The Bulldog Print, the student newspaper at Preston Hollow’s Yavneh Academy of Dallas was named the top paper for Class B schools – those with less than 2,000 students at The Dallas Morning News High School Journalism Day and Competition.

The Bulldog Print staff was judged on articles in the categories of hard news, sports, and features, as well as photos and graphics, and page layout.

The school’s paper is in only its second year of publication, and in addition to the DMN award, was named one of the nation’s top high school papers at the Journalism Education Association/National Scholastic Press Association conference in Philadelphia.

As a journalist who first cut his chops at the longest continually published high school newspaper in the state, I tip my cap to you, Bulldog Print staff.

The papers at Episcopal School of Dallas and The Hockaday School, both in Preston Hollow, and McKinney North High School were named finalists in the division.

And since the DMN is a couple hundred short on staff these days, the paper announced seven students had been awarded high school internships, including ESD junior Steele Burrow and senior Rebecca Simon.

OK, there’s really not any correlation there, they do the internships every year. But I’ve got a feeling this year’s crop of high school interns is going to get to do a lot more work than previous year’s.

Who says you can’t have free child labor in America these days?

Community gardens are sprouting up across North Texas to educate people on proper gardening techniques and help feed the less fortunate at the same time.

At the Episcopal Church of St. Thomas the Apostle in Preston Hollow, church members took an unused, overgrown piece of land the church owns and turned it into a community garden they maintain.

Two large plots contribute fresh produce to food pantries across North Texas. In addition, volunteers tend 16 smaller plots for themselves, tithing 10 percent of their harvest to a hunger organization of their choosing.

The Richardson-based Gardeners in Community Development helps establish community gardens throughout the region, including one it helped start at Arthur Kramer Elementary School in 2002. Students participate in cultivating the garden, and the food is donated to food pantries.

Northway Christian Church on Northwest Highway also maintains a community garden.

The gardens produce a wide range of produce, including peppers, an assortment of greens, cucumbers, beans, zucchini and other squash and tomatoes. In 2007, Gardeners in Community Development donates more than 7,000 pounds of food every year.

In honor of the Temple and the Tomb exhibition featuring Etruscan treasures from Tuscany, SMU’s Meadows Museum is hosting Family Day this Saturday from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m.

The Etruscan culture existed in Italy circa 800 B.C., but this event is geared toward bringing that culture to life through traditional Italian dances, music, and folklore. There will also be hands-on activities for the kids where they can scratch Etruscan designs on vases and make Etruscan bracelets and head ornaments out of gold foil and metallic-colored cardboard. There is also the exhibition itself, displaying Etruscan art unearthed at an archaeological excavation in Poggio Colla, Italy. Normally, the exhibition costs $8 per adult, but during the hours of Family Day, it’s free.

A settlement has been reached in the lawsuit between the family of a St. Mark’s and Lamplighter School student and the fraternity he belonged to at the University of Colorado.

Lynn Gordon Bailey, Jr. died when he and his fellow Chi Psi pledges were marched up a mountain blind folded and forced to drink excessive amounts of alcohol.

Bailey passed out at the fraternity house and later died.

Bailey graduated from Deerfield Academy in Massachusetts in the spring of 2004 but until 10th grade had attended St. Mark’s School of Texas and The Lamplighter School.

Bailey’s mother and stepfather, Leslie and Michael Lanahan created the Gordie Foundation to raise awareness about alcohol abuse and hazing.

The foundation made a documentary about Bailey’s death called HAZE, which will be screened March 27 and 28 at the Magnolia Theatre in the West Village as part of the AFI Dallas International Film Festival.

• At least it hasn’t come to this for DISD boss Michael Hinojosa, despite all of his problems. The new Chicago schools superintendent was booed this week by a crowd of parents, teachers and community officials upset about plans to close and reorganize 22 schools. The Chicago Tribune reported that he looked on sheepishly as the crowd booed as his name was mentioned.

• Want to write a book? Get in line. The New York Times reports that more authors are forgoing traditional publishers to publish their books themselves – something that technology has made tremendously easy. In 2008, nearly 480,000 books were published or distributed in the United States, almost one-third more than in 2007. The reason for the growth? Much of it came from an increase in the number of self-published books. Frankly, as someone who has dealt with traditional publishers, this makes perfect sense. The author has a chance to make more money by doing it his or herself, given the Victorian royalty structures of most book publishers.

• Ed Bark offers a few thoughts on the update web site at Channel 5, a new station-run promotion, and a very odd looking statue. Channel 5, of course, is famous here at Back Talk for firing the great Rebecca Miller (who has since found a job at Channel 33.)

The flu is hitting nearby SMU campus hard. Reportedly (NBC5 ) about 60 students have been diagnosed in the last week or so. Seems they are trying to prevent exacerbation of the outbreak by raising awareness. Understandable, but from the crowd I saw at the Cold Medicine rack at Albertsons last night, it’s just a side note, which gets me thinking … there are about 4700 students at SMU, so a little over one percent of the population has flu. And that’s a newsworthy epidemic … hmm. Here at the Advocate, we have 20 employees, give or take, and no less than six have had the same issues as these SMU kids. With 30 percent of our staff suffering, WOW, it’s a wonder we made it at all, AND we got the February magazines to you on time — and with all the usual top-quality content. It’s a miracle!

