Southlake Carroll announces new high school principals
Two educators with years of leadership experience in the Carroll school district were chosen to replace two high school principals who left for other jobs after their contracts were not renewed beyond 2026.
Shatina Lewis, who was principal at Carroll Middle, was named principal at Carroll Senior High School and Patrick Holladay, principal at Johnson Elementary, is now principal at Carroll High School.
Lewis replaces Ryan Wilson, who was hired last week as the principal at Sagniaw Boswell. Holladay takes over for Christina Benhoff, who was hired May 15 as the principal at Keller Timber Creek High School.
Superintendent Jeremy Glenn announced the leadership changes during Monday night's school board meeting.
'Changes in school leadership are unsettling,' he said.
'We recognize that transitions can create uncertainty,' Glenn said.
Lewis was principal at Carroll Middle School for over three years. During her time as principal, she fostered academic excellence and strong community partnerships, the district said in a statement.
Before becoming principal at Carroll Middle, Lewis was an assistant principal at Dawson Middle School. She began her career in the district in 2014 as an English teacher at Carroll Senior High.
Holladay taught high school math for 20 years throughout North Texas. Holladay was assistant principal at the Mansfield school district's Donna Shepard Intermediate Leadership Academy for six years before coming to the Carroll school district.
Glenn also announced that Stefan Benadetti, teacher of the year in 2023, is the district's choir director.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
2 hours ago
- Yahoo
Egypt illegally detaining Alaa Abd el-Fattah, UN investigators find
The British-Egyptian human rights activist and writer Alaa Abd el-Fattah is being illegally detained by the Egyptian government, an independent UN panel has found after an 18-month investigation. He is being held in a Cairo jail while his mother, Laila Soueif, based in Britain, is on hunger strike. She is holding a daily one-hour vigil outside Downing Street, the limit her health and weight loss allows. She is on day 241 of the hunger strike, and her body weight has halved. Keir Starmer, the UK prime minister, last week called for a second time for the Egyptian president, Abdel Fatah al-Sisi, to show clemency, saying the Egyptian government was causing the family great anguish. In a report released to the family, the UN working group on arbitrary detention also asked the Egyptian government 'to take the steps necessary to remedy the situation without delay', adding 'the appropriate remedy would be to release Abd el-Fattah immediately and accord him an enforceable right to compensation and other reparations, in accordance with international law'. Unusually, the Egyptian government mounted a full defence of its actions to the UN panel. The UN group gave a withering verdict on the standards of justice in Egypt, including the suppression of free speech. It concluded that the activist's continued imprisonment was arbitrary and illegal owing to the absence of a warrant at the time of his arrest and the lack of explanation of reasons for his arrest or the allegations against him. It found Fattah was arrested for exercising his freedom of expression, not afforded a fair trial, and was detained based on his political views. Egypt is not obliged to comply with the report, but its findings add to the damage being done to the country's reputation by continuing to detain one of it most prominent writers. Fattah was arrested in September 2019, and was finally sentenced in December 2021 to five years in jail for spreading false news and harming Egypt's national interest. The UN panel found the allegation stemmed from Fattah sharing a Facebook post about the death of a prison inmate. Fattah's English barrister, Can Yeğinsu, said: 'The UN working group has delivered a clear and unequivocal decision: Alaa Abd el-Fattah's detention is arbitrary and in breach of international law. Egypt is now obligated to release Alaa immediately.' Richard Ratcliffe, the husband of Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, the British-Iranian held in a Tehran jail for five years, said: 'Having a ruling from the working group of arbitrary detention is a club no family wants to belong to. You worry repeatedly about whether to file, and then the UN system is so slow, so you can wait for years. Then when it comes, it is a moment of clarity – an acknowledgment of the injustice under international law. 'The crime is not Alaa's; the criminals are those still holding him, and provoking his family to desperation. For our family, our WGAD ruling was also a relief: we thought it would mark an end to the UK government's prevarication, and the beginning of firm action on Nazanin's case. In the end, it did. 'But for Alaa's family, time is so much shorter. The ruling needs to be implemented now. The law is clear, but so is the heavy cost of continuing to ignore it.' Fattah's cousin Omar Robert Hamilton urged the UK to take Egypt to the international court of justice over the detention. The working group in its report said the use of excessively broad and vague concepts such as 'dissemination of false information' were incompatible with international standards of freedom of expression and should be abolished. It also suggested it was a crime against humanity to use 'rotation sentencing', whereby the prosecution changes the original charge so that the defendant's period in pre-trial custody is not counted as part of the sentence.
