To all the teachers who lost their jobs today; Good bye. We are sorry to see this happen to anyone who, like yourselves, gives of themself so much. The fact that your job was lost to a failed system and group of people who place themselves over others is sad, very sad. For you, all of you, this was personal. For us too, the parents and students, it is personal.

My vote; Hinojosa must go. He put himself over our tax paid education system and children who WE pay to educate. Reduction in teaching staff vs. administration wage reductions and terminations. Others should go too, the school board members who turn heads and tails when it comes to controling the Superintendent. They too have not performed the intended functions of the positions they were elected to do. Now, they too have violated our entrusted tax funds to allow teachers, not other non teaching expendetures, to be cut, so our tax dollars pay for non teaching personnel and functions.

That's what I am talking about. Let's get this stain on the DISD out of here because, as a student at a DISD High school I am not pleased with Hinojosa's performance I am losing a lot of my teachers. I don't appreciate that. I don't comprehend with teachers that I don't know. SO DO US THE STUDENTS OF DALLAS INDEPENDENT SCHOOL DISTRICT A FAVOR AND GET THAT unpleasant person OUT OF OFFICE. "HINOJOSA AND BUSH MUST GO"!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Michael Hinojosa's job performance is so poor a category registering how awful it is has not yet been invented! Inept, incompetent, arrogant, petty, and vindictive are flattering descriptions for the worst superintendent in the history of the Dallas Independent School District... and I have been around since the very early days of W. T. White, no not the school, the man!

Besides the fact that Garza, Lopez, Medrano (all of whom vote by surname), Price (a two-faced, breathing joke), Bingham (who handles the truth quite loosely as alleged in the Spruce High School mandate), Ellis (not the brightest bulb on the Christmas tree ergo her appointment to be over DISD policies) and Lowe (who is making money hand over fist, $9 million+ since 2002 - documentable)... besides the fact that seven of the nine MUST go, if the Board did not put a performance clause in Hinojosa's contract that included incompetence and poor job performance, all nine should go!

If District lawyers are worth a flip, they can prove that his job performance demands firing and the District WILL NOT have to buy out his contract! If the lawyers are as competent as Hinojosa - they are probably like him if he hired them - we are stuck with Hinojosa!

A scandal every week; the only district in the whole State of Texas open on an ice day thereby jeopardizing lives; passing the buck to underlings when an inept decision backfires or draws criticism; hiding from the media when the water gets too hot; blatant discrimination against non-Spanish speakers, especially African-Americans (check the records); protecting Hispanic administrators during the P-Card fiasco (check the records); hiring Hispanic and white employees with six-figure salaries who do not know how to do the job and then hiring outside consultants to train them for the job to which they had been hired; an HR Director with no experience in HR who handled the teachers in the Spruce High School mess; firing anyone who tells him "no" like the finance person who told him NOT to make this financial mess; taking vengeance on everyone who had the good sense NOT to promote him when he was in the DallasISD the first time (compare then to now – one had initials M.R.); high schools that are rapidly going down (19 that are actually unacceptable); circumventing District policy, state law, federal law, God's Law (check it out hiring, firing, the high school to college program through the DCCCD) alleged -may be; investigations that never get investigated (this week's scandal at SOC); a grading policy that has again made the DISD the butt of a bad joke in academia http://www.cnn.com/2008/LIVING/09/18/dallas.schools/index.html#cnnSTCVid... and now the biggest gaffe in the history of the Dallas Independent School District to the tune of God knows how much because the numbers do not add up! That flushing sound that you hear is the Dallas Independent School District going down the toilet single-handedly orchestrated by Michael Hinojosa!

He had no business being here in the first place! The Dallas Morning News wrote a SERIES of articles telling the Board NOT to hire this joke of a superintendent because he did the SAME things in SpringISD. If memory serves me correctly, their deficit was $56 million.

