Race Tensions Engulf Dallas School System

They were known as the “Slam Dunk Gang”--a white-majority bloc on the Dallas school board that dictated policy for most of the last few years in a district in which 90% of the students are minorities.

Although the schools improved under the “Slam Dunk Gang,” the legacy has been hard feelings among blacks and racial tensions that have engulfed the school board.

At recent board meetings, scuffles have broken out between police and protesting blacks, and members of the New Black Panther Party have urged supporters to show up armed.

Racial tensions were heightened last fall when a white member of board was secretly tape-recorded uttering racial slurs.

“We’ve got a district that has 90% children of color, and it’s still being run by the 10% Anglo population. And we can no longer continue to watch that,” said Dallas County Commissioner John Wiley Price, who is black.

Price is among a few protesters who have exhorted blacks to demand more representation on the school board and in top positions in the school system, the nation’s 10th largest with 142,000 students.

One problem is that although they make up a majority in the school district, minorities have been unable to win a majority at the polls. The board has five white members, three blacks and a Hispanic.

While the schools are only 11% white, the voting district for the school board is 44% white, a difference reflecting whites’ lower birth rates, higher average age and their children’s attendance at private schools.

Blacks, with just over 30% of the district population, represent 42% of the schoolchildren. Hispanics make up about 43% of the student enrollment.

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Protesters, including Price, say their goals are simple: They want the board to rotate its presidency, appoint a black deputy superintendent and place more blacks in leadership positions in the human resources and special education departments.

The current superintendent is white, and the deputy superintendent is Hispanic.

Not everybody is ready to compromise.

“You’ve got some individuals who are dressing up in some kind of soldier wannabe garb and they’re coming down and threatening to harm people physically,” said school board president Bill Keever, who is white.

Two members of the New Black Panther Party were arrested in May when they refused to sit at a meeting and scuffled with police who took them from the hall. In June, a meeting had to be canceled when party co-founder Aaron Michaels called on others to show up outside with rifles and shotguns.

Blacks say the troubles stem from the years when the white majority ruled with impunity and relished its power.

“When it came time to vote, he would slam down on the [voting] button and holler, ‘Look like we’re the slam dunk group tonight!’ ” said black parent Shirley Daniels, referring to Dan Peavy, former school board vice president.

Now, Daniels said, “People like Aaron Michaels are saying, ‘Slam dunk us.’ ”

In September, Peavy was secretly recorded describing black students with racial slurs, and saying that to correct a mishandled project, the board “got some white folks working on it.”

He resigned shortly after the tapes were publicly aired, and is awaiting trial on charges that he received $459,000 in bribes to help a partner sell insurance to the district.

The scandal appeared to break the power of the “Slam Dunk Gang,” but then in May, Keever and Kathleen Leos, who is also white, were elected president and vice president of the board, angering many blacks.

Leos insisted that the board is not like the old days and that nearly all votes nowadays are unanimous, not lopsided.

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And despite the controversies, Dallas schoolchildren are doing relatively well.

“My sense is that Dallas is better than most urban school systems, but somewhat below the national average, just from what I have seen of their test results,” said Michael Casserly, executive director of the Council of the Great City Schools, a coalition of the country’s largest urban school systems.

Mayor Ron Kirk, Dallas’ first black leader, said he believes the city will overcome the strife.

“I still believe that if we focus our attention on what’s wrong and say, let’s fix it, that we can continue to move this city forward,” he said. “I’m not willing to stand by and let anybody drag this city back into the period of conflict and discord that we’ve come out of.”