Yahoo
2 hours ago
- Yahoo
Laila Soueif, on 247th day of hunger strike for jailed British-Egyptian son, defiant in face of death
Laila Soueif, lying shrunken on a hospital bed at St Thomas' hospital in London on the 247th day of her hunger strike in pursuit of freedom for her son, imprisoned British-Egyptian activist Alaa Abd el-Fattah, is locked in what may prove to be her last of many trials of strength with Egypt's authoritarian regime. A remarkable, witty and courageous woman, she has the self-awareness to admit: 'I may have made a mistake, God knows,' but she will not back down, and anyone looking back at her rich life has little evidence to doubt her perseverance. Speaking from the hospital on Tuesday, Soueif said: 'My message is: use my death as leverage to get Alaa out. Don't let my death be in vain.' Soueif told the BBC: 'It's something that I passionately don't want to happen. Children want a mother, not a notorious mother – whether the notoriety is good or bad – but if that's what it takes to get Alaa out of jail and to get all my children and grandchildren's lives back on track, then that's what I'm going to do.' Fattah was arrested in September 2019, and sentenced in December 2021 to five years in jail for 'spreading false news and harming Egypt's national interest'. A UN panel concluded Egypt was illegally detaining him. Soueif described her eventful life to the Guardian. Born in Britain in 1956, where she lived until she was two, she comes from an academic family. Her father, Mostafa Soueif, was the founder of Cairo University's psychology department and founder of Egypt's Academy of Arts. Her mother, Fatma Moussa, was a professor of English literature at Cairo University, an accomplished translator of Shakespeare and Naguib Mahfouz, the Egyptian Nobel prize-winning novelist. Her sister Ahdaf is a distinguished novelist and essayist. Her parentage gifted her a love of literature. At the age of 11, bed-ridden from typhoid, she was given a copy of War and Peace to keep her quiet and now even in hospital a novel has always been on her bed. She said she was also raised on Jane Austen, so is 'partial to texts in which every word is considered and nothing is superfluous'. She also developed a love of maths, telling her father at the age of eight that she loved 'solving maths puzzles, and it did not seem like school work'. She went on to become an assistant professor of maths at Cairo University. She spent her adolescence on Brazil Street in Zamalek, an affluent district in Cairo where like any other neighbourhood there was a band of rebellious teenagers. 'I loved riding motorcycles with the boys and had fleeting romances, but I steered clear of drugs. I never hid anything from my parents either. I'd even take my romantic calls on the house phone,' she recalled. She said her sister Ahdaf 'was always the polished, captivating mademoiselle – five boys would be infatuated with her at the same time. She was the older sister everyone admired. Meanwhile, I was the punk, trying everything out. Our parents never wanted us to be replicas of each other, or of them.' Politics was always part of the household and a pivotal moment came in 1967 when Israel defeated Egypt in the six-day war. It was a political awakening. She said: 'People who'd always remained silent spoke out. I remember seeing family friends who had been close to the regime, officers in the army, sitting in our living room, weeping: 'We betrayed the country! We lost it.'' She recalled her first student protest in high school in the early 1970s, when demonstrations were erupting across campuses calling for an uprising against the Israeli occupation of Sinai. 'I remember watching students march from everywhere, even Zamalek, to Tahrir Square. A student friend and I joined, thrilled.' She met her husband, Ahmed Seif el-Islam, and the father of Alaa, at Cairo University. She was doing an MA in algebra and he was a member of a secretive group called Al-Matraqa that had split away from the Egyptian Communist party, disillusioned by the party's reformism. Laila had inherited from her parents a cynical attitude towards any party organisation, but she loved Seif for his mind and his sincerity. Related: Must Laila Soueif die from her hunger strike in London before her son Alaa Abd el-Fattah is released? | Helena Kennedy Alaa was born in 1981. In 1983, her husband was