More than a month after five people were indicted in a scheme to help secure positions in Texas schools for unqualified teachers. The Texas Education Agency released the first batch of more than 100 teachers under investigation.

In late October, the Harris County District revealed the alleged scheme credentials were falsified for more than 200 unqualified teachers. Five people, including the plot's "kingpin" raked in more than $1 million according to prosecutors.

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On Wednesday, the TEA released the names of 102 teachers under investigation. The list showed 49 of them worked in North Texas at the end of the 2022-2023 or 2023-2024 school year.

The teachers at the center of the investigation worked at 20 North Texas school districts, including some of the largest -- Dallas, Fort Worth, Allen and Arlington.

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New information has connected several North Texas educators to a false certification scheme. NBC 5's Meredith Yeomans has the latest updates.

NBC 5 reached out to Dallas ISD for comment, the district confirmed a total of six current employees were implicated in the statewide cheating scandal and that it is fully cooperating with the TEA during the investigative process.

Rena Honea, president of Alliance AFT, the largest teachers union in Dallas, was unable to verify if the DISD employees are union members.

Honea says the union advocates for having a certified teacher in every Texas classroom.

"Our students need in this state and in the country people who, number one, who want to be there that have been trained well that understand how children learn," said Honea.

Fort Worth ISD tells NBC 5 that the TEA has identified five teachers, based on 2023-2024 Public Education Information Management System (PEIMS) Data, who are currently under investigation. The district said it is cooperating fully with the TEA.

"Like all Texas public school districts, Fort Worth ISD relies on TEA and the State Board for Educator Certification (SBEC) to manage and oversee teacher certification processes," the district said in a statement to NBC 5. "Fort Worth ISD is committed to upholding the highest standards for educator certification and professionalism to ensure our students receive quality instruction."

The executive director for the United Education Association, an educational employee union in Forth Worth, says none of the five FWISD employees named are union members.

In Duncanville, there are eight teachers under investigation and according to the TEA, one of those teachers is also being investigated for an inappropriate student-teacher.

Teachers implicated now have a note on their Texas Educator Certificates indicating an allegation of misconduct is being investigated by TEA staff.

A TEA spokesperson says it's up to each district to determine whether the educators remain on the job during the investigation.

NBCNews.com reported that in mid-2023, TEA investigators said they noticed numerous teachers who previously failed certification exams would drive to the Houston area to take exams and pass the test with flying colors.

The Harris County DA's office said a tip came in that exposed the scheme in which candidates would pay $2,500, then the teachers would be told where and when to appear for the test with an official at the Houston Training and Education Center who would allow someone else to take the test for them.

HTEC was shut down in mid-2023, but the DA's office said the cheating scheme continued at a new location.

The TEA said it expects additional investigations to be opened as it receives more information from the initial investigation.

Not all neighborhoods have the time and resources to turn streets into holiday display wonderlands. But the ones that do attract thousands of visitors every year.

Here are seven of the best neighborhood and city light shows in and around Arlington you can drive or walk through.

All spectacles are free and on display through Christmas unless otherwise noted.

It’s busy, it’s renowned, it’s an over 40-year-old tradition — and it’s free to drive through. Arlington’s western Interlochen neighborhood lights up annually for the holiday season, creating a show that attracts visitors from across Dallas-Fort Worth. Tune into holiday music on radio stations 102.1 FM or 98.7 FM. Find updates on the event’s website and Facebook page.

Where: Route starts at 2001 Westwood Drive in Arlington and is available online.

When: 6-10 p.m. Dec. 14-25

When resident Dave Kulesz first lit up his Dalworthington Gardens house with thousands of lights, he sparked a neighborhood tradition of holiday decorating that brings in visitors from around the metroplex. Kulesz uses the spectacle to encourage people to donate to the Alzheimer’s Association and raise awareness of the disease he lost his mother to.

Where: Rushing Meadow Court, Dalworthington Gardens

For 34 years, the Glenbrook neighborhood in Bedford has lit up like a Texas-style North Pole. As visitors drive through the neighborhood, house displays take them through “The Night Before Christmas — in Texas,” a children’s book by Leon Harris. A route of the spectacle is available on the group’s Facebook.

