Dallas Independent School District is moving forward with a program to expand pre-kindergarten education from the prenatal period through to toddlers, i.e. educate in utero to eighteen.
The program was previously announced in April 2021, but is gaining traction with recent reports in Dallas Morning News and Fox4 News.
Educate In Utero, But Not After Born?
The initiative, called Start Strong Dallas, is in its early stages.
The school district said most of a child’s brain develops before they turn five years old and children have learning gaps before they arrive to Dallas public school programming in the areas of language and social skills.
Dallas ISD also hopes to develop educational programming for parents, but Dallas ISD’s record on education is poor at best.
In 2020, Dallas ISD Trustees noted students were failing throughout the district in basic areas such as reading and math. At the time a number of suggestions were made to close the gap including extending the school year – which a handful of campuses did – but there was no focus on innovative education and DISD remained with a top down central market style educational system.
Additionally, while there have been numerous examples of financial mismanagement, many Dallas ISD parents and taxpayers are concerned by the district’s handling of basic school management functions.
After Thanksgiving 2021, Dallas ISD Transportation did not have buses running correctly reminding parents of the problems with Dallas County Schools.
Last year, a student enrolled in a dual credit program had teachers who would not communicate with him. More recently there have been examples of poor management where an elementary student had a firearm at school and in another example a student orgy took place in a middle school bathroom.