Garza, Ranger, Bingham....

Much has been said of late of DISD Trustee Jerome Garza's attempt to recruit someone to run against sitting District 6 Trustee Carla Ranger. He supposedly wants someone who will be in favor of the progressive change that the Superintendent and he feels needs to occur in the Dallas ISD. And, someone who will not ask any questions and just go along and get along.

Well, I guess he wants someone just like Trustee Nancy Bingham from District 4 to take her place? Trustee Bingham, who just happens to be a retired teacher, doesn't seem to have voted in the favor of teachers, nor does she seem to question anything that the Superintendent or Trustee Garza puts forward.

Hmmmm.. Let's take a look at District 4. Where have, and continue to be, most of the chronically low-performing schools? Could that be District 4.... Where are some of the most ill-maintained school facilities? Could that be District 4.... And, most recently, where are some of the highest ratios of assaults on teachers by students? Could that be District 4 as well....

Hmmm.. Is that what we really want for our students? Guess that's what most of District 4 wants and seemingly so does Trustee Garza. Ms. Bingham did pick up an opponent in last spring's elections, however short-lived because he really didn't live in District 4. Couldn't someone who lived in the District actually run?

NEA-Dallas did not endorse Ms. Bingham in last year's elections and we drew the wrath of the Superintendent for it. Supt. Hinojosa just happened to be in the NEA-Dallas building for another meeting when I approached him about school safety in the wake of the shooting at Virginia Tech.

The first words from him were,"I'm mad at you." I, immediately asked why, and he replied, "You shouldn't have done Nancy Bingham that way." I explained to the Superintendent that NEA-Dallas' interview team recommended that we not endorse her for various reasons but mainly because of what she did, better yet, didn't do at a meeting with our membership.

Ms. Bingham was very gracious in coming to our general membership meeting at NEA-Dallas to discuss CEI's, SEI's and the Dallas Achieves proposal. We asked her, and Trustee Medrano who also there, to please agree to pull the Dallas Achieves agenda item for a separate vote. On three occassions, Ms. Bingham turned to Trustee Medrano and then stated that she was sure someone would pull it for a separate vote. We were not asking her to vote against it, just make sure it didn't get buried in with the consent agenda. Finally, I told both of them that we had two Trustees there with us. Would one of them agree to pull it? Trustee Medrano then agreed to pull it.

How hard is that? If Trustee Bingham would have said, "No.", we would have understood. But, she could not even do that. If that is the kind of Trustee that Trustee Garza wants, then maybe we all should be looking for candidates that will be more like Trustee Ranger for his and other Trustee districts.