04/07/05  Did assault victim beat herself up?
 

Teacher arrested in attack; Woman dragged, hit instructor at her child's school, police say Monday, April 4, 2005 By MARGARITA MART?-HIDALGO / The Dallas Morning News

A North Dallas High School teacher was arrested and placed on paid administrative leave after an attack last week on a middle school teacher in front of students.    Dallas County Sheriff Paulette Baines Paulette Baines was charged with assault with bodily injury in connection with the beating Friday, Dallas County Jail records show. Ms. Baines, 45, was released from jail early Saturday after posting $2,500 bail, a jail official said.    Mary Oliver, a teacher at William B. Travis Academy/Vanguard for the Academically Talented and Gifted, said she suffered several injuries, including bruises to her face, a concussion and two broken ribs. ...  "Obviously, this is not something we take lightly," said Dallas Independent School District spokesman Donald Claxton. "We will not tolerate it. We're very disappointed by the behavior displayed by the [high school] teacher." ... "There is nothing that would have warranted one educator assaulting another educator in a classroom full of kids." ... Ms. Oliver told several students who were at their lockers to go to class. One of the students, an eighth-grader, is Ms. Baines' daughter. ... Ms. Oliver said she didn't single out "any particular person. I said, 'Y'all' " need to get to class. ... Upset, the girl went to the school counselor, who called Ms. Baines to tell her what had happened, the spokesman said. ... Ms. Oliver said Ms. Baines was yelling at her as she walked across her classroom. ... According to the police report, Ms. Baines grabbed Ms. Oliver's hair, yanked her out of her chair and dragged her across the floor, punching her in the face several times. She also kicked her repeatedly, the report said. ... "I want you to know I didn't raise a finger. I didn't raise my voice. I didn't do anything to aggravate the situation," Ms. Oliver said. "I did everything possible to defuse the situation."

Think that's shocking?  It was to me, but then I'm just a product of DISD schools (1st - 7th).  A woman walks into a classroom full of 7th graders and beats the living daylights out of a smaller woman and she's out on a measly $2500 bond?  A DISD high school teacher walks into a classroom full of 7th graders and beats the living daylights out of a smaller DISD teacher and the DISD spokesman says "We're very disappointed by the behavior..."?  Give me a break!

Put this incident in a different perspective:  White, male elementary teacher walks into a classroom full of high school students and beats the living daylights out of a Black, male teacher of any size because the assault victim dissed the beater's kid.  Do you for one minute think for one minute the beater's bond would have been $2500 or he would have been placed on paid administrative leave?   Not likely!

There would have been hell to pay!  This city would have been in an uproar, as it should be now!

The assault victim was not some bigoted old White guy who deserves what he got because his daddy or granddaddy probably did something worse to some ancestor of Paulette Baines.  The assault victim was a woman of Asian-Hispanic descent.  I'm a woman of German-Cherokee descent who was adopted by a man of Scotch-Irish descent by way of Tennessee, and I'm married to a man of English-French Canadian descent.  So what? 

It does not matter what color of skin is victim Oliver or teacher-beater Baines.  What matters is that a DISD teacher was beaten to a pulp by a parent of a kid that Ms. Oliver told to go to her class because the kid was not where she was supposed to be. 

It does not matter if Ms. Oliver only "dissed" the Baines kid and ignored any other kids doing the same thing, which Ms. Oliver says did not happen.  What matters is that a DISD high school teacher who shapes young people's minds and social skills on a daily basis beat up another teacher because she thought Ms. Oliver "dissed" her daughter.

What would your parents have done had you complained that a teacher told you to go on to your class -- like you were supposed to have already done?  What would you say to your school child if she complains that a teacher told her to go on to her class where she should already have been?

How can anyone turn this assault on an Asian-Hispanic teacher by a Black teacher into a natural conclusion to racial tension at an elementary/junior high school for academically advanced children?  Well, it was apparently easy for Dallas Managed News columnist, Scott Parks.

