Denton ISD teachers and staff members will receive a pay increase after the DISD community approved of a tax rate increase under Proposition A.

The overview: Teachers will receive a $750 increase, which is more than 1% adjustment, while staff members will receive a 1% increase on the midpoint of their current pay grade, according to a district news release.

Superintendent Susannah O’Bara explained that through a district-wide survey staff members were asked how they wanted district leaders to utilize the additional funds. Staff members “overwhelmingly” supported increasing staff pay and deemed that a top priority, she said.

Quote of note: “Although we can’t do a huge increase right now … this is helping us to get a more level playing field before we bring you a compensation recommendation for the next budget season,” O’Bara said.

Knee Deep Plumbing in Denton now offers assessments and replacements of water softeners and filtration systems, according to a news release from the company.

The details: The services include both whole-home and point-of-use water filtration. The company started servicing water filters and softeners after receiving complaints of scale build-up and cloudy water, the release states.

“In many cases, those symptoms trace back to water quality issues or outdated treatment systems that were never updated as household needs changed,” manager Sue Janosko said. “Providing a structured service for water quality systems allows those issues to be evaluated directly rather than indirectly.”

• 733 Fort Worth Drive, Denton

MP Materials Corp. announced it has selected a 120-acre site in Northlake for its 10X campus, a planned large-scale earth magnet manufacturing campus in the Alliance area of Fort Worth.

Located less than 10 miles from another MP Materials’ Independence facility in Fort Worth, the 10X facility is expected to contribute to the company’s total production capacity of approximately 10,000 metric tons of neodymium-iron-boron, or NdFeB, rare earth magnets per year once it is operational, according to a news release.

A closer look: The site, which will be acquired from Hillwood, is within the AllianceTexas development and was selected following a national site evaluation process led by CBRE, a commercial real estate company.

MP Materials is expected to invest more than $1.25 billion into the project and create 1,500 direct manufacturing and engineering jobs with an average annual salary of $74,315, according to previous reporting.

Quote of note: “AllianceTexas continues to attract advanced manufacturing that creates jobs, diversifies our economy and strengthens America’s supply chain,” Hillwood Chair Ross Perot Jr. said.

The Texas Education Agency must correct roughly 4,200 errors in its elementary and middle school curriculum, the State Board of Education ruled Feb. 25.

The overview: The changes to the Bluebonnet Learning materials, a set of state-developed textbooks, include replacing improperly licensed images, fixing formatting errors or typos and correcting factual errors.

The SBOE approved the Bluebonnet materials in November 2024. The curriculum, which became available to districts ahead of the 2025-26 school year, has been criticized for frequent biblical references in the reading materials, although proponents said the materials would help improve student outcomes.

Zooming in: Before approving the changes, several board members expressed concerns about the “unprecedented” number of issues with the state-developed textbooks, noting that Texas taxpayers will cover the costs of reprinting the updated materials, as they were developed with state funds.

“I’m very concerned that, as a board, we have set a precedent for sloppy publishing. Many times, even if it's a typo, it could become an error of fact,” SBOE member Pam Little, R-Fairview, said.