The Board was on the right track to hire a superintendent of value, the man from Beaumont, but all of what was good and all of the information from the DMN was ignored to appease a portion of the population who cares nothing about qualifications, just surnames! Just because a group has the most students in the District does not mean that they should get what they want just because they want it. It does not mean that they are astute enough to choose academic leadership. They should have known that Hinojosa has NEVER even been a principal. How could he possibly be qualified to tell principals how to run a school? This is the third strike! Listen, Gonzales, who ended up in the penitentiary; Rojas, who was surrounded by indictments; and now Hinojosa a galloping incompetent who has no business sense, academic sense, or administrative sense and has caused the largest budget line item for lawsuits in the history of the District.

The only person pleased with the performance of Michael Hinojosa is Michael Hinojosa and he seems to be too arrogant and incompetent to realize that his administration is an abysmal failure!

see ya wouldn't want to be ya...accept for the pay out...also could I please mow your yard since I know you pay someone to do it if I get RIFD...i will use organic fertilizer

I think that he should step down. I also think the RIF should start with central staff and P-Card administrators/principals who abused funds. Why start with teachers? One of the big injustices I've seen is the Hinojosa administration's use of Spanish to usher many Hispanics into the district. This is wrong because many Hispanic kids can't even read Spanish or speak it that well. Many of the parents pretend they can't speak English even after having students in DISD from pre-K to high school. The whole objective should be to groom students to speak english and mainstream them by grade 5.

The district has NOT improved, but has digressed indeed! The network infrastructure is totally outdated. Try sending an email out, it may take your whole planning period, because the system either freezes or kicks you out, and you have to keep logging in. Some departments even require that their paperwork be DRIVEN downtown. This is ancient. What about an electronic interface for this? Gas is too high for that nonsense. This kind of stuff is the result of hiring unqualified people and getting rid of the qualified in the name of the need for Spanish speakers.

Lastly, what is the AFT saying about all this? Why aren't they asking for Hinojosa to step down? They are supposed to be representing teachers - teachers that are being fired, by the way. If they are calling for Hinojosa's resignation, they must be saying it very softly. Where is their aggressive stance on this? The RIF is supposedly not to be done by seniority. That's because many of the new and last hires are Hispanic. What criteria they are using to get rid of people?

dkrause

Yes, he needs to go! What is the school board thinking, not letting him go?

Absolutely he should go.

Someone wrote about Hinojosa's different allowances - clothing, car, driver, wife's clothing, child's college. Is this true? If so, where can proof of this be found?

Send him home. He sent 2 million dollars back to the state from the state from The Texas Work Force. He felt it was too much trouble to have our after school programs licensed as day care centers. Instead he has Parks and Rec. as one of our choices. Do you notice that one of our board members has ties with Parks and Rec. I thought that was interesting. Parks and Rec do not hire teachers to help with their program - the Texas Work Force did.

Send him HOME

Look, I wish this was a complicated question, but it's not. Hinojosa has lost the confidence of the public; he will not regain it. This alone makes him an ineffective administrator. If you polled most of the citizens of Dallas, I believe you would find that a clear majority want him gone (or his head on a platter).

When you have a top administrator with zero credibility in entire city, he needs to be replaced - and not by wasting money on some nationwide talent search. We have qualified people here in Dallas who can do the job.

My husband has worked for DISD for 32 years. When he started, he worked in Deaf Education as an artist in the curriculum development department. When the Board decided to gut the deaf ed/special ed programs and put all those kids in "mainstream" classes, most of the people lost their jobs. He was lucky in getting transferred to library services; he's been a library clerk - often doing the job of a librarian without the pay - ever since. (He never finished his degree because I'm disabled and can't drive anymore, so he has to take me to the doctor, the pharmacy, etc., and my disease is demanding.)

He also runs a cartooning club for the kids after school; the middle school boys who turn up are always interested in working on their "tags" (grafitti tags). Instead of denigrating them, he teaches art techniques and gently guides their interest into other branches of cartooning. So by the end of the semester, they are drawing hotrods and anime, rather than preparing to climb bridges and spray-paint their tags all over town! What will happen to these boys if he loses his job?

