I heard from a couple of annoyed DISD moms yesterday who had gotten wind that announcements about the district’s magnet school applicants — as far as which students are accepted where — would not be mailed out today, April 10, as they and others had been told.

I called DISD spokesman Jon Dahlander to find out what had happened, and though he was in the middle of listening to the banter at yesterday’s school board briefing, he called later to say that it would be next week before families are notified. The delay has to do with the Iowa Test of Basic Skills, which was administered later this spring than it had been in the past, and is "part of the criteria that helps principals determine which students get in where," Dahlander says. "Everything got backed up as a result of that."

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"I’m sure everybody would love to know right now," he adds, "but it’s going to be one more week, and everybody just needs to hang in there."

The delay doesn’t have anything to do with the news from yesterday’s briefing, Dahlander says, where the DMN reports board members were told that per-pupil spending on DISD campuses is not equitable — with a few of the vanguards, academies and magnets among the overfunded schools — and that $135 million in stimulus and federal aid money is at risk unless the funding is brought under Texas Education Agency compliance.