Extra Credit

Your A.M. roundup

Longtime Fort Worth youth mentor Margaret Williams is retiring

Program would let students double their degrees

Carroll swim center to get chlorine treatment system

Mother of invention

-Patrick M. Walker

Your A.M. roundup

TCU staffer touched many lives

Farewell to a UTA coach who changed lives

Arlington goes to West Coast for advice on gangs

Teacher pay raises approved in Grapevine-Colleyville

-Patrick M. Walker

Your A.M. roundup

Clips of fights between teens become common online See a slide show here

Schools vie for new teachers at Arlington job fair

Maryian Jimenez, left, a teacher from Tamaulipas, Mexico, speaks with Susan Gruber of iTeachTexas, an alternative certification program.

Fort Worth school board candidates arguing over mailer

-Patrick M. Walker

A wake-up call for Arlington

You don't want to know how bad the gang problem is in Arlington, writes Mike Norman, the Star-Telegram's editorial director for Arlington and Northeast. But if you live there, you want to do everything you can to make it go away. Read what he has to say here.

-Patrick M. Walker

600 students riot at Los Angeles high school

From The Associated Press:

A fight at a troubled South Los Angeles high school escalated into a campuswide brawl involving as many as 600 students before it was quelled by police officers in riot gear.

The melee, which students said was between rival black and Hispanic gangs and started around noon on Friday, forced the authorities to shut down the school, Locke High, and keep students in their classrooms.

After restoring order, they rounded up those involved and separated them, holding Hispanic students in the gymnasium and black students in another room. Four people were arrested, three students for fighting and one non student on suspicion of possessing a knife, said Susan Cox, a spokeswoman for the Los Angeles school district.

Several students were injured and treated at the scene, officials said. A music teacher, Reggie Smith, told the Los Angeles Times that it was a chaotic scene and difficult to distinguish between those fighting and those trying to avoid the mayhem.

“The kids were crazy, running from place to place, jumping on other kids,” Smith said. “Some of my kids were crying because they were walking to class with friends and they got jumped.”

Victor Wong, an 18-year-old senior, told the Times that the brawl grew out of a fight two days earlier between two graffiti gangs. He said Hispanic students who were friends of his asked him to participate in a fight planned for Friday that was to pit 10 Hispanic students against 10 black students.

The two groups met as planned at the handball courts, Wong said, but the fight quickly spread throughout the campus. “Security didn’t know where to go,” he said. “They’d concentrate in one spot, and something would happen somewhere else.”

School district police called about 60 officers to the scene, while the Los Angeles Police Department sent about 50 officers and more than a dozen patrol cars.

Ronald White, a 17-year-old senior, said that when the police arrived, some of the students began fighting the officers, who responded with their batons. Another student said he saw the police use pepper spray.

Joseph Sherlock, a senior, said it was his “first actual encounter with a riot.”

About 65 percent of the 2,600 students at Locke are Hispanic, and 35 percent are black. The school has been marred by almost daily fights during much of the academic year.

-Patrick M. Walker

Your A.M. roundup

Today on star-telegram.com:

First lady plays 'first librarian' during Fort Worth visit to announce grants See a slide show to go with this story here, and watch a video of Laura Bush reading to second-graders here.

Arlington hopes grant money will help curb gangs

-Patrick M. Walker

Your A.M. roundup

Here's what's going on today at star-telegram.com:

Fort Worth district seeks speedy deal on whiteboards

Many comings, goings in Mansfield school district

Grapevine students learn by planting a salsa garden

Nonprofit organizations created for at-risk youths looking for a new home

Report details Cleburne misuse of funds, criticizes officials

Now it's your turn. What's going on in your neck of the woods?

-Patrick M. Walker

Your A.M. roundup

Today on star-telegram.com:

Rising costs force Tarrant school districts to reconsider bond projects

Arlington specialist in gang culture has boyhood ties to cops, criminals

John Rodriguez is with the Greater Arlington Juvenile Improvement Team, which is working to reduce youth crime.

Principal ushers in era of stability at once-failing Arlington charter school

In January, Janice Hobbs took the helm of Metro Academy of Math and Science, which has posted some of the lowest test scores in the county and suffered financial difficulties.

Arlington superintendent set to work with new trustees

Euless girls are on the run -- to healthier, better lives

Colleyville, Trophy Club ImagiNation teams have new Destination: the top

The Uber Blue Paws from Colleyville Middle School will compete in the Destination ImagiNation global finals next month. Team members are, front, Zach Hoinoski, Faiez Saiyed, Vanessa Hethcock and manager Terri Mouton; back, Breshell Hurley, Emily Wiegmann and Andrew Hohertz.

As always, please share your thoughts on any education-related matters on your mind. This is your forum. We just work here.

-Patrick M. Walker

Texas messes with kids?

Texas is one of the 10 worst states for children, according to a report coming out today by the nonprofit group Every Child Matters Education Fund.

Texas got lumped into this category with states like Arkansas, Arizona, Louisiana, Mississippi, New Mexico, Nevada, Oklahoma, South Carolina and South Dakota based on 10 "child well-being standards" including lack of access to prenatal care, premature deaths, malnutrition, poverty, child abuse and teen incarceration. The list is alphabetical, real rankings will come out around noon with the report.

Children in the bottom 10 states, according to the report, are three times more likely to die before the age of 14, five times more likely to be uninsured and eight times more likely to be incarcerated as teens.

The top states? Connecticut, Hawaii, Iowa, Massachusetts, Maine, Minnesota, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, Vermont and Washington.

For more information and the full report, go to the ECMEF's web site.

Is Texas such a terrible place? Let us know what you think.

- Katherine Cromer Brock

Ankle monitors for truants?

I guess it was inevitable. Students caught playing hooky used to be returned to school by their kindly neighborhood police officer. Now a Midland County judge is ordering chronic truants to wear electronic monitors around their wrists instead of the ankle monitors worn by adult offenders. And school officials say it's reducing the truancy rate.

-Martha Deller