Every good teacher in DISD WANTS to be in his/her classroom, not fighting for benefits like unemployment. We may have to start thinking about a class-action suit. Or perhaps a gazillion individual suits would be better. Hmmm. . . . .

My question is; if he stays, as I'm sure he will, who is going to believe anything he has to say? Which employee will actually respect him after this? How effective can he now be? Or does he have enough friends in high places (DISD Central Admin) to put pressure on enough principals to maintain some status? How can so many want him to leave and yet he remains?
Does the school board stand for anything anymore?

Hinojosa has a car, personal chaffeur, a clothing allowance, his wife has a clothing allowance, his son's college education is paid for + a - ALL AT TAXPAYER EXPENSE. Why are we paying for his WIFE'S CLOTHING? He does not make enough to buy her clothes out of the 375,000 he is paid??

He cannot manage his own son's education out of the 375,000 he makes? He already lives an $815,570 home (public information) while our own teachers who have given their lives to our children worry about how they are going to feed their own families.
I am angry about this. He should have never been hired.
He brought in his friends and they all make over $150,000 (yes Allen, I used your database and researched those top 100 people).

My wife is a teacher with more than 20 years of experience. She makes less than 70,000 a year after 25 years.
You will never see a more dedicated teacher. I have been to her classroom to volunteer and her kids LOVE her! They call her mama and cling to her as though she really is their mother. Not all lessons learned are lessons learned from a book.

I have accompanied my wife to the store while she buy small incentives for her students, trying to reward the smallest successes her students have.
I have seen students she has taught over the years return to her class to let her know they made it because of her influence. They thank her for pushing them because it prepared them for the real world.

She is literally drained when she gets home because she gives so much emotionally, yet each year she returns to the same low income neighborhood dedicated to serving the children of Dallas and now this imbecile wants to let her and teachers like her go because of their incompetence?

In her lifetime she will probably never ever see the kind of money that Hinojosa makes or even 1/2 of his salary that matter!
Last year, my wife and I made 110,000 COMBINED.

We need to take a stand as parents and taxpayers. NO MORE WASTEFUL SPENDING. NO MORE DISTRICT EMBARRASSMENT. NO MORE THROWING OUR TEACHERS UNDER THE BUS!

The best superintendents we have had, we ran them off.
If any teacher is laid off, Hinojosa must go as well!
Our teachers need our unwavering SUPPORT!
DISD DAD and HUSBAND

If the number of people about to be RIFed was not so obscene, I wouldn't be as certain that Michael must be fired, but I do not see how the board can allow so many blameless people to be terminated and keep the Superintendent. It simply defies reason. As to the question of who will take his place, I believe there are a number of qualified people working in the District who can be interim while the board looks once more for a "savior." The one thing I will say is that it must be a hard-nosed person who is a stickler for detail. One of my favorite DISD people always says, "Don't expect what you don't inspect." That's the kind of person DISD needs.

Wonder what kind of score he would make on a TAKS Math test? He should go!

Hey Ed, I like to respond when you ask for my view~

It is a very emotional issue and I have been living the emotion of dealing with the DISD Insane Stupid Disaster system for a few years, and I must say things are not as smooth as when Dr. Moses was in the seat, but we need to look at the picture from a rational perspective.
My Question Is What is the plan? I have a unique view because I have a unique business experience as well as a family that has special needs obligations. Many teachers will look at this post and think I am a terrible writer, but we need to look at the education of kids with a new cultural perspective and responsibility to balance the budget and educate the kids correctly. I am the first one to go without the frills and bling. I take responsilbility for my fiscal condition as well as the welfare of my family and invest hard in my tasks. I have found it more efficient to educate my children privately at a more affordable rate than the school can create with the money designated for my children with services they need. I have been lied to and treated unfairly, not by the board or superintendent, but by the staff, specifically the teachers and principal and special education administration. Rather than do the job as is necessary, and place the children into programs that are capable of servicing the needs at the same cost, as the current waste of taxpayer funds from sitting in ARD meetings and falsifying documents and lying about the facts regarding the child's behavior and needs that are to be considered. There are ways to organize the students to have them placed in appropriate school settings with the correct curricullum, but the entire system of the required tasks to identify needs and service the children is so mismanaged and unbelievably ineffective it is really upsetting to me as a taxpayer to watch such stupidity and lack of efficiency with the system in the administration level. Same with the budget. As a business person who learned arithmetic in school, I know when I have to spend money I need to earn it somehow. It seems the entire budget department are concerned with the money in their pocket, and DO NOT let the money out for services for the kids. It is old school. We need a new cost sheet program.

