Rebuilding a brand

The once-winning Wildcat basketball team is looking for a comeback

By KYLE KLEMME I Photo by RASY RAN

THE LAKE HIGHLANDS High School boys basketball ended the 2017-2018 season with 13 wins and 17 losses, but there are signs of progress. The team has a new leader who is focused on rebuilding the once powerhouse team.

Head coach Joe Duffield, who’s in his second year leading the Wildcats, has got his eye on making playoff runs in the future with his tenets of “play fast, play great defense and play unselfish.”

“I see this program being one of the top basketball programs in the state,” Duffield says.

Duffield isn’t new to Lake Highlands. He previously served as assistant coach who helped lead the team to the district championships in both basketball and football.

“I think my time as an assistant has definitely helped me in understanding our school, our feeder system, and understanding what makes the Lake Highlands community so special,” he says.

Duffield left Dallas to serve as the assistant coach at Vista Ridge High School in Austin, where he helped lead that school to playoff runs in 2011 and 2013. But, ultimately, he was called back to our neighborhood.

“Our family loves living in the Lake Highlands community. Lake Highlands truly has a tight-knit community that almost feels like a small town, but with the benefits of being in a big city,” he says. “We love the diverse student population, and no other place I’ve worked has had the type of tradition and loyal support that you find in Lake Highlands.”

ALTHOUGH SHE didn’t spend much of her life in Lake Highlands, having grown up in Illinois, Sandra Lynch was a member of the first class to graduate from Lake Highlands High School. She was a leader then and remained a trailblazer her entire career, all the way from a Wildcat to the United States Court of Appeals.

Three things to know:

1 She was a hyper-involved Wildcat, back when she went by Sandy Lynch. She was the editor of The Fang, the campus newspaper, and she was a member of Student Council, the Pan American Student Forum, the Creative Writing Club and the National Honor Society. She lettered in tennis, and she was a National Merit Scholarship finalist.

2 She was the first woman ever appointed to the United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit. President Bill Clinton nominated Lynch in 1995 after her predecessor, Stephen Breyer, was appointed to the U.S. Supreme Court.

3

She set a legal precedent by ruling that trading drugs for guns amounted to using a firearm in the trafficking of illicit substances, a criminal violation. — Emily Charrier

Risd Strikes Back

Richardson ISD board of trustees is disputing a lawsuit that claims its atlarge electoral system promotes inequality. District administrators and trustees recently filed a legal response denying that it perpetuates a system that favors white, affluent students.

Former trustee David Tyson Jr. — the only minority to ever serve on the board — filed the lawsuit, which claims the “perpetually monolithic board” exacerbates a performance gap between affluent and low-income students. Currently, people who live anywhere in the district can run for any of the seven seats on the board. Tyson claims that this system hinders minority candidates, violates the Voting Rights Act and “leads to limited representation of, and ultimately, to indifference to, the interests of the non-white community in RISD.”

The trustees’ rebuttal denies “any assertions or suggestions that the District’s Board of Trustees do not make decisions concerning the allocation of the District’s resources in a manner that benefits all students equally.” The response includes 76 such denials and states Tyson is not entitled to “any and all relief requested in his complaint.”

The district seeks to resolve the lawsuit as quickly as possible, RISD spokesman Chris Moore told the Advocate.

Moore acknowledges that RISD’s demographics have changed, and says the lawsuit was filed around the time the district had shifted its focus to lowperforming campuses.

He cites the new Accelerating Campus Excellence (ACE) program, modeled after Dallas and Fort Worth, that will be implemented at Carolyn Bukhair Elementary, Forest Lane Academy, RISD Academy and Thurgood Marshall Elementary. The programs extend school hours and coincide with a reconstitution process in which current staff will reapply for their positions, Moore said.

The ACE program also will provide students with three meals and additional after-school opportunities.

“The longer they’re with us, the more we can teach them beyond the classroom,” Moore said. — Elissa Chudwin