Continuing an Oak Cliff legacy with West Dallas roots
In the almost two months that Jamie Contreras has been principal at Gabe P. Allen New Tech Academy, he has been building on his family’s legacy in Oak Cliff and West Dallas. Every day he walks through the school, he sees a hallway or a room that was there when his father attended in the 1960s and knows he is in the right place.
“When you look around, you can see where it has been updated, but you can also see what’s original to the school, and I can hear dad,” he said. “When I see the young boys here, I can see how dad would have been then. I see dad in them, and I want them to have the same foundation he had to be successful in life.”
In the 21 years he has worked in Dallas ISD, he always has wanted to work in Oak Cliff, where he grew up and where he and his twin brother—Joseph, a lead dyslexia evaluator in Student Services— attended school, graduating from Sunset High School. Contreras had passed up opportunities for advancement in the past that took him out of Oak Cliff, but when the offer to lead Allen New Tech Academy was presented, he couldn’t say no.
“I wanted to stay [in Oak Cliff] and give back to my community, but when I was told it was Gabe P. Allen, I knew I had to come,” Contreras said. His father, who passed away in May 2023, attended the school from kindergarten through third grade, and his widowed mother, Yolanda, lives nearby.
One of the first things Contreras did after arriving at Allen in September was find a picture of how the school looked when his father went there and place it among those of his wife, Valerie, a fifth-grade teacher at Leslie A. Stemmons Elementary School; his two daughters, Sadie and Madeline, the youngest of whom still attends Mary McLeod Bethune Elementary School, where he was assistant principal for nine years; and those of the rest of his family. Stemmons is Contreras’ elementary school.
Legacy and deep connections can be found throughout Contreras’ career in the district but also in his life as a student.
After graduating from Sunset High School, where he played football and was student body president, Contreras thought he would go to college on a football scholarship that never materialized. Instead, he worked 40 hours a week and attended Dallas College on a Rising Star scholarship after which he got another scholarship to finish a degree at the University of North Texas.
While working on his degree, he started his career in the district as a special education teacher assistant at L.O. Donald Elementary School. Later, he taught at Celestino Mauricio Soto Jr. Elementary School, where he was named Campus Teacher of the Year and designated Master Teacher. Eventually, he became assistant principal at Bethune and stayed there for several years because working in his community, being near his parents and being able to spend time with his daughters was a priority. After his father got sick and was undergoing chemotherapy, being close by to help when needed was important.
In 2021 he got the opportunity to be part of the LEAD program, which also helped him get his master’s degree at UNT, and last year became a resident principal at Soto.
“Dallas ISD and the LEAD program invested in me,” he said. “I want to give back.”
Contreras said his parents were at-risk students, he was an at-risk student, but his daughters are not considered at-risk.
“Going to college is a given for them,” he said. “We broke that generational chain. Somebody helped us break it, and I was the first-generation college graduate because someone told me ‘I believe in you.’ I want to be that person for others.”
Contreras said his work as principal is a ministry, and every day that he wakes up, he commits to having his actions reflect his beliefs by building relationships, by emphasizing equity, by getting back to human contact, by having conversations about people and establishing a team culture—basically, treating others as he would like to be treated.
“If you build those relationships, the academics will follow,” he said.
Contreras also keeps an eye on the data and has hit the ground running to give back to the district, the community, the students and the team members at Allen by setting the path to improvement. He doesn’t believe that the fact that the school is rated D or that it is 99% low socioeconomic should be something that holds them back from achieving higher academic levels and fulfilling their potential.
“Education wasn’t a big deal to my grandparents, which is probably why my father only went up to the eighth grade and started working young,” Contreras said. “But he would be so excited that I am here now. This is why I am committed to making sure kids get the same now that he got then, a safe place to be, something to eat and people who care about them.”
“We are telling our West Side story,” he added. “We don’t have to follow the story others tell for us. We can write our own story for ourselves and for anyone who wasn’t expecting us to be winners. We get to decide what that looks like and how we make it happen with growth and a change mindset.”
