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HomeMy WebLinkAbout2025-04-22 Euless Articles 18-wheeler knocks down Euless power line, leaving nearby residents in the dark By Allie Spillyards • Published April 16, 2025 • Updated on April 16, 2025 at 10:22 pm NBC Universal, Inc. Nearly 2,000 homes and businesses lost power in Euless on Wednesday after police say a grocery delivery truck collided with a power line. It happened around 3 p.m. along West Harwood Road near the intersection of North Main Street. Six power poles snapped, and downed lines stretched multiple blocks towards Euless City Hall. “It’s huge. We had to summon almost every police officer and the fire department immediately because half this stretch was still live when it was laying down on the road,” said Officer Tyler Killman. Killman said the incident is believed to be an accident. While the department’s commercial vehicle unit was called, the driver is not expected to face charges. He said the truck exited from the same entrance it used just an hour prior. “We’re not sure if something changed with the power line, but he unexpectedly caught the top of his cab on a power line,” he said. Nearly 2,000 homes and businesses lost power. Several traffic lights were also impacted. “It was a power surge and then it came back on and then 15 minutes later, it went out for good,” said Josh Reynolds. Nearby, dismissal was delayed at North Euless Elementary School. Police say no one was injured and power was restored for most within a couple of hours. But for those living at the Pointe at Fair Oaks apartments, outages are expected to last until 2 a.m. “It was starting to get hot in the house, so I ran to get some pizza, so we’d have something to eat. All of our food is in the fridge, so we don’t want to open our fridge,” said Canyon Veytia. Once Oncor’s job is complete, Euless Police say work will begin to repair data and communication lines. Police expect Harwood Road will remain closed between Main and Aransas Drive through Thursday morning’s commute. Hurst-Euless-Bedford ISD sees mixed results from midyear test results by Matthew Sgroi April 7, 2025 4:30 pm Hurst-Euless-Bedford ISD’s youngest students are making steady progress in reading, according to district officials, even when the data doesn’t show it at first glance. During a March 31 board meeting, officials shared early literacy and benchmark assessment data from the middle of the 2024-25 school year, highlighting familiar midyear trends and a shift back to trusted testing practices. The results showed that while some scores fell year-to-year, district leaders are confident in what’s happening behind the numbers, Holly Norgaard, director of curriculum, told trustees. Year-over-year comparisons involve different classes and naturally reflect some variation in performance from one group to the next. Norgaard also emphasized that while data showed some declines, midyear assessments only capture part of the picture, especially for early learners whose reading skills develop rapidly between testing windows. Particularly, kindergarten comprehension scores dipped between the beginning and middle of the year — a drop Norgaard said the district expects annually. “Because comprehension at the beginning of the year for kindergarten (is) things like, do they know where the cover of the book is? Do they know how to hold it and open it up? And by the middle of the year, are they opening it up and reading it?” she said. She added that the assessments themselves increase in rigor as the year goes on. “Every time we test them, it’s not at the same mark,” she said. “The target is moving.” Midyear results showed mixed trends across grade levels: Kindergarten fluency scores showed “fairly minimal movement” between the beginning and middle of the year, Norgaard said. Comprehension scores declined — a typical midyear dip that the district sees annually as expectations increase for young readers. First-grade fluency scores fell, but fluency remained consistent when compared to students’ performance in kindergarten. English comprehension stayed even, while Spanish comprehension improved compared to last year’s first-grade class. Second-grade students scored slightly below last year’s class in fluency and performed worse in comprehension from the start of the year through the middle. This year’s report also marked the district’s first effort to track performance in its expanding dual language model, which replaces the previous late-exit bilingual program. “In dual language, we don’t want to minimize the language students came in with,” Norgaard said. “We want them to grow in both. And that’s what we’re seeing.” Norgaard said students in dual language classrooms made gains in both English and Spanish fluency between the beginning and middle of the year. The March 31 meeting also marked the return of the district’s traditional benchmark assessments for English in grades three through 10. Last year, HEB ISD used state- provided interim tests, but the results were unreliable, Norgaard said. “We did this for a year, and we did study,” she said. “But the data was not giving us what we wanted.” Interim assessments — while administered on the same platform as state standardized tests like STAAR and adaptive to student responses — appeared to inflate results at higher performance levels, she said. By contrast, the district -authored assessments use secure, original questions and allow for greater control over alignment and instructional planning, she said. Because the district shifted assessments multiple times over the last three years — from reading-only assessments to integrated reading and writing tests, to state interims, and now back to district assessments — year-to-year comparisons are limited. Still, the class data revealed key takeaways: Fourth-grade, seventh-grade and eighth-grade students met grade level at lower rates on this year’s district benchmark assessments compared to last year’s STAAR test; fifth and sixth grades saw increases in the amount of students who met grade level. Fifth-grade students are already performing at or above their previous STAAR results at the masters level. Older grades, especially ninth and tenth, saw drops in high-level writing performance. Norgaard said part of that is due to teacher-scored compositions, where instructors often grade more rigorously than state scorers. Intervention planning is now underway, with teachers using benchmark data to target students nearing the next performance tier, Norgaard said. “We want to make sure we’re identifying the right kids at every level,” she said. “Not assuming they’ve got it — actually knowing they do.”