What we’re reading: Dallas convention center to provide shelter for migrant teens

By Sederick Oliver

Published Mar 15, 2021

Migrant children and teenagers from the southern border of the United State wait to be processed after entering the site of a temporary holding facility Sunday, March 14, 2021 south of Midland, Texas. (Eli Hartman/Odessa American via AP)

Dallas convention center will provide shelter to migrant teen boys

The Federal Emergency Management Agency will use the Kay Bailey Hutchinson Convention Center in downtown Dallas to temporarily shelter thousands of migrant teenage boys, according to The Washington Post.

The move is an attempt to help reduce the overpopulated border facilities currently holding more than 4,200 children and teenagers.

The center will house boys between the ages of 15 to 17, with enough space for about 2,300 teenagers.

According to one official with knowledge of the plans, the center plans on being available for the next 90 days.

Dallas ISD plans newcomer centers for teens learning English

Dallas ISD will launch a newcomer center for high schoolers who are struggling to learn English. Newcomer students are recent immigrants with limited or inadequate English-speaking skills.

The effort would serve the district’s 1,600 newcomer high school students at a “school-within-a-school,” according to the Dallas Morning News. DISD hopes to eventually open five centers across the district.

DISD will use the next year to plan and train staff for this change and launch the dual-language revamp in 2022-23 under this proposal.

“Dual language can become a crucial initiative to realizing the promise to equity,” Rosemont Elementary Principal Marco Barker said.

Bill passed for reparations from damages of the winter storm

In this Tuesday, Feb. 16, 2021, file photo, shows power lines in Houston. When an unusually heavy winter storm blanketed much of Texas with snow, knocking out electricity to millions of homes and leaving many struggling to find clean water, one sector of the population was particularly vulnerable: inmates in Houston at the state’s largest county jail. (AP Photo/David J. Phillip, File)

A mid-February snowstorm in Texas caused $16 billion in charges for wholesale electricity and state legislators are trying to get those charges reversed.

The Texas Senate passed a bill providing reparations for the state’s top utility regulator to restore the charges for the damages during the state’s power outage.

With the Legislature’s bill filing deadline on Friday, the Senate employed a parliamentary procedure during an unscheduled floor session on Monday to rescind its vote to adjourn last Thursday, according to Dallas Morning News.

The bill was approved by the Senate Jurisprudence Committee by a vote of a 3-1. Within the next hour, the Senate reconvened and Sen. Bryan Hughes, R-Mineola, laid out his bill which says there is a “compelling public interest” for the state’s Public Utility Commission to reverse $16 billion in wholesale electricity charges incurred during the final days of last month’s winter storms.

The bill will now head to the state House of Representatives for consideration.

Citizens 50 and older are vaccinated at Dallas Fair Park

In this Jan. 20, 2021, file photo, people that received a COVID-19 vaccine socially distance as they wait the required fifteen minutes to monitor for adverse reactions after getting the shot at the Dallas County mass vaccination site at Fair Park in Dallas. Two months after the first COVID-19 shots were administered, the race to vaccinate older Americans is gaining traction, with more than half of states reporting that a third of people 65 and up have received their first dose. (AP Photo/LM Otero)

A vaccination site for people 50 and over began Monday at Dallas Fair Park.

“We’ve had over 730,000 people register on the website,” said Dallas County Health and Human Services spokesperson Christian Grisales. “And we’re doing about 35,000 shots a week. About 1,100 an hour.”

The ultimate goal is to keep progressing and increasing the number of recipients.

The current rate of 35,000 shots per week could increase to 50,000 which would allow the site to remain open seven days a week, per Fox4News. Organizers say they are also expecting more Johnson & Johnson vaccines, but it will take many more vaccines to hit site capacity.