Wanted to post this earlier, but you know, it’s Monday. But if you’re interested in DISD and the future of quality education in Dallas, really, you’ll find the Schutze link compelling.

Because of the convention center hotel election, relatively little attention is still being paid to the issue of what DISD plans to do with its vanguards, learning centers and magnets (science and engineering, arts, talented-and-gifted, etc.). Briefly, DISD announced that in order to receive more than $100 million in federal Title 1 funding, which is aimed at low-income students, they’d have to ‘equalize’ per-pupil spending across the district. This would mean, more or less, cutting back on the very programs that have made these schools such successes.

But on Friday, the Dallas Observer‘s Jim Schutze does what he does better than most anyone else in the city: got the documents, got the history, got the lawyers and sources. Again, briefly, for six years, these special programs have gotten an exemption because 1) they are such successes in drawing in families from all races, all classes, and 2) they were partly created for that purpose by the desegregation order. And it seems nothing really has changed.

So why is DISD now saying, sorry, we gotta do it, it’s the feds, it’s TEA, it’s not us. Schutze explains in gratifying detail why that doesn’t seem to be the case. He also follows up today with how people like Congresswoman Eddie Berniece Johnson want to find out why this isn’t applying elsewhere, and with how, suddenly, people are starting to re-phrase what’s been said.