Dallas Mayor Eric Johnson Thursday returned to his elementary school in the West Dallas neighborhood where he grew up to celebrate a renovation plan with Dallas Independent School District Trustee Maxie Johnson.
C.F. Carr Elementary on Bayside Street is now slated to receive $16 million from the 2020 Dallas ISD school improvement bond referendum approved by voters.
Mayor Johnson said the West Dallas community treated him very well growing up, but he believes the rest of the city did not treat his neighborhood so well.
“We did have a mentality of, ‘Hey, we have to take care of ourselves because the rest of Dallas kind of looks down on us, in some way or is not as supportive as we though they should be,’” Mayor Johnson said. “We dealt with those inequities for years but we didn’t use them as an excuse not to achieve. So, we worked hard.”
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Trustee Maxie Johnson said the new investment helps reverse past inequity.
“I told the district if you give us resources, we can achieve. There's not an achievement gap. There's an opportunity gap,” he said.
Principal Calotta Hooks said C.F. Carr has improved to a B rating in state accountability scoring in just the past year.
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“We set out to do what hadn’t been done in years because of our staff, working hard, our students believing in themselves, and the staff believing in our students,” she said. “With the renovation money, we’re going to continue to grow and you will see more heirs, more leaders coming out of C.F. Carr in the future.”
Former Carr student James Armstrong, a West Dallas Pastor, is also the leader of housing non-profit “Builders of Hope.”
Armstrong said he attended first grade in the very same classroom as Thursday’s C.F. Carr celebration occurred.
“In this classroom, I sat at the back and struggled because I couldn’t see the board, not because I was at the back but because I didn’t have resources for glasses,” he said.
A caring teacher provided special attention years ago Armstrong said, and with extra time at school, he caught up on reading and math. Now he said he hopes the renovation helps the school connect with future students.
“It’s so very important that we invest in schools, our local neighborhood schools, where kids can walk from home to school and have a close relationship with the teachers in this community,” Armstrong said.
School leaders said neighborhood input will be sought to finalize C.F. Carr renovation plans.
“This community was disenfranchised and ignored. And there was no investment. And we’re fixing that,” Trustee Maxie Johnson said.
West Dallas has a history of severe flooding and environmental issues that have improved over the years. A notorious lead smelter was shut down and new flood control features were added. New housing is being constructed. But neighbors still have complaints about industry and environmental concerns.