Is trouble at Travis a matter of race? 09:47 PM CDT on Wednesday, April 6, 2005 By SCOTT PARKS / The Dallas Morning News

Even by Dallas public school standards, what happened at William B. Travis Academy/Vanguard for the Academically Talented and Gifted seemed extreme and shocking. ... Some parents who've had children at Travis said they saw it coming. ... On Sunday, Ms. Oliver told reporter Margarita Mart?-Hidalgo that she had not singled out any of the girls but had told them "y'all" need to get back to class.    Some parents say race may have played a part.    I talked to Rossi Walter, who is black. He serves as president of the Dallas Council of PTAs and happens to have children at Travis.    Mr. Walter told me that he spoke with Ms. Baines, who is black. ... told him:    Ms. Baines' daughter and a friend, who is black, were in the hallway during class. Ms. Oliver, who is of Hispanic and Asian descent, directed them to get back to class but ignored a white girl who also was in the hallway in violation of school rules.    Let me stress that no one has established what role race may have played in Friday's incident. Ms. Oliver had taught science to Ms. Baines' daughter in past years. So, maybe there was a history there that had nothing to do with race.    But racial tension has plagued Travis since it opened in 2001 in Oak Lawn.    "It was foreseeable that something like this would happen," said Kenneth Walker, a black lawyer and parent of a Travis child from 2001 to 2003. ... Mr. Walker and other black parents about their concerns that white administrators and teachers at Travis were not sensitive to black families and children. ... Travis is a magnet school for academically talented kids. Kids apply for admission based on test scores, grades and recommendations. Competition is tough. The student body is evenly divided between black, white and Hispanic students. But the teaching staff is overwhelmingly white ? 70 percent in the elementary school and 75 percent in the middle school.    At a school like Travis, where excellence is the goal, there's a lot of talk about who can cut it academically and who can't. Sometimes, the talk turns to students who should return to their less-than-rigorous neighborhood schools. ... Mr. Walter, the PTA president, said he believes some white teachers have unconsciously created the impression that they expect less of black students than white students. The result is less faculty attention and interaction with some black students, he said.    "I don't think it's racism, but I can see how some people might see it as racism," he said.    Mr. Walter described Ms. Oliver as a strict teacher. For the record, he said his son had a good relationship with her when they were student and teacher.    The source of the violence at Travis on Friday morning must not be written off as just another isolated incident, Mr. Walter said. ...

"Even by Dallas public school standards"?   Scott Parks' column was race-baiting in the extreme, even by Dallas Managed News standards.  When was the last time you read a report on the DISD that was not completely crouched in terms of racial issues?  When was the last time Tawnell Hobbs reported on a DISD matter that she did not paint the White or Hispanic DISD Board members as racist incompetents and Lew Blackburn, Hollis Brashear and Ron Price as long-suffering Black men being victimized by the rest of the DISD Board members?

Just a few days ago, the Dallas Managed News Propaganda Board bemoaned the fact that no one will run for the School Board anymore.  Why is that?

Scott Parks quotes Rossi Walker, who ran for the School Board against Ron Price last time up.  Despite the fact that Rossi is imminently more qualified, has a successful business (we don't know what Ron Price does) and has his children in the DISD system (we don't know where wife-beater Ron Price's kids attend school), he could not defeat an incumbent with the gerrymandered school district lines we have.  I'm disappointed that Rossi Walker would let Scott Parks paint him into the race corner, because that's not Rossi's style or attitude normally.

It would be one thing if this Baines assault coverage was an isolated incident at the Dallas Managed News, but it is not.  The way the Dallas Managed News is dealing with the strong-arm mayor issue is total race-baiting.  From the beginning, they have tried to paint the Blackwood proposal campaign as pretty White Lady, Mayor Miller, against Black rabble rousers like Old Al Lipscomb and Roy Williams.  The Dallas Managed News has used inflammatory headlines to remind White voters that the African-American community is strongly against the Blackwood proposal.  So what?

With Friends Like These... Unlikely allies form a coalition of the willing--for now BY ROBERT WILONSKY

