Dallas school kids won big because Mayor Mike Rawlings stuck his nose into DISD
Mayor Mike Rawlings sounded the alarm that incremental changes within DISD wouldn’t cut it — the entire gargantuan institution had to be reinvented.
The toughest work that Mayor Mike Rawlings put his shoulder into this last eight years wasn’t even in his job description. But he persistently stuck his nose into Dallas’ public schools — even when that offended a lot of folks — and DISD students came out the winners.
The Dallas ISD board of trustees celebrated Rawlings’ tenure Thursday night with a resolution proclaiming him “The Education Mayor” and noting that since his election, the district “has found no greater partner in government committed to its success” than him.
Trustee after trustee lauded Rawlings for his tireless energy in supporting district reforms and using the power of the bully pulpit to help turn around Dallas schools.
“You made education a priority, and you stuck to it for eight years,” said Miguel Solis, who recently made his own bid for mayor. “When we needed you, you were always there for us.”
Rawlings would be the first to tell you that “Education Mayor” is more than a little hyperbole. He is only one of many partners whose work has made DISD a school system in which we can all take pride. The district is still a major work in progress, and its mightiest heroes are those teachers, counselors, principals and support staff whose names almost never make headlines.
But whether pressing for difficult change or cheerleading each success, Rawlings drove attention — and action — that propelled the district forward. As he prepares to leave office amid an avalanche of accolades, for issues as disparate as support for the arts and his fight against domestic violence, he told me Thursday night that this recognition means the most.
The mayor also has tried to walk the education talk from Dallas City Hall. He has promoted and raised money for private causes to help kids. He jump-started the Mayor’s Intern Fellows summer program, which matches public high school students with jobs in industries they might not otherwise ever experience. He helped create Dallas City of Learning, a partnership with the nonprofit Big Thought which enhances academics outside the traditional school day.
And even in defeat — the home-rule effort stands out as a big one — Rawlings found ways to help DISD make major improvements.
Last week, before Rawlings or I were even aware the DISD award was in the works, we talked about the challenge of trying to transform education from the mayor’s office — and why he took it on.
Very simply, Rawlings saw the mayor’s job as owning — by first owning up to — the city’s core problems. “So I couldn’t be mayor and not try to work to see our school system getting better,” he said.
“People look at the mayor’s job in terms of policy issues, zoning and budgets,” he told me. “But the future generation — and setting our city up to be successful for the future — is really the most important task.”
Rawlings made local public education a prominent theme in his first mayoral campaign. But only after he was elected did he fully understand its intersection with two equally dire and connected struggles: the gap between the haves and the have-nots in the city and the loss of Dallas’ middle class.
“To attain the ‘haves’ status, you have to be born to someone who’s got money — the lucky sperm club,” Rawlings said, “or most of the time you earn it in the marketplace, which means needing a good education.”
Rawlings saw schools failing to help those desperate for a better life, and he realized that middle-income parents of all races would continue to flee to the suburbs for the sake of their children’s education.
As part of an editorial board that led a “tactics for a DISD turnaround” campaign, I remember those days well. Most Dallas residents at the time were pretty short on hope for their local campuses — if they thought of them at all.
Dallas needed a high-profile leader willing to stand up and say our public schools are failing and we leaders are going to do something about it.
Rawlings was that guy. He sounded the alarm that incremental changes wouldn’t cut it — the entire gargantuan institution had to be reinvented.
His first victory was persuading education advocate Todd Williams to serve as his adviser. Soon after that, Williams founded the nonprofit Commit Partnership, which works on education issues across Dallas County.
Rawlings also was pivotal in the DISD board of trustees finding Superintendent Mike Miles in 2012. The mayor had gotten to know then-Education Secretary Arne Duncan through the U.S. Conference of Mayors, so the mayor called for recommendations. Miles’ name emerged and DISD’s board hired him.
Despite his tumultuous tenure, I remain a big fan of Miles and the academic reforms he led. While his “people acumen” admittedly ranged from limited to lousy, he understood the painful but critical changes that needed to be made within DISD.
That started with depoliticizing the entire district ecosystem and genuinely puts the academic success of kids first.
Perhaps one of Rawlings’ biggest political defeats as mayor — the home-rule effort — provided the cover that Miles and the DISD trustees needed to get those transformative reforms in place.
The effort, launched somewhat chaotically in early 2014, would have allowed the district to free itself of many state regulations. Although more than 48,000 Dallas voters signed petitions favoring home rule, its complexity — and the uproar and suspicion that it sparked in some communities — always made it a long shot.
Rawlings said he knew early on that the idea was doomed because, contrary to first reports, not enough trustees actually supported the idea. But he went forward — as he puts it “into the bowels of hell” — because although “I always like to win, I felt this dialogue would be healthy for the city.”
The mayor also said he “knew that by running out in the open field, everyone would take a shot at me while the board and Miles would get a little less hostility.”
While Rawlings took the political heat, DISD’s administration focused on initiatives that likely were as valuable as home rule: teacher merit pay, principal training and accountability, and help for struggling campuses, among others.
Miles deserves credit for creating those strategies, and Superintendent Michael Hinojosa for building on them.
Rawlings will soon leave office with the best gift he could ever have as mayor: the turnaround in Dallas schools. His list of examples was long: The key indicator of third-grade reading scores continues to rise. The number of “needs improvement” campuses has dwindled to four. Pre-K enrollment continues to grow. The Accelerating Campus Excellence program continues to help the most needy schools by funneling more resources and support to them.
“To see that we were one of the worst-performing districts in the state to now among the state’s fastest-improving is truly a remarkable story,” Rawlings said. “I hope that historians look back on this period and — they won’t remember me — but they remember what happened to our school district.”
“We adults should just be focused on getting those kids over to the ‘haves’ side from the ‘have-nots’ side,” he said. “Everything else is just a sideshow.”
View the full article by Dallas Morning News.