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FAR NORTH DALLAS JULY 2009

The 'Dal-Homa' Dilemma

How so many government entities came to lay claim to our neighborhood

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Sandy Greyson, a neighborhood resident, writes a monthly opinion column about neighborhood issues. Her opinions are not necessarily those of the Advocate. Send comments to her here .

Far North Dallas has a lot of government compared to the rest of the city.

Various parts of Far North Dallas are in three different counties — Dallas, Collin, and Denton — and in four different school districts — Dallas ISD, Richardson ISD, Plano ISD, and Carrollton-Farmer’s Branch ISD. The rest of the city of Dallas is entirely in Dallas County, although there are areas of the city that are in other school districts besides DISD.

Many people who move here from other parts of the country are often astonished or bewildered to find that, while they live in the city of Dallas, they also live in Collin, not Dallas, County and their children go to Plano schools. Or they live in the city of Dallas but in Denton County, and their children go to school in the Carrollton-Farmer’s Branch school district. Or they live in the city of Dallas and Dallas County but their kids go to Richardson schools. When they are summoned for jury duty, they don’t go Downtown but instead to McKinney or Denton.

Running for office, particularly for Dallas City Council District 12, can be challenging for candidates because they must deal with three different county election departments. Voting can be challenging for some residents because they sometimes have to go to more than one voting location on Election Day.

Sometimes even city staffers get confused. When I was on the city council and held town hall meetings in the far western part of the district, some staff members would ask me why I was having meetings in Carrollton. When Far North Dallas residents would go to city hall on city business, they were sometimes told they didn’t really live in the city of Dallas.

Well, we are pretty far north. I’ve seen our part of town occasionally referred to in print as “Dal-Homa”.

I’ve often wondered about the jigsaw boundaries in Far North Dallas, especially the school district boundaries. The county lines are understandable — annexations by Dallas caused the city to grow into the other counties. But why don’t school district boundaries follow city lines? Some examples:

• RISD serves portions of Richardson, Garland and Dallas;

• PISD serves Plano and portions of Dallas, Richardson, Parker and Murphy;

• C-FBISD serves portions of the cities of Carrollton, Farmer’s Branch, Addison, Coppell, Dallas and Irving;

• and DISD serves portions of 16 cities.
The first public school law in Texas was enacted in 1840 and provided for land in each county to support public schools. So counties originally ran public schools. Dallas County Schools, which today does not operate any schools but provides a variety of support services to schools in 14 school districts and is mainly known for providing school buses for student transportation, is a remnant of that original system.

As cities began to grow, they wanted a greater voice in the development and administration of schools. The cities wanted “local control”. A series of additional laws gradually gave cities that authority. Eventually, independent school districts were established. In Texas, “independent” means that the district is separate from any county or city control. By 1900, the state had 526 ISDs and as of 2004, it had 1,039 ISDs.

While ISDs assure local control of schools through independently elected local school boards, cities still control zoning. That sometimes creates problems when one city grants a developer the right to build large numbers of apartments on land which is in the city’s boundaries, but within a different city’s ISD. A recent case of this occurred when Dallas granted greatly increased residential zoning rights on property located at the far northwestern edge of the city along LBJ Freeway west of Stemmons Freeway. This property was in the Coppell ISD. Coppell was very concerned about the potential impact on its schools, but Dallas wanted the increased tax base such development would provide.

A tug of war indeed between two kinds of local control.

Advocate