... Boyd, among others, initially wanted former mayoral candidate Jordan to act as the coalition's chair, not only because he's perhaps the best-known among its leaders but also because "he really does know how the city operates...and he's a real positive guy." Instead, the group settled on three co-chairs: former Councilman Alan Walne, who, during his tenure on the council, garnered a reputation for presenting a cogent case for an issue and then voting against it; local arts patron Shaw, wife of political consultant and Elite News columnist Rufus Shaw; and attorney Adelfa Callejo, chairwoman of the Coalition of Hispanic Organizations.    "The majority thought it was important for it to be tri-ethnic," Boyd says. "Those are just not my priorities. Mine are getting things moving. I wasn't disagreeing with them but wanted to get to the next place. But I am just an Indian in this one. Pat's the coordinator. She pulled it together. I am pleased to let somebody else take the arrows." ... Perhaps there need not be a single, unifying voice among the anti-Blackwood faction, and perhaps there need not be a commanding, fashionable front man for their campaign--someone like Kirk, who insists his involvement will be limited to a handful of debates. Maybe it's not even that important for them to push the council's alternative. Perhaps it's merely enough that the naysayers confuse the voters enough to get them to vote "no" come May 7.    The mayor certainly seems to believe the vote-no campaign is having an effect: She says her early polls, taken around the beginning of the year, showed a 14-point gap between those for and against the Blackwood proposal, with Proposition 1 the clear favorite. But now her polls show a decidedly different race: ...    "For Laura to say we're confusing people is so insulting," says Boyd, Miller's former ally when they opposed the use of public funds to build the American Airlines Center. "It's elitist to think people who can go to their jobs every morning and feed their kids and get them to school and pay their taxes are so easily misled. If there had been any confusion and misleading, it was done by the Blackwood crowd and the mayor initially. We have been able to get the true message out...People get it. They do understand this was done behind closed doors, and it's bad policy to do government that way." ... "In the African-American community," Shaw says, "we don't have everything we want, but we at least know the system. ...  If you're looking at Blackwood from the position that one person controls virtually everything and you're not friendly to that person, where do you think we'll be?" ...  Shaw says. "But right now, our whole mission in life is to focus on defeating Blackwood. On May 8 this coalition will no longer exist. If there are others that want to form something else to push another agenda, they will do that."    "Now, we're not each other's best friends and won't be after this is done," says Boyd, whose Web site www.DallasArena.com catalogs a litany of disparaging nicknames for current council members and a former mayor with whom she now finds herself allied. There's James "Beat that Indictment" Fantroy, Maxine "Brain Dead" Thornton-Reese, Lois "Finkelwitch" Finkelman and, of course, "Con Jerk," her favorite pet name for Ron Kirk.    "Everyone was watching to see if we'd be polite," Boyd says, "and, of course, we are, because we're grown-ups."

See the difference?  Wilonsky reported the story straight up.  Obviously, there are racial connotations, but he respects his readers enough to let them read the story without screaming "be sure to see the race issues". 

If you think I'm paranoid about the Dallas Managed News race-baiting motivations in their coverage of the Blackwood proposal campaign, you are absolutely right. 

Coalition member Dave Marquist thought he had a gentleman's agreement with the Dallas Managed News Propaganda Board to give us a fair balance after Victoria Loe-Hicks decided to openly campaign for the Blackwood proposal (even though she hasn't got a clue what she's talking about).  We were supposed to get a "viewpoint" from one of our members for each of the proponents of the Blackwood proposal.  Instead, they paired the Mayor's guy, William Blair, against publicity hound, Roy Williams, who painted the Blackwood proposal as an attack on 14-1.

Unless you know nothing about Dallas recent political history, you do not know that we never voted for the 14-1 arrangement at City Hall (14 single member districts with the Mayor elected at large).  A Park Cities resident, Judge Jerry Buchmeyer, imposed 14-1 on us after the city had voted to approve a 10-4-1 system (10 single member districts, 4 council seats and the mayor elected at large).  In most of North Dallas, 14-1 is still a simmering wound.

Roy Williams is no mental giant, but he knows his "viewpoint" would not be helpful to those opposing the Blackwood proposal.  Roy Williams is just like Al Lipscomb.  Neither one of them do anything they are not paid to do.  Someone is paying Old Al to challenge James Fantroy in an effort to remind "North Dallas White voters" that Old Al is just an election away from being back on the council -- since his miraculous recovery from his Fred Sanford act in Amarillo.

The real shame about what's happening at the Dallas Managed News is the fact that Dave Levinthal and Emily Ramshaw are two of the best reporters Belo has had in many years.  They write well and fairly, but the headline editors absolutely slant your opinion before you get a chance to read Levinthal or Ramshaw's accurate reporting.

Back to Scott Parks who completely screwed up the story on DISD high school teacher Paulette Baines assaulting a DISD teacher at another school.  Here's what I sent to the race-baiter by e-mail:

Apparently, the kids at Travis were as offended by his column as me.   There are several letters
to the DMN editor in Thursday's edition taking Scott Parks to task for his race-baiting.

Now, you grownups need to let the Dallas Managed News know that you're tired of their race-baiting, too.

sb