October 2024

The HCM Benefits Department is launching Tuesday Talks: Achieving Your Retirement Goals for the school year. This new initiative provides district employees with essential knowledge and resources to prepare for a successful and secure retirement.

Diverse and engaging events

On select Tuesdays each month, the HCM Benefits Department will host a variety of retirement-focused events to cater to different learning preferences and schedules. The program may include:

• Virtual seminars—Convenient online sessions providing employees with information and resources for retirement.
• In-person seminars—Interactive face-to-face sessions providing employees with information and resources for retirement.
• Lunch and Learns with Trusted Capitol Group—Informative lunchtime sessions providing guidance on Social Security, Teacher Retirement System benefits, retirement savings, and more
• Special seminar with TRS—A comprehensive seminar in March featuring insights from TRS

Topics Covered

Seminars will cover a range of critical topics to help employees prepare for retirement, including but not limited to:

• Steps to Retirement—Detailed guidance on the essential steps to take as you approach retirement
• Retirement Service Award—Information on how to receive payment for accumulated local days
• Retirement Savings Accounts—Insights on different types of retirement accounts and how to maximize retirement savings.
• Eligibility and more—Understanding the criteria for retirement benefits and other important considerations

How to participate

Due to space constraints, the HCM Benefits Department encourages all employees to frequently check the Benefits website for the latest event details and registration information. Registration will be on a first-come, first-served basis, so employees must sign up early to secure a spot.

Here’s how to stay updated and register:

1. Visit the Benefits website—Regularly check for updates on upcoming events.
2. Register for events—Employees may sign up for the seminars that fit their interests and schedule.
3. Mark your calendar—Employees may add the event dates to their calendar, so they don’t miss the event.

For more information and to register for upcoming events, please click here or email retirement@dallasisd.org.

As Dallas ISD celebrates National Principals Month during October, Toni Molina, principal at James S. Hogg New Tech Center, reflects on what her legacy as principal will be and how that legacy is the impact she can make on others. 

“I always look at our students and tell the staff that every day they come in, they’re part of somebody’s history,” she said. “As educators, we don’t see it like that because we’re in the thick of it, but that is what we’re doing. We’re changing somebody’s history every day we show up.”

Molina speaks from experience. A graduate of Dallas ISD, she credits her education—and the opportunities that came with it—with changing the trajectory of her family’s life.

“The first teacher I can actually recall is my first grade teacher, Ms. Welsh,” she said. “She really made me feel safe, given the background I came from—we were very poor and I didn’t always feel like I belonged. I never felt like that in her classroom.”

Molina started school at Gabe P. Allen New Tech Academy (formerly Gabe P. Allen Elementary School) and graduated from Moisés E. Molina High School.

Her parents got their GEDs. Now, two of her children graduated from Molina High School, and her youngest daughter is a freshman at Booker T. Washington High School for the Performing and Visual Arts.

“Our legacy is different now,” Molina said. “We have a Hispanic man who graduated from college. He’s the first from my maternal side of the family to do that.”

Growing up, Molina wanted to be an accountant. But she quickly realized her heart was leading her on a new path that would take her back to Dallas ISD to be a teacher, and eventually, a principal.

“I had some office jobs, but they weren’t for me,” she said. “When I got out of high school, I started working at a private school as a pre-K teacher. I liked the pace of it, and I liked helping people.”

Molina thought about all she had to overcome and the teachers who helped along the way, as well as the impact they had on her life, and realized that teaching was where she needed to be. After obtaining the teacher certifications, she started her tenure in the district at Gabe P. Allen. 

Now, as principal at Hogg, Molina finds ways to foster traditions with her students that she hopes will one day become part of the school’s legacy. For example, drawing from her experience being active in sports, Molina strives to promote Hogg as one big team.

“One thing I always ask is ‘What are we?’ and ‘What represents us?’” she said. 

“Good morning, Razorbacks” is how Molina greets students every morning to emphasize not only the school’s mascot but also what it represents. 

“This year, we’re really focused on what the characteristics of a razorback are,” she said. “If you ask our students, it means we’re resilient, we’re tenacious. We don’t give up.”

Olivia Rodriguez is a staple at the café in the Dallas ISD’s Linus Wright Administration Building, where she has worked since 2017 after years of working in a school cafeteria, where she forged connections with the community and the students because to her, food means family and culture. 

Rodriguez joined the Food and Nutrition Services Department in 2014 at Leonides Gonzalez Cigarroa, M.D. Elementary School. One of her favorite things about working there was the connection she forged with the students who visited the cafeteria daily. 

“The students would always sing to me when it was my birthday,” said Rodriguez with tears welling up in her eyes. “The children come up to you and hug you.” 

While she misses the school, she finds that working in the administration building allows her to meet people from all over the district and also spend more time with her own children, Rodriguez said.

Rodriguez is originally from La Moncada, a municipality of Tarimoro in the state of Guanajuato. While she has been in the United States for almost two decades, she said she carries the memories of her hometown and country in her heart always. 

“On September 27, it will be 19 years since I took that leap of faith and left my family and friends to start a new life here,” she said. Since leaving Mexico, Rodriguez has established roots in the city and Dallas ISD—her three children, ranging in ages from high school to elementary school age, attend district schools. 

Keeping her Mexican culture alive is something Rodriguez strives for in her family. Her children speak Spanish, and she and her family often sit down at the table to enjoy traditional dishes. She loves to cook chicken mole with rice.

“I don’t have a special recipe because I always make it more or less remembering how my mom used to make it, because she doesn’t make it anymore,” she said. 

Rodriguez doesn’t have a written recipe, because she learned how to make mole from her mom, adding her own personal touch to it. She just knows how much of each ingredient the dish needs—tanteando (estimating the measurements), she said. 

One of the things she remembers fondly about Mexico is the celebrations they had in her hometown of La Moncada. 

“On Sept. 16, Mexico’s Independence Day, we would participate in parades, where the schools and the community would walk together in unity,” she said. 

Rodriguez said there were school bands called la banda de guerra in the parade where they would march in unison with percussion instruments and cornets. She participated in the band as well as danced folkloric music from her state of Guanajuato. There was also the student banda de viento, which was a more traditional band, different from the banda de guerra with instruments like the trumpet, trombone, tuba, saxophone, and so on. 

She recalls the memories of the excitement of preparing for such celebrations. Her school and community would get together on Sept. 15 for the traditional Grito de Dolores at midnight, which represents the historic event that happened in Dolores, Hidalgo, when Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla rang a church bell and gave the call to arms that began the Mexican War of Independence. 

Rodriguez said that it’s important that her children and others know about their rich cultural history because it gives them a sense of belonging and pride, all of which contributes to their self esteem. 

One of Rodriguez’s wishes for her children and the children of the district is that they fulfill their dreams and stay safe always, she said. As far as her own dreams, she hopes to return to Mexico someday after her children are grown and she has retired.