Democratic State Rep. Marc Veasey may have given a much-needed boost to beleaguered Polytechnic High School. An amendment he added to the omnibus education reform bill just passed by the Texas House bars the state education commissioner from renaming a high school if the school fails to meet specific academic standards five years in a row.
Even more importantly for Poly, the amendment provides more time for such schools to reach compliance, if they are showing steady improvement, which Poly is doing.
Without the change, no matter how much improvement its students have made, Poly, with its 75-plus years of history in Fort Worth, could be toast. This is the school’s drop-dead year, since its passage rates on the Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills (TAKS) didn’t measure up for the past four years. Veasey, who represents the district adjoining the century-old Poly neighborhood, was a substitute teacher at the school before being elected to the statehouse, and many of his constituents are Poly students or grads. The amendment’s next hurdle is the Texas Senate, but with education reform getting a high priority in the lege this session, the conventional wisdom is that passage will be a piece of cake – maybe with a candle on it for Poly.
CYS
Another piece of legislation that Static has been keeping its eye on is now on Gov. Rick Perry’s desk. A qualified (as opposed to absolute) shield law for journalists was approved unanimously – yes, that’s right – by both the Texas House and Senate (read more about it in Dave McNeely’s column on page 4 in this issue). Its official name is the Free Flow of Information Act, because supporters wanted to emphasize that what’s being protected is not the posterior of lowly reporters so much as it is the public’s right to know.
Anonymous sources probably get thrown around too freely in the press sometimes, but there frequently are very sound reasons for not publishing their names. They might lose their jobs; in some cases they might lose their lives. And if people with info feel they can no longer pick up the phone or put a document in an envelope without their names being revealed, then sources dry up, and the public loses the stories like Watergate and a thousand other tales of public corruption and private criminal activity that so badly need a light shined upon them.
Static’s boss Gayle Reaves went down to Austin to testify for the bill this time around, like she did two years ago. Reaves told the House committee about a series of stories on drug corruption in South Texas in which the then-sheriff of Starr County sued her then-paper and tried to find out who had talked to the reporters. The reporters revealed no names then or ever, but a few months later (Starr County being a small place where secrets are hard to keep), one of those anonymous sources was shot down with an assault rifle outside his home and seriously wounded.
A prosecutor had already told the committee passionately about how district attorneys need to be able to pressure sources’ names out of reporters to protect the public, even to go on fishing expeditions for other information.
Sometimes, Reaves said, it’s the prosecutors and the people with the badges and subpoena power that citizens need protection from. People need to be able to call the cops. But sometimes, she said, they also need to be able to call the press.
Vote for Fort Worth’s Future
City election day is Saturday. At stake in Fort Worth are the mayor’s office and a bunch of city council spots. There are more contested races than usual, and that’s a good thing if it brings out more voters. This election could represent a turning point for the city – for how it treats gas drillers and the people who live next to the wells, for how livable a city this is going to be in 50 years or so, for how open our city government is going to be. Static doesn’t endorse candidates, and it’s too late, by the Weekly‘s rules, to do that anyway. But for Pete’s sake, go vote. You can do that much for the Fort.
