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Leah Hanany is President of the Board of Trustees of the El Paso Independent School District and is as dishonest as she is incompetent.
The Board passed its FY 2027 budget on June 16, 2027, shortly after revealing a third-quarter budget gap of $52.8 million and declaring financial exigency.
On September 15, the Board was presented with the property valuations for EPISD and a no-new-revenue tax rate of $1.0233 per $100 of taxable property value.
That same day, the Board voted 7-0 to adopt a tax rate of $1.0745, increasing the tax bill on the average-value single family residence by 9.7%, from $1,179.77 to $1,294.18, a difference of $114.41.
Rather than announcing to the public the 9.7% tax increase, Hanany declared in an email sent at 5:37pm today that the “Board adopted a rate of $1.0745 per $100 of taxable property value, down from $1.0807 last year.” She strategically omitted that the average taxable value of a single-family residence increased by 10.2% in the same period.
In other words, she intentionally deceived her constituents in order to create the impression they will be taxed less in FY 2027 when precisely the opposite is true. In so doing, she followed the playbook of Mayor Renard Johnson, who made similar statements in the wake of the 5.2% City tax increase for FY 2026.
In the same email, Hanany states that EPISD does not set the value of our homes, which is true. But EPISD receives our home valuations and sets tax rates accordingly and thus controls the amount of tax we pay.
HANANY’S RECORD OF INCOMPETENCE
None of this should come as a surprise from a woman who voted against closing eight EPISD schools on November 20, 2024, exacerbating the district’s financial crisis, and then voted the following May to keep Lamar Elementary open, costing the district $3.2 million per year for the benefit of only 206 students.
Hanany then led the effort to fire Superintendent Diana Sayavedra, who was perfectly competent, and appoint CFO Martha Aguirre as Interim Superintendent. She claimed this decision would strengthen EPISD financially but Aguirre led the district into a catastrophic financial crisis.
This is what happens when an elected leader with no financial acumen places her leftist political agenda over the needs of 44,700 students.
There is no way this Board of Trustees, led by Hanany and Loveridge, should be entrusted with issuing and managing a large general obligation bond and we will fight to oppose it through all our networks.
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