Category Archives: School news

In compliance with yesterday’s Texas Supreme Court ruling temporarily blocking the mask mandate in Dallas County, face masks will again be optional for all GPISD students and staff in all District schools and facilities. However, we strongly encourage students and staff alike to wear a mask at school as part of our efforts to keep them safe from COVID-19.

In compliance with an executive order issued on August 11 by Dallas County Judge Clay Jenkins, face masks will be mandatory for all GPISD students and staff in all District campuses and facilities effective at 11:59 p.m. tonight (August 11, 2021). The District will update our health and safety plan to reflect the mask requirement for all students and staff in any GPISD facility.

On April 22, the GPISD Board of Trustees unanimously approved an Employee Appreciation Compensation plan that will provide a one-time payment of $1,000 to all full-time and long-term substitutes and $500 to part-time GPISD employees.

“The Board wanted to express its appreciation not only for what our educators do every day, but also for how they have risen to the many challenges presented by the COVID-19 pandemic,” said GPISD Board President Aaron King.

The Board, which has been discussing this plan since the fall of 2020, was finally able to take action on the plan as a thank you to all District employees. This action takes place just two weeks before the District’s Employee Appreciation Week May 3-7.

“There is no one in our District that has not been focused on making sure our students can continue to learn,” said Superintendent Linda Ellis. “Everyone understood from the onset of the pandemic, that we would have to do things differently. For that we are grateful.”

The Employee Appreciation Compensation plan will begin its rollout during the week of May 3-7.

High school.

From Carrie to Buffy the Vampire Slayer, monsters and high school have gone together like, well … Frankenstein and Dracula. It can be scary stuff.

As part of a class project, students at GPISD’s Dubiski Career High School played with the idea of what would happen if there was a monster lurking on their campus. That project grew into something much more. As in, feature-length more.

In the 2018-2019 school year, Dubiski Career High School instructors Tyler Case and Brian Blosser took a short-film project and turned it into a full-blown movie-making adventure.

The film, titled “Tardy Terror,” had a budget of $3,000 (with $2,500 of that donated) and ended up taking 65 days to shoot. That didn’t involve editing, post-production, or a worldwide pandemic that slowed – but didn’t stop – the project.

The cast is almost exclusively students though some professional actors, previously brought in to speak to and mentor students, ended up being part of the film as well. Several teachers were also involved as were a number of extras and even some parents. Though most of the film was shot on the Dubiski campus, the crew also used Main Event in Grand Prairie, Hangman’s House of Horrors, and the Gopher-Warrior Bowl. Costumes were made by Midnight Studio Effects and the school’s Architecture pathway even built some of the sets.

The students, and the school, hosted a limited, invitation-only, masked and socially distant premiere at the Studio Movie Grill in the Arlington Highlands on Thursday, October 29, at 7:00 p.m. On Halloween, they had a 24-hour showing of the movie on YouTube.

Their goals are to submit their work to film festivals, get it on Amazon Prime and Vudu, and ultimately market it for sale with money going  directly back into the program so other students may have the same opportunity.

For a look at the film, here are some previews of “Tardy Terror”:

Tardy Terror – The Blast Clip
Behind the Scenes

Watch the Movie