A story in last week’s "Dallas ISD Communicator," a weekly newsletter for staff and volunteers, has some great things to say about Sanger Elementary principal Larry Allen. The story says that when a Sanger student is having problems passing the TAKS, Allen sends a note home to parents, inviting them to a meeting. If Allen doesn’t receive a response, he’ll call the parents at home, and even visit them at home or at work to make contact with them. In one particular case, Allen tracked down a parent at work, and was told that the parent’s supervisor wouldn’t allow the parent time off to meet with Allen during work hours. So Allen called the supervisor. That did the trick.
The story mentions some other interesting tidbits, such as Allen setting aside budget money for substitute teachers to cover the classes of regular teachers so they can meet together and discuss teaching strategies. This happens every nine weeks for four hours.
I spent half a day at Sanger last spring as part of DISD’s principal for a day program, and was pretty impressed with Allen and the way he runs his school. Those students were incredibly well behaved and attentive. Sanger often gets a bad rap, mostly because of its high percentage of minority and low-socioeconomic students, but more and more neighborhood parents are seeing the fallacy of letting these types of factors determine whether their children will attend Sanger. Every parent with whom I’ve spoken who sends her child to Sanger can’t say enough about Allen. Last year he was one of six principals nominated for DISD’s principal of the year (Skyline High School principal Leslie Williams won).
If you’re interested in reading the full story, find the full publication here, then click on "Communicator-Page 3" in the Sept. 17, 2007 edition to download the PDF.