Where: Brookside Court, Bedford

Over the past decade, the Morrisdale Estates neighborhood in Euless has built a reputation for its competitive annual house decorating contest that inspires the best and the brightest displays by residents. In addition, homeowners coordinate covering their curbs and lawns in matching red lights, giving visitors the feeling of driving through a shiny red sea.

Where: Morrisdale Estates, Euless

Each year, a collection of Mansfield homeowners on Ravenna Street cover their lawns in lights and synchronize their flashing to Christmas music played on 95.7 FM. As they watch the show, visitors can vote online on which songs play next over the radio.

Where: 1209-1101 Ravenna St, Mansfield

Prairie Lights is one of North Texas’ premier holiday destinations, with two miles and more than four million lights for visitors to drive through and a holiday village at its halfway point. Starting at $50 per car, visitors can line up to enter the event every night between 6 and 10 p.m. Tickets can be booked in advance online.

Where: Lynn Creek Park, 5610 Lake Ridge Pkwy, Grand Prairie, 75052

When: 6-10 p.m. through Dec. 31

Arlington residents up for a drive followed by a saunter through seasonal magic, need to head west to the Fort Worth Botanic Garden’s 1.2-mile lighted holiday trail. After wandering through the synchronized flashing lights, visitors can warm up next to a fire with cups of hot cocoa at the Lightscape market. Tickets start at $18. Find updates on the event’s website.

Where: Fort Worth Botanic Garden, 3220 Botanic Garden Blvd., Fort Worth

When: 5:30-8:30 p.m. Nov. 17-Jan. 11

Drew Shaw is a reporting fellow for the Arlington Report. Contact him at [email protected] or @shawlings601.

At the Arlington Report, news decisions are made independently of our board members and financial supporters. Read more about our editorial independence policy here.

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That night of the first killing freeze has happened (or soon will) across all of North Central Texas. That officially plunges our gardens into the early days of the winter. In turn, that stirs up an entirely new list of things that must be accomplished if we’re to earn our stripes as successful plant-growing Texans. Let’s see what it entails.

▪ Tidy all beds of stubble and rubble. That would include spent flower stalks, seed heads, and old leaves. It might even include dead weeds. (Gasp!) Get it all cleaned up and top it off with a fresh layer of bark mulch, compost, or shredded leaves.

▪ Mow the lawn to remove the last of the fallen leaves. Use them in the compost pile or carefully place them over your perennial gardens or beneath shrubs in beds. Do not send them to the landfill. They’re valuable natural resources, and your city’s landfill doesn’t want them in the first place.

▪ Remove dead and damaged branches as quickly as possible. I’ve warned you before here: those branches are really heavy, and the time when they’ll break under their own weight is getting closer and closer. Don’t wait any longer. If you need to hire a certified arborist with the right tools to do the job safely, do so. Amateurs shouldn’t be climbing ladders with chain saws to climb trees that are dead and rotting. Something just doesn’t sound safe about all of that.

▪ Address winter weeds before it turns colder by January. Broadleafed weeds like clover, dandelions, henbit, chickweed, plantain and even thistles can be addressed with a broadleafed weedkiller spray containing 2,4-D while it’s still comparatively warm. There’s not much time left, however. Once it turns colder, you’ll have to wait until February, and by then the weeds will be much more mature and harder to kill. Read and follow label directions for best results, and spot-spray the weeds individually as much as possible. Tank sprayers are more precise and use less herbicide than hose-end types.

▪ Dormant-season transplanting can be done once your shrubs and trees have been exposed to at least one hard freeze (temperatures in the 20s). That generally happens by late December.

▪ If you’re noticing mistletoe clumps getting started on your trees, clip them out as soon as you can. They begin on small twigs initially, but as the mistletoe grows larger, so will the host branch. If you wait a couple of years, you’ll have major “surgery” to get it removed. There are no chemical sprays that consumers can use to kill mistletoe without risking the health of their trees.

▪ Peaches and plums are pruned while they are dormant. It’s usually best to wait until the second half of the winter, but if you have large numbers of trees and limited manpower you can start earlier. Your goal is to maintain them in a bowl shape by removing all strongly vertical growth. Ideally, they will have three or four strong scaffold branches equally spaced around the trunk, all originating 22 to 26 inches above ground level.

