By Jennifer Nagorka, KERA 90.1 commentator
Dallas, TX –
When I read that a Wilmer-Hutchins school district official supposedly tore up documents to keep them away from state investigators, my first thought was, "Oh, for crying out loud, they pay their superintendent $175,000. Couldn't they afford a shredder?"
What amazing cynicism. But the Wilmer-Hutchins school district provokes that sort of response from anyone who has followed its troubles. The district has been investigated, monitored, advised and reprimanded. With dreary regularity, it appears in the news because of fiscal mismanagement, board micromanagement and student underachievement. Fewer than 6 percent of the district's 10th and 11th graders passed all sections of the TAKS in 2003. That makes Wilmer-Hutchins among the worst-performing school district of its size in Texas.
Somehow, state officials, who have the power to dissolve consistently lousy school districts, never hand down that death sentence. Maybe every state needs a Wilmer-Hutchins, so that conditions in other districts don't look so bad by comparison. It's kind of like how Mississippi makes Texas look positively progressive when it comes to spending on social services.
Or maybe state officials just don't want the political grief that will inevitably come from shutting down a district in which African Americans dominate the administration and school board. Either way, Wilmer-Hutchins just keeps hobbling along, and hobbling the 3,000 young people who depend on it for an education.
The Wilmer-Hutchins situation vexes me for a couple of reasons. First, there is Enron, WorldCom, Adelphia, Health South aspect of the district. Even though these companies' success was built on fraud and thin air, their boards gave CEO's outrageous salaries and perks.
Likewise, even though Wilmer-Hutchins' schools are literally falling apart, its students can't pass state tests, and its finances remain a mystery, trustees gave the superintendent a $50,000 raise within a few months of hiring him. Dr. Charles Matthews makes $175,000 annually to lead a school district the size of a large suburban high school. If Dallas paid its former superintendent on the same per-student scale, Dr. Mike Moses would have earned $9 million per year.
Second, the ideal that drove desegregation was that all children, no matter where they grow up or what color their skin, deserve a decent public education. Wilmer-Hutchins, a predominantly minority district, betrays that ideal. The betrayal is especially poignant because an old segregated high school still stands in Joppee, an east Oak Cliff neighborhood that feeds into the Wilmer-Hutchins district.
Joppee is a tiny, isolated, tattered neighborhood, founded as a Freedman's Town in the 19th century. The old high school for black students is a boxy, brick building with peeling paint that has served more recently as a church. A couple of blocks away, listing goal posts and a rusting scoreboard rise above the thigh-weeds, marking the school's former football fields.
When area schools desegregated, kids from Joppee were supposed to have a chance at something better. But the education they receive now doesn't seem like much of an improvement.
The Texas Education Agency needs to overcome its unwillingness to close districts. Local control is an important idea, but sometimes, locals fail to control. The state's first priority should be students, and Wilmer-Hutchins students would be better off in any other school district.
Jennifer Nagorka is a writer from Dallas. If you have opinions or rebuttals about this commentary, call (214) 740-9338 or email us.