Statewide Petition Quest Purposes to Reopen Black School District

New Life?

Darren Camper
Texas Editor

Dallas- Loyalists to the Wilmer-Hutchins Independent School District have a dream. - that one day the chains and locks will come off their schools and that children will once again move through the hallowed halls of its schools and learn in a hometown classrooms.

It is a far cry from students getting up at 3 a.m. and 4 a.m. to catch school buses by 6 a.m. for the long trip and numerous stops at a variety of Dallas schools by 9 a.m.

That burdening routine is what has put citizens on a mission to restore the WHISD.

“We are going to the community and appealing to all people in every corner of this state,” said long-time resident Faye Gafford, and spokeswoman for Citizens to Restore Wilmer-Hutchins Independent School District. “Watching what is happening to our children just breaks my heart… we demand answers and are in this fight for the long haul.”

Gafford and citizens have launched an all out campaign and are circulating petitions statewide to reopen the schools.

The petition was drafted by attorney Kenneth Thompson with the powerful African-American Atlanta law firm of Molden-Holley, Thompson & Heard, LLC. The prestigious firm has also been retained to represent the group’s cause.

WHISD served a culturally diverse population of 3,200 students in eight schools: one pre-Kindergarten school, four elementary schools, one middle school, one high school and one alternative education school. Prior to being merged into the Dallas ISD, its students were 70.4 percent African American, 25.4 percent Hispanic, and 3.9 percent White.

In the petition, citizens are asking all Texas residents to sign and join a move to convince Gov. Rick Perry, Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst, House Speaker Tom Craddick and other Texas lawmakers that the case to reopen the district and its schools has merit and deserves to be heard. It is a case that without challenge has the potential to affect and change how TEA deals with every school district in Texas 254 counties.

CRWHISD hopes the legislature will authorize an unprecedented waiver of sovereign immunity that would allow the community served by the district to pursue justice.

The group believes that WISD was illegally closed and students dispersed to the Dallas ISD for purely political reasons and because a majority of the students and leaders in the district were Black.

The truth is out there and it begins with how WHISD became a victim to false accusations and a vendetta campaign by the Texas Education Agency and Dallas television and newspaper media groups who pressed an agenda to get rid of the all Black run district.

In one small part of the argument for re-opening the district, citizens cite a March 21, 2005 letter sent by TEA Commissioner Shirley J. Neeley to Wilmer-Hutchins officials lowering the district from “academically acceptable” to an “academically unacceptable” rating and in the same letter her move to appoint a board of managers to run the district.

According to the argument, such actions according to Texas Education Code 39.131 (a) (9) are questionable since an accused district must be given “a year or more” to challenge the change in rating before the board of managers are appointed.

“Wilmer-Hutchins was not given that opportunity,” she said. “What happened was illegal because this district was not given its due process.”

CRWHISD also believes that the dissolution of the district was also driven by economics and a vast land grab given talk of the coming transportation corridor and others interest in business and industrial expansion into southern Dallas County.

Another argument for reopening the district is the fact that after the one complaint against the district and numerous cheating and mismanagement investigations, still no charges have been filed against any official that definitively proves any wrongdoing, cheating or justification for shutting down the district and closing its schools.

The closure of schools and district shutdown left the 3,200 students without neighborhood schools, splintered the communities and shattered and destroyed the education will of youth who loved their district, prided their schools and just wanted to attend and complete their education in schools taught by teachers from their communities.

“Parents and children and community served by the former WHISD have suffered an inexcusable injustice,” she added. “We know that there’s no way that Whites in Dallas would allow this to happen to their kids.”

The group also raises questions about other districts, including Dallas ISD, and statewide with numerous problems similar to the WHISD who were not targeted, highlighted, sent board of managers or closed.

“There have been predominantly White schools in this area whose students have done far worse on test scores that our children have,” she said. “They are allowed to continue with their neighborhood school. Why is that?”

Any one can sign the petition as long as you are a Texas resident. You do not have to be a registered voter, Gafford noted, and she is hoping people from Houston, Waco, San Antonio, Austin, Beaumont, Port Arthur, El Paso, Abilene and other communities join the effort to preserve these and other schools in the future who may face hostile takeover, attack and closure like Wilmer-Hutchins did.

“These children need your help now and this community needs its schools,” she said in a passionate appeal. “Right now, many of them have no home and nothing to connect with in this community and far too many are being lost to the streets and the criminal justice system.”

For more information or to get a copy of the petition contact Gafford at 972-225-3713.