Apples are pruned less, primarily to remove strong vertical “watersprouts.” Pears should be pruned as little as possible, primarily just to remove damaged or dead branches or those that are rubbing against one another. Figs should not be pruned unless there are damaged branches. Blackberries are pruned after harvest. More on that at that time.

▪ Water your lawn and landscape during winter dry spells. The plants won’t need nearly as much water, nor will they need to be watered nearly as often, but two special precautions should be taken. Water deeply ahead of extreme cold. Plants need to be hydrated. And be sure that new plants aren’t allowed to get dry over the winter. They will dry out more quickly than their mature, established counterparts. Soak them once or twice weekly if it isn’t raining significantly.

▪ If you’re looking to brighten an entry or patio, do it with container color. Pansies, violas, and pinks are our most cold-hardy plants for the area, but others will also succeed. Remember to protect the containers from extreme cold, however. You lose 10 to 20 degrees of hardiness when you grow plants above ground where their roots are exposed.

▪ Winter is the time to plant new fruit trees and vines, also pecan trees. The large growers are digging their plants during the winter dormant season. Many of the best sources still sell their plants bare-rooted (packed in moist sawdust or moss), so those must be planted as soon as possible after they are made available for sale. Local independent retail garden centers (as opposed to big national chains with regional buyers) are most likely to have the varieties recommended by Texas A&M for your specific part of Texas. Several excellent Texas-based mail-order sources are also available. Start by checking reference books and online listings from A&M regarding the best varieties for your locale.

▪ Have frost cloth bought, cut to fit, marked, and stored, ready for use. I can’t tell you when you’ll need to apply it — not even which year. But I can tell you that you will eventually need it. There will come a cold spell when your most vulnerable species needs to be covered to keep them from freezing. That’s when you’ll be grateful for the lightweight, but bigger than life fabric that gives 6 to 10 degrees of difference in which plants survive all the cold. It’s a great investment that you can use several times over. It’s that durable.

This story was originally published December 6, 2024, 5:00 AM.

A study out of Texas has revealed the presence of fentanyl and other pharmaceuticals in dolphins in the Gulf of Mexico.

Researchers from Texas A&M—Corpus Christi sampled tissue from 89 free-swimming common bottlenose dolphins from three sites around the Gulf of Mexico and determined 30 had trace amounts of drugs in their bodies, according to a study published Nov. 29 in the peer-reviewed journal iScience.

These drugs included fentanyl, muscle relaxants and sedatives, according to the study.

Tissue samples were collected from dolphins in Redfish Bay, Texas; Upper Laguna Madre, Texas; and Mississippi Sound, Mississippi.

Of the 89 dolphins biopsied, 83 were alive when the samples were taken, and the remaining six were biopsied after death, researchers said.

Fentanyl was present in 18 of the living dolphins and all six of the dead animals, according to the study.

Researchers said they also tested historical samples, some dating back to 2013, which also showed the presence of pharmaceuticals, leading them to believe this is “a long-standing issue” in these environments.

“For there to be drugs in a dolphin means that the drugs are either in the water, or they’re in the prey that they’re consuming,” researcher and Texas A&M University Ph.D. student Makayla Guinn told KIII.

Dolphins are often used to evaluate the health of an ecosystem, particularly when it comes to the presence of environmental contaminants.

Contaminants get stored in dolphins’ lipid-rich blubber, which can “be sampled relatively minimally invasively in live animals,” Dr. Dara Orbach, assistant professor of marine biology at Texas A&M — Corpus Christi and researcher, said in a news release.

According to the study, contiminants such as human pharmaceuticals can end up in aquatic environments due to insufficient wastewater treatment or “untreated discharge from pharmaceutical manufacturing facilities,” while veterinary pharmaceuticals may end up in the water through manure runoff.

“We did find one dead dolphin in Baffin Bay in South Texas within one year of the largest liquid fentanyl drug bust in US history in the adjacent county,” Orbach said in the release.

Researchers said that while the concentrations of drugs found in the dolphins were too low to quantify, the fact that it was even detectable reinforces the need for additional and large-scale assessment, particularly in “areas with dense human populations” and large fishing or aquaculture industries.