arrested and tortured. A year later she was given the chance to undertake a PhD at Poitiers University in France, taking her son with her, but returned to Cairo for a year after her husband was arrested in 1983. He was found guilty of illegal weapons possession, and sentenced to five years in jail. On bail, he went into hiding with his wife and young son for three months only to decide that life as a fugitive was impossible and so gave himself up. In jail he was again tortured. While in prison he received a BA in law and within a month of leaving jail was admitted to the bar. He became one of the most effective human rights lawyers in Egypt. It was in France that Laila formed a deep emotional bond with Alaa, but started to learn the sacrifice involved in political activism. She said: 'The fact that Seif was in prison when Alaa was very young created a very special relationship between us. 'I had to explain things that you should never have to explain to a child – why his father was in prison, that there are bad police and good police – the good ones, who catch thieves and organise traffic, and the bad ones, who arrest people who oppose the government. 'You don't usually need to know these things when you're four or five.' Later her admiration for Alaa's ability to look after his two younger sisters comforted her in continuing a teaching career. On returning to Cairo full-time, she helped found the March 9 movement in 2004, an organisation dedicated to academic autonomy and removing the state from universities. Her reputation as someone who would confront the police in protests became legendary. She was often the last to leave. Although she participated in the demonstrations in Tahrir Square in 2011, she like many had not anticipated the scale of the popular movement that would bring about the fall of Egypt's then president, Hosni Mubarak. By then she was the matriarch of three human rights activists. Sanaa, the youngest of the three and then 18, joined their activism during the Mohamed Mahmoud street clashes in 2011 that resulted in more than 40 being killed. A week before Mubarak's fall in February 2011, Soueif's husband was arrested in his office and later interrogated in prison by Abdel Fatah al-Sisi, then head of military intelligence, and now president. In an exchange with Sisi, Seif el-Islam unusually answered him back, describing Mubarak as corrupt. Seif el-Islam later told the Guardian that Sisi 'became angry, his face became red. He acted as if every citizen would accept his point and no one would reject it in public. When he was rejected in public, he lost it.' The episode is sometimes cited as one reason Sisi seems so determined to keep Alaa in jail. The revolution, in the hands of the Muslim Brotherhood, imploded. Soueif said: 'We couldn't believe that the most prepared organisation for governance wasted itself on eliminating the opposition as its first task, instead of achieving tangible accomplishments on the ground. Even the religious current in Iran, when it took power, implemented some social and economic achievements for the masses before it became a dictatorship. But for the MB to start by fighting the opposition in the streets – how did they think that would work?' With the collapse of the revolution and the capture of power by the military, the family suffered. In June 2014 Alaa was first arrested for violating protest laws and then in October Mona, the middle daughter, then aged 20, was convicted of a similar offence and jailed for three years. She had two spells in jail. At the time Soueif and her other daughter Mona went on a hunger strike lasting 76 days. When her husband died aged 63 in August 2014, two of his children were in jail, and were barred from seeing him in hospital. Alaa spoke movingly at his father's funeral. Since then Soueif's life has been one long attempt to secure his release and ensure his life in prison is bearable. She was once asked during the hunger strike whether what she was doing frightened her. 'My mind is aware that I am doing something different, but my feeling as a mother is that this is normal and intended. 'Any mother in my circumstances with the ability to do so would do this. People don't easily realise what you can do. I know all the time that there are things that work, I don't guarantee the results at all, but I tell myself that there's nothing more to lose.'