I think Dr.H needs to stay and work for free. I think what is missing at DISD is a code of ethics from the lowest level to the highest. I think the majority of people at DISD are ethical, and there are schools and teachers I have experience with that are the greatest folks I ever met. I think we need to not pay the unaccountable administrators until they are accountable and they need to service with in a budget. The budget needs to be developed in accordance to the current Federal laws of IDEA and NCLB and each child needs to have a screening and evaluations as soon as they can as they are in school. The children who need services from ECI need to have a smooth and effective and COST EFFICIENT transition placement to service the NEEDS not the teachers with the lunch buffets in the special ed PPCD classroom kitchen. I think some programs would be none for the worse if the staff was diminished, but there are the majority of staff that are priceless and they need to be paid well for work well done. I think there are principals with principles, and those without.
So my vote keep the entire lot of them but do not pay the administration directly involved with accounting and not directly servicing, but managing the services, and denying services and putting children on waiting lists rather than doing the tasks required by law, make them work for free, because the job they need to be doing is not being done. Tell them to do the job then they will be paid, not before.

I saw the ol' Doc H on the school district propaganda network telling about the new school year.Hey the guy has every agency with the scope on him. He has the responsibility of every screw up in the district on his desk. In the cases I have in his stack I admit the complaints I have are regarding the teachers, principal, central administration and now the lawyer was set on me and I was reported to CPS regarding the behaviors that the school caused, and would not be willing or able to comprehend or be honest to work things out. The system will not give the campus the correct support and the teachers are encouraged to do what they can do to "convince" the parent their kid is not having problems so they will not have to call in the behaviorist that does not exist. The PIE is not divided correctly for a school district to be productive or efficient. The attitude to pay the administration to not work is the problem. I suggest we make them work then pay them if the kids are doing better.

The budget is simple. You have x income from revenues that need to be completely accounted for by a group of trained professionals. I think that task needs to be done with the TEA influence. Then the x is divided by y, the number of students, and the z is the amount per student the campus should have available to use. Each campus is alloted y times z. The services need to be organized at the campus level, referred to as site based. The administration needs to fulfill the request of the campus and there should be enough funds if the people are working as smoothly. The leftover funds after all the needs and services are given can be paid to the administration that work hard to deliver the services correctly and efficiently.

The superintendent needs to have the TEA to come in without the need for forced implementation due to the verified corruption. The funds need to go from the intake to the implementation of service with the least amount of cost. Each person on staff needs to be working with the task of service rather than driving around town and sitting in ARD meetings for endless hours not servicing. The way the schools work with parents needs to be like a public service with trust and honesty and real love for the kids. It is apparent the DISD I witness is in it for the BLING BLING.

There needs to be a cultural shift in the entire district. The district suffers from "pervasive bad attitude" and there needs to be some behavior modification and other psychological evaluations done on the members of the school board. The BOARD need to demand the TEA to direct this mess, and the people need to visit the jail for a while if they are involved with the mismanagement. We are not aware of the truth at all. Somebody needs to work for free until the budget is made and the kids are serviced.

Not just yes, but heck YES!

Do you think he would resign, or do you think the Board will have to make the employment decision?