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Top Stories: DISD Will Again Attempt Tax Hike; Immigrants Face Deportation Without Lawyers

KERA News

The top local stories this morning from KERA News: 

Dallas school district administrators are again trying to get a 13-cent tax increase before voters.

Two previous efforts failed to win a needed six-vote supermajority on the nine-member board.  District officials tried then to win over board members by showing how new tax revenue could expand or launch initiatives.

But during yesterday's budget workshop for board members, Superintendent Michael Hinojosa and chief financial officer Larry Throm said much of the extra $116 million generated each year would go to salary increases for teachers and staff and to Dallas ISD’s savings account.

Three of the four board members who voted no before told Hinojosa and Throm they still have concerns.

A board vote on a possible tax ratification election would happen in early August. If approved, any tax increase decision would go to voters in November.

Other stories this morning: 

  • Less than 30 percent of immigrants facing deportation proceedings in Texas have lawyers. That's according to the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse at Syracuse University. That rate is one of the lowest in the country, behind only Arizona and Louisiana among states with the most deportation cases.
  • The four-year-old University of North Texas at Dallas law school is about to get a new dean. Felecia Epps comes from Florida A&M University, which faced similar challenges with getting its would-be lawyers to pass the bar exam. She talked to KERA's Rick Holter on the line from Florida for our Friday Conversation.

You can listen to North Texas stories weekdays at 8:23 a.m. and 6:20 p.m. on KERA 90.1 FM.

Samantha Guzman is the coordinating editor of Arts Access, a partnership between The Dallas Morning News and KERA expanding arts coverage in the Dallas-Fort Worth area through the lens of equity and access.