Yahoo
2 hours ago
- Yahoo
Revealed: 5,000 English nature sites at risk under Labour's planning proposals
More than 5,000 of England's most sensitive, rare and protected natural habitats are at high risk of being destroyed by development under Labour's new planning bill, according to legal analysis of the legislation. The Guardian has examined the threat the bill poses to 5,251 areas known as nature's 'jewels in the crown', as some of the country's most respected wildlife charities call for a key part of the bill to be scrapped. The areas at risk from Labour's planning changes include cherished landscapes such as the New Forest, the Surrey heaths, the Peak District moors, and the Forest of Bowland. Rivers such as the Itchen in Hampshire and the Wensum in Norfolk are also threatened by the bill. The thousands of protected habitats are locations for threatened British wildlife such as nightingales, badgers, dormice, otters, butterflies, dragonflies, kingfishers, tufted ducks and egrets. The bill is the product of the government's promise to build 1.5m homes to help address the UK's housing affordability crisis, and approve 150 major infrastructure projects, in this parliament. The pledge is key to Labour's plan to boost economic growth; however, a recent study suggests the government is likely to miss its new homes target. The government says the bill does not weaken environmental protections. But according to three separate legal opinions on the planning and infrastructure bill currently going through parliament, legal protections will be rolled back by the legislation, making it easier for developers to build on areas that have historically been protected under UK and international law. The Guardian has identified 10 protected sites that are under particular threat from development under the new legislation amid growing criticism of Labour's bill. Related: Ten jewels of English nature at risk from development and Labour's planning bill They include one of the last strongholds for nightingales in England at Lodge Hill in Kent; a wetland dating back 2,600 years in south Devon; an internationally important tidal wetland at Tipner west in Portsmouth; and woods dating back as far as the 17th century at Sittingbourne, Kent, part of the 2.5% of the UK's ancient woodland that still remains. These areas represent just a handful of the most protected environmental gems across England which include 4,100 sites of special scientific interest (SSSIs), all currently protected by the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981; 71 wetlands protected under the internationally-binding Ramsar convention; 256 special areas of conservation (SACs) and 824 special protection areas, (SPAs) all protected under UK and international law in the habitats directive. Though numerous, these protected areas in total only cover just under 8% of land in England. Critics of the bill say ensuring they continue to be protected does not amount to a block on building new houses. In a legal opinion, Alex Goodman KC said the consequences of the planning and infrastructure bill as drafted were that any adverse impacts a development inflicted on the most protected natural areas in England, including SSSIs, SACs and Ramsar sites, must be 'disregarded'. '[The bill] thereby withdraws the principal legal safeguard for protected sites,' he said. 'This amounts to a very significant change.' Goodman has provided one of three separate legal opinions on the bill since it was presented by Angela Rayner, secretary of state for housing, communities and local government. All, including that of the government's own watchdog, the Office for Environmental Protection (OEP), challenge Rayner's assertion to parliament that the bill is not a rollback of environmental law. Rayner has been threatened with a judicial review brought by nature groups if she does not 'correct' her comments. Goodman said: 'The only possible reading is that the bill will have the effect of reducing the level of environmental protection provided.' Glenys Stacey, chair of the OEP, said: 'The bill would have the effect of reducing the level of environmental protection provided for by existing environmental law. As drafted, the provisions are a regression.' Key concerns focus on part three of the bill, which provides a mechanism for developers to sidestep current environmental obligations by paying into a nature restoration fund, which will be used at a later date to create environmental improvements elsewhere. Once the fee is paid, the development can go ahead even if it 'inflicts adverse effects on the integrity of a protected site'. Dubbed a mechanism to pay 'cash to trash', the bill contains no requirement for developers to measure what harms are taking place during the planning process. Irreplaceable habitats have no extra protection from development. Leading charities have called for this section to be scrapped entirely. Dr Ruth Tingay, co-director of Wild Justice, said the government seemed intent on causing unrecoverable damage. 'Imagine flattening an irreplaceable grade I listed building like the Royal Albert Hall, replacing it with karaoke machines in various towns and then telling the public this is a 'win-win' for architecture and music. Swap the Royal Albert Hall for any one of the UK's nationally important and protected habitats, swap the karaoke machines for a few pathetic tree-planting schemes, then tell people this is a 'win-win' for the environment and the public, and the analogy is brutally clear.' David Elvin KC, in a third legal opinion, said part three of the bill was regressive and potentially in breach of international law. Ellie Chowns, a Green MP, said there was a serious legal question with the bill because although the secretary of state asserted to MPs there was no reduction in environmental protections, the reality of the legislation was that the bill was in fact a rollback of environmental protections. 'We have a responsibility to protect the most important, the rarest and most in need habitats, like chalk streams, ancient woodlands, peat bogs; these jewels in the crown of our ecological heritage have their protections weakened in this bill,' she said. 'These are irreplaceable habitats, which by their very nature cannot be created anywhere else in some kind of compensation schedule.' A government spokesperson said: 'We completely reject these claims, and have been clear that our planning and infrastructure will not weaken environmental protections. 'The government has inherited a failing system that has delayed new homes and infrastructure while doing nothing for nature's recovery. 'That's why we will deliver a win-win for the economy and nature as part of our Plan for Change, unblocking building and economic growth while delivering meaningful environmental improvements.'
