Yesterday the Dallas School Board voted 7-2 to extend their terms from three years to four. The two members who voted against the measure, Carla Ranger and Adam Medrano, argued that the measure might be illegal and came at a terrible time, respectively. Both are correct.
Though the argument in favor of the idea is based on saving the city money--elections cost about $270,000 a year--the poison pill here is that the measure takes effect immediately. That means three trustees won't face reelection next May at time when the district is facing perhaps its worst crisis since the desegregation order.
Had the trustees realized what a poor message this sends to the constituents, they wouldn't have gone down this path at this time. It reminds me of when then-Dallas mayor Laura Miller pushed the strong-mayor initiative in 2005. Regardless of how I felt about that issue, I admired her for insisting that if the changes were approved by the voters (which they weren't), they wouldn't take effect until after she left office. That's the kind of transparency the trustees should have strived for.
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I would like to hear your comments about another Dallas ISD issue that is making headlines this week. Recent investigations have found that a significant number of DISD employees were assigned fake Social Security Numbers when they were hired. Some of these numbers were legitimate; unfortunately, they already belonged to other people.
According to the Dallas Morning News (Friday, Nov. 14, 2008), the Texas Education Agency informed the DISD in 2004 that the practice was illegal. Apparently, DISD management continued to use the fake numbers because the software used for entering new employees would not allow an employee record to be created with a missing SSN. Using a false number tricked the software into completing the process.
As a software engineer, I specialize in user interfaces and am always interested in studying form validation. A good part of my job consists of anticipating and blocking incorrect or invalid user input. Another good part of my job consists of staying one step ahead of users who actively seek loopholes in the interface. The DISD managers fall into this category of users who deliberately misuse the software. Their response to criticism is that they are forced to enter other people's SSNs because the software will not accept a blank SSN or an SSN which fails validation algorithms (something along the line of 000-00-0001).
I would say to DISD Management: The problem is not with your software; the problem is that you are hiring people without legal identification. Not only are you putting other people's identities at risk, but you are allowing false, SSN-based, background checks to be run on people that parents entrust their children to every day.
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