Wilmer–Hutchins Independent School District
The number of African-American students increased rapidly over the next decade as the United States government established housing policies that concentrated many African-American families in the northern part of the district, which was in Dallas, while the cities of Hutchins and Wilmer remained majority white.
The more rural southern portion of the district remained predominantly white - Linfield, Alta Mesa, Wilmer and Hutchins Elementary Schools were reserved for white students, as was Wilmer-Hutchins Junior High and High School.
The Texas Education Agency (TEA) had, on several occasions, appointed monitors to oversee the district, with no long-term success.
"[9] Dianna Wray of the Houston Press stated that WHISD "was almost a mirror image of [North Forest Independent School District] in both demographics and history".
That investigation found sufficient evidence of educator-led cheating for TEA to retroactively declare the school district "academically unacceptable" (the lowest possible ranking).
The retroactive ranking was the second consecutive "academically unacceptable" rating, which gave the TEA authority to close WHISD and transfer its students to another school district.
After WHISD voters overwhelmingly defeated a proposal to increase the property tax rate (many citing the district's shoddy recordkeeping), the TEA elected not to attempt yet another monitoring effort, and instead ordered the district closed for the 2005–2006 school year.
[17] The Dallas Observer, an alternative newsweekly, argues that DISD agreed to absorb the district because of the significant tax revenue to be gained from the recently completed US$70 million Union Pacific Dallas Intermodal Terminal, which is located partly in the city of Wilmer and partly in the city of Hutchins, but wholly within the WHISD district boundaries.
[19] In January 2007, Dallas ISD removed 5,000 boxes with more than one half million personnel records and placed them in the DISD administration building.
[citation needed] As a result of the merger, Dallas ISD will hold the titles to the former WHISD campus facilities.
In addition DISD planned to build a new elementary school campus within the former WHISD territory.
Some residents feel that the next preferable option is to have DISD open schools in the former WHISD territory.
In 1996 Thomas Koroesec of the Dallas Observer said that the building, which does not have windows, "at times resembles an education ministry in some Third World country.
[28] Described as "semirural" suburbs by Thomas Korosec of the Dallas Observer,[4] both are located on Interstate 45 and at the time had a mix of racial groups.
WHISD also served portions of South Dallas and these areas, mostly African-American, were low income; as of 2003 WHISD was one of three school districts other than DISD which enrolled large numbers of students from the Dallas city limits: the others were Plano ISD and Richardson ISD.
[4] Korosec stated that the residents blamed the poor performance of WHISD for the fact that nobody established new businesses and houses within the district boundaries.
The district also had many landmarks considered undesirable including a landfill and the Hutchins State Jail.
[4] In 1996 Fahim Minkah, the director of the nonprofit community group United Front of Dallas and a former organizer previously known as Fred Bell, said that many of the neighborhoods in WHISD were, as paraphrased by Korosec, "better than many in southern Dallas" and that the district area had "decent housing and a tolerable level of crime."
