Two Westside residents were appointed to the El Paso Independent School District Board of Trustees on Thursday, filling seats vacant for two months and setting the stage for a crucial decision on whether to ask voters to approve a bond issue later this year.
Matthew Reza will represent District 6, which is the Franklin High School attendance area; and Brian Kelley will represent District 7, the Coronado High School attendance area. The appointments were made by the five members currently serving on the school board. The new trustees will serve until elections in May 2027.
Reza, 48, is a psychiatric mental health nurse practitioner and retired Navy officer. He was the unanimous choice by the five current board members over two other candidates for the appointment.
“I’m seeking to serve as District 6 trustee because I believe every student deserves a safe school, strong teachers, responsible leadership, and access to resources needed to succeed,” Reza said in his interview with the school board.
Kelley, 51, is a vice president of Hunt Real Estate. He said the district needs to improve its facilities to make EPISD more attractive to families in the competition for students.
“If we want to combat the population decline, as well as attract people into our schools, I think we need to support them with the right facilities,” he said in an interview with El Paso Matters after being appointed.
The board voted 3-2 in selecting Kelley from among six candidates, with educator Esther Zapata supported by trustees Mindy Sutton and Jack Loveridge. Trustees Leah Hanany, Alex Cuellar and Robert Osterland voted for Kelley.
The next major decision for the EPISD board is deciding whether to ask voters to approve a bond issue to address extensive infrastructure concerns in the district. The district administration is recommending that a bond issue be submitted to voters for the Nov. 3 general election.
The school board will decide Tuesday whether to call for a bond issue vote in November and, if so, how much to ask voters to approve. The board could decide to hold off on a bond election, with May 2027 being the alternate date.
Current school board members said they wanted the Coronado and Franklin areas to have representation on the board as part of that decision.
After his selection, Kelley said he needed to learn more about the bond plans, but said the board and district have more work to do to build public trust.
“We want to set ourselves up for success, and right now, I think the perception of the school board and the district in general is at a nadir,” he said in an interview with El Paso Matters, adding that EPISD should “use this time to rebuild the trust in the community.”
Reza declined comment after his selection.
The two school board vacancies were created in June, when District 6 Trustee Valerie Ganelon Beals and District 7 Trustee Daniel Call resigned shortly after the board voted to declare financial exigency in the face of tens of millions of dollars of budget deficits for fiscal years 2026 and 2027. That triggered dozens of layoffs of teachers and other employees to reduce spending.
Call was the only trustee to oppose the exigency declaration, and Beals was absent from the meeting where it was addressed. Call said he didn’t have confidence that the majority of the board, with whom he often clashed, could properly manage the district’s financial challenges. Beals said she had moved out of District 6 to take care of a family member.
El Paso’s largest school district has faced numerous challenges in recent years, including declining enrollment, reduced state funding, a change in superintendents, a controversial school closing plan in 2025 that didn’t yield the promised savings, and the belated discovery in May that the district was running a deficit that was tens of millions of dollars higher than thought.
EPISD has identified more than $1 billion in capital needs for the district, and a citizens committee helped district leaders identify up to $450 million in projects for a potential bond is
A major bond issue would almost certainly require residents and businesses in EPISD to pay higher property taxes in coming years.
Three applicants sought appointment to the District 6 seat, and the District 7 seat drew six candidates. In addition to interviews with the school board members Thursday, the candidates participated in forums earlier in the week led by students at Franklin and Coronado high schools.
The other candidates in District 6 were Roger Scott Brown, a facilities and operations executive; and Tom Handy, a retired Army military intelligence officer.
In District 7, the other candidates were veteran educators Zapata, Ruth Arras and Xavier Miranda; financial professional Michael Houghton; and Lorraine O’Donnell, who served on the EPISD board from 2003 to 2007 and now works as director of grants and external funding at New Mexico State University.
The last four trustees elected to represent District 6, which covers the Franklin High School feeder pattern, didn’t finish the four-year terms they were elected to serve:
- Patricia Hughes, elected in 2007 and 2011, was on the board when it was removed by the Texas education commissioner in 2013 for failing to oversee then-Superintendent Lorenzo Garcia, who was convicted on federal corruption charges.
- Trent Hatch, elected in 2015, resigned in February 2019 while serving as board president, after a teacher organization raised questions about whether he actually lived in the district.
- Freddy Klayel Avalos resigned in October 2022, citing “a new set of challenges in my personal life.”
- Beals, elected in 2023, resigned June 5. County property records show that she and her husband bought a house in Canutillo on April 2, and sold their Westside home in District 6 on June 2.
The post New El Paso ISD trustees appointed for Franklin and Coronado areas before bond vote appeared first on El Paso Matters.
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