Dolphins eat fish and shrimp, and if pharmaceutials are present in their food source, it suggests potential health impacts for humans who consume the same foods, researchers said.

The study was complete in partnership with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and Precision Toxicological Consultancy, according to the news release.

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December 04, 2024 1:26 PM

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Texas

December 05, 2024 11:30 AM

There are 15 Tarrant County educators who are among more than 100 teachers statewide being investigated by the Texas Education Agency over alleged teacher-certification fraud.

The names of the local educators released by state officials this week span across seven Tarrant school districts. Flags were placed on all of their teaching certificates and investigations were opened this week, according to TEA, with Fort Worth ISD having the highest number of accused educators. The names listed for each district do not mean that those educators are currently working there, according to TEA officials. The information is based on their employment either at the end of the 2022-2023 school year or the 2023-2024 school year.

The release of the names comes about a month after Attorney General Ken Paxton announced that a Harris County grand jury issued indictments against five people involved in a fraudulent scheme to help individuals obtain their state teacher certifications. Vincent Grayson, 57, the alleged scheme organizer; Nicolas Newton, 35; Tywana Gilford Mason, 51; Darian Wilhite, 22; and LaShonda Roberts, 39, are the five defendants who could face up to 20 years of incarceration if convicted of their suspected roles in the scheme.

“The operation involved teacher candidates paying Grayson to arrange for Newton to complete the TEA licensing exams on their behalf. Candidates would enter a testing center, provide their identification to a cooperating employee, and leave while Newton completed the exams in their place, allowing unqualified individuals to falsely obtain certification,” according to Paxton.

A TEA spokesperson said the agency “fully expects additional investigations to be opened as the agency receives more information.” The Star-Telegram has reached out to the local districts for comment.

Fort Worth ISD officials said they are taking the matter seriously, are cooperating with TEA and “will continue to do so to address this issue.”

“The Fort Worth Independent School District was recently notified by the Texas Education Agency (TEA) that, as part of its investigation into an alleged certification-testing scheme across the state, TEA has identified five (5) FWISD teachers (based on 2023-2024 PEIMS Data) who are under investigation by the TEA Educator Investigations division,” officials said. “Like all Texas public school districts, Fort Worth ISD relies on TEA and the State Board for Educator Certification (SBEC) to manage and oversee teacher certification processes. Fort Worth ISD is committed to upholding the highest standards for educator certification and professionalism to ensure our students receive quality instruction.”

Fort Worth ISD officials declined to answer whether the named educators are on administrative leave amid the state investigation.

Mansfield ISD officials said they were notified by TEA on Tuesday that two educators employed by the district in the 2023-2024 school year are under investigation as part of the alleged scheme based out of Houston.

“As requested, MISD confirmed to TEA that both teachers are current district employees. We are cooperating fully with TEA’s investigation. In addition, MISD is conducting its own investigation into our employees and will take appropriate action,” officials said.

Officials with the International Leadership of Texas, a public charter school network, said they would make a personnel decision on one of their Tarrant County employees in response to the results of TEA’s investigation.

“Any ILTexas employee who may have a fraudulent credential would receive the appropriate disciplinary actions up to and including termination. At this point, the investigation is being conducted by the TEA and we are awaiting the results,” officials said.

Arlington ISD officials said they placed three of their employees on administrative leave Thursday, Dec. 5, after being notified by TEA of “potential issues with their teaching credentials.”

“The TEA is conducting a thorough investigation, and the Arlington ISD is fully cooperating and supporting their efforts,” officials said.

Eagle Mountain-Saginaw ISD officials said their teacher on the list was placed on leave Thursday, Dec. 5, after the district was notified of the investigation. They said they are “cooperating fully with TEA.”

According to the list released by TEA, the names of the Tarrant County educators and their corresponding districts are:

Mansfield ISD:

Fort Worth ISD:

Arlington ISD:

International Leadership of Texas Arlington:

Crowley ISD:

Everman ISD:

Eagle Mountain-Saginaw:

This story will be updated.

This story was originally published December 5, 2024, 2:00 PM.

Fort Worth Star-Telegram

Lina Ruiz covers early childhood education in Tarrant County and North Texas for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. A University of Florida graduate, she previously wrote about local government in South Florida for TCPalm and Treasure Coast Newspapers.