I never tire of reading and listening to the words of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. He had unwavering hope in the future of America and of mankind to do what is right. His "I Have a Dream Speech" is the most well known, but a friend shared with me yesterday the words of his Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech in 1964, and I once again found myself moved to tears. (You also can listen to it here.)

The best way to honor his legacy is to continue to work toward the peace and equality to which he devoted his life. Today, we’re more likely to talk about socioeconomic inequality than racial inequality (though, unfortunately, the two are often closely intertwined). "I have the audacity to believe that peoples everywhere can have three meals a day for their bodies, education and culture for their minds, and dignity, equality and freedom for their spirits," King says in his speech. I listened to a "This American Life" segment recently that talked about the Harlem Children’s Zone and its Baby College, and was floored by the way this nonprofit is breaking the cycles of poverty, poor education, and dropout rates, simply by enabling parents to make small but significant changes in the way they raise their infants and young children.
Geoffrey Canada, the Harlem Children’s Zone president and CEO, had already been working with Harlem high school students, trying to reverse the drop-out rates, propensity toward crime, and unlikelihood that these students, even if they made it through high school, would continue into institutions of higher education. But by the time they reached high school, it was often too late. So Canada decided to pour the nonprofit’s efforts into working with children starting at birth.

Essentially, the Baby College is teaching inner-city parents a new way to raise their children, based on studies of what suburban families (middle-class families) have been practicing with theirs. Things like reading books to their children at bedtime, playing games, singing songs. The big difference between inner-city kids and suburban kids, studies have found, is not money but language — the number of words parents are speaking to their children, which is most important between birth and age 8, 9 or 10. The Baby College even educates parents on discipline, teaching them not to yell at or hit their children, which shuts a child down instead of  giving him an opportunity to learn and encouraging him to explore their world (again going back to language). This teaching is the hardest sell with the parents because it requires them to completely break the cycle of the way they were brought up.

I’m not doing justice to the amazing story on "This American Life", and I highly recommend listening to it. I also plan on reading New York Times Magazine editor Paul Tough’s new book "Whatever It Takes", written based on his up-close-and-personal observations of the Harlem Children’s Zone in action.

The Youtube.com clip below from WRTilson gives a peek into the Harlem Children’s Zone from a segment on the Oprah Winfrey Show. Information about the Baby College starts at 3:38.

A regular roundup of stuff that wouldn’t necessarily make it on the blog, but is worth noting:

• Apparently, we’re not the only ones who like to argue about street names. Hundreds of people are expected in Arlington to show support to honor Martin Luther King Jr., Cesar Chavez, and the Muslim and Vietnamese communities through special street sign toppers. Expect lots of arguing. Says one councilman opposed to the proposal: "I think all of us working together to bring our community together is a far better goal than segmenting and labeling sections of our city in any geographic or demographic manner."
• Ads on web sites and blogs, so why not school tests? "Tough times call for tough actions," says the San Diego school teacher whose budget for supplies was cut to help his financially scrapped district. He had to make up some $200 in expenses used to copy tests, so he started selling ads on his test papers: $10 for a quiz, $20 for a chapter test, $30 for a semester final. Says the principal: "It’s not like, ‘This test is brought to you by McDonald’s or Nike.’ "

• A Los Angeles children’s tradition is also experiencing financial woes. The Bob Baker Marionette Theater, which has been entertaining kids for generations, is in debt and may not survive. The economy has played a role, since Southern California is especially suffering, says baker. But he shoulders much of the blame: “I am more of an artist than a businessman.”

• Jerry Bartos, who represented North Dallas on the old 11-3 city council, died last week. The obituaries describe Bartos as outspoken, and I can attest to that. I still have a letter he sent me almost 20 years ago, after I wrote a piece questioning the council’s wisdom. It is a bunch of outspoken. Bartos was difficult to define politically, which seems to be true for many council members from that part of town, up to and including Mitch Rasansky. At times, he was a real neighborhood guy, and yet often voted with the downtown majority at the expense of the neighborhoods.

Dallas ISD School Board Trustee Edwin Flores will be at Marsh Middle School this week to talk about academic achievement, recent policy changes, and that hot-button financial recovery. The first talk is at 3 p.m. and will be in English—another talk at 4:30 will be in Spanish. Anyone who has kids in a District 1 school is encouraged to attend the free event.

A regular roundup of stuff that wouldn’t necessarily make it on the blog, but is worth noting. Today, public education news — and, apparently, the DISD isn’t the only district with problems.

• The Carrollton-Farmers Branch ISD fired its superintendent last week. Superintendent Annette Griffin was ousted after being arrested for drunk driving and then not reporting the arrest. Said one trustee: "It was not an easy decision for me in light of Dr. Griffin’s significant contributions to the district over the last decade. But the superintendent must be a role model for the staff and the students. What has transpired was a breach of trust to the board and the community."

• In Lancaster, the board fired superintendent Larry Lewis Monday after he apparently withheld information from the board and tampered with members’ mail. He may also have made loans with district money and spent $800,000 to hire employees who were not in the budget. Lewis’ lawyer said his client had no knowledge of alleged loans and that there was no need for the superintendent to notify the board about hiring additional employees because there was money in the budget to pay for them.

• The Arlington ISD is on its third superintendent this year. Long-time superintendent Mac Bernd retired in January, and his replacement, Hector Montenegro, was forced to resign in July after questions arose about his dealings with nonprofits that did business with the district. Jerry McCullough has been interim superintendent since.