Fifty-five El Paso Independent School District employees are losing their jobs after the board of trustees took a series of votes Monday to terminate their contracts for the 2026-27 school year.
The vote was the final step needed to lay off dozens of employees, including teachers, instructional coaches and social workers, who received notices last week informing them their positions were identified for elimination as part of a reduction in force.
“Today is just one of the most difficult days we’ll ever have as trustees,” board President Leah Hanany said during a news conference after the meeting. “We know that what we’re doing is making a very concerted and valiant, to be frank, effort to align our budget to what needs of kids are in the classrooms. This board has been so committed to doing that work.”
Hanany said other at-will positions that don’t require contracts may still be cut by the district’s administration without going to the board for a vote, but did not say how many could be impacted or when the decision will be made.
Superintendent Brian Lusk said the district has been working to reduce the number of employees affected by the layoff, and will try to find jobs for those who were.
“I can tell you without question that the team has worked extremely hard to find the best fit for all team members who may be in this position, as we’ve been going through this financial exigency process,” Lusk said during the meeting.
The affected employees include 42 teachers and 13 support staff, ranging from instructional coaches to social workers. District leaders voted to eliminate over 90 employees last week and initially estimated they would need to cut 400 jobs.
The votes were grouped by job title and location and were part of a cost-cutting plan approved by the board June 4, which included declaring financial exigency. The declaration allows the district to terminate employee contracts in the middle of their term to reduce payroll expenses by $40 million from 2025-26 levels.
While school psychologists were originally on the list of employees expected to be cut, the board decided to keep them.
Before the votes, school psychologists, student outreach specialists and parents pleaded with the board to consider the importance of the positions being cut.
Student outreach specialist Julian Salinas, whose responsibilities include contacting families to address attendance issues and ensure they enroll in school every year, said employees in his position help bring in state funding that’s calculated based on students’ attendance.
“For a district who is bleeding money, you need positions like ours. When we go to find you, we bring you back. Not only do we ensure the future of that student, but we secure revenue,” Salinas said.
Student outreach specialist Claudia Medina said she’s had to locate a student who stopped going to school after his parents were deported, and helped him start going to classes again.
“We are often the people making the calls, conducting home visits, locating students, connecting families with resources, and helping students overcome barriers that keep them from coming to school. When students disappear, we look for them. When families are in crisis, we show up,” Medina said.
Others, such as parent Roger Scott Brown, shared concerns with how cutting school psychologists and other employees who support special education students will affect them.
“As a parent with a special needs kid who has autism and ADHD, he might be a little young Sheldon, but he needs these people. He talks to them almost every day for some crisis. You gotta keep the people in the classrooms,” Brown said.
Trustee Mindy Sutton cast the lone vote against cutting a handful of educational diagnosticians, who evaluate students dealing with behavioral or developmental issues.
“Dr. Lusk has assured me that the remaining (diagnosticians) can do the work, and I’m willing to trust his judgment. But, as a kindergarten teacher, and working with the diagnostician closely, I’m afraid that this might hurt us,” Sutton said.
On June 8, EPISD sent the Texas Workforce Commission a notice informing them the district plans to lay off up to 250 employees by June 19.
The next day, on June 9, more than 60 employees received notices that their positions had been recommended to be cut, with a form to fill out by June 12 if they chose to resign instead. Union leaders warned that resigning could disqualify employees from getting unemployment benefits.
The district did not reveal how many, if any, took the resignation.
EPISD will need to reimburse the Texas Workforce Commission for any unemployment payments sent to its former employees. Hanany said the district will make a $50,000 payment every quarter for unemployment reimbursements, but did not say for how long.
Union leaders previously warned employees against resigning voluntarily because it could affect their ability to qualify for financial aid.
Chief Human Capital Management Officer Patricia Cortez said the district is working with the Texas Workforce Commission to ensure all employees, even those who resigned, can get unemployment benefits.
“The district will be submitting a mass claim to initiate the unemployment process, regardless of the employee’s decision to either resign or go through this process,” Cortez said.
Deputy Superintendent David Bates plans to recommend that the board on Tuesday adopt a $534.8 million budget for the 2026-27 school year, a 1% reduction compared to the previous year, with a $4.3 million deficit that will be paid for by the district’s reserve funds. The board will hold a public hearing before voting on the budget.
The board will also vote Tuesday on a compensation plan for the coming year, which will not include pay raises and will remove or alter certain employee stipends, saving the district $1.1 million a year.
This includes eliminating stipends for coaches who meet certain competition requirements, teachers with bilingual certifications and principal mentors who help train campus leaders, among others. The plan also reduces stipends for middle and elementary school intramural sports coaches, certain fine arts teachers and some extracurricular program sponsors, to name a few.
Lusk has said the layoffs, combined with ongoing staffing reductions made when employees resign or retire, would likely downsize the district’s workforce by 8% to 9% – or about 600 employees – compared to the start of the 2025-26 school year.
Without these major cuts, EPISD officials expected to have a $37.3 million deficit for the coming school year, which would have been paid for by dipping into the district’s reserves. That would have been on top of a $47.9 million deficit, which was initially estimated at $52.8 million, for the current fiscal year, which ends June 30.
Combined, the deficits would have nearly depleted the district’s savings, which Bates has said could put the district at risk of being put under the management of the Texas Education Agency.
EPISD should end the month with about $64 million in reserves, or enough to keep the district running for about 44 days in an emergency, El Paso Matters calculated.
Texas school districts need enough reserve funds to run for at least 75 days to get an A in the Financial Integrity Rating System of Texas. Districts that get a failed rating multiple years in a row risk losing their accreditation.
Declining enrollment, rising costs, limited increases in state funding and poor budget practices created a perfect storm that led to the unprecedented financial crisis.
The depth of the issue was not discovered until late in the school year, when it was too late to make any major budget adjustments.
The post El Paso ISD board votes to lay off 55 employees under financial exigency appeared first on El Paso Matters.
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