Donna Halstead, president of the Dallas Citizens Council, focused on public education and called on SMU students to tutor Dallas schoolchildren and become involved in the Dallas community at a meeting of the SMU College Republicans Wednesday night.
 

“The one thing you could do, more important than anything else, would be to spend an hour a week at a Dallas elementary school helping a child,” Halstead said.
 

Mentorship programs, Halstead said, have produced significant gains in student achievement district-wide, lifting underperforming schools to recognized and exemplary status in just a few years.
 

A former science teacher, Halstead said one of the most pressing issues facing the city is its public education system.
 

Halstead said she is encouraged by both a surge in students taking advanced placement exams, as well as by the progress evident in the upcoming class of graduating seniors from the Irma Rangel Young Women’s Leadership School. Ninety four to 95 percent of the class will enroll in a four-year college or university this fall, Halstead said.
 

Following Halstead’s address, Megan Rutledge, a first-year student from Greenwich, Conn., said she fully supports the magnet plan.
 

“I think that it’s really great to foster kids’ special interests and needs,” Rutledge said.
During her tenure as the longest-serving president of the influential Dallas civic group, Halstead said the council has been involved with many of Dallas’ most hotly debated topics. Most notable in recent history is the council’s part in the debate over the Trinity River project.