El Paso Matters – ‘I worked so hard’: El Paso ISD employees fear layoffs, financial exigency vote delayed

The El Paso Independent District Board of Trustees has postponed by two days its plan to vote whether to accept the recommendations to declare financial exigency and eliminate an estimated 410 jobs to help address a financial crisis.

The board initially planned to vote at its 8 a.m. June 2 meeting, but pushed the decision until a 5 p.m. meeting Thursday, June 4, which will allow more community members to give input on next steps at both meetings.

Superintendent Brian Lusk estimates the district’s workforce size will shrink by about 10% over the summer, but noted there is still more work to be done to figure out how exactly EPISD plans to close a $42 million budget gap for the 2026-27 school year. 

Lusk said the district began by reviewing 200 vacancies that could be eliminated from the budget, but noted it will likely have to lay off employees if the board approves his proposal to declare financial exigency, a rarely used step that allows him to break employment contracts and make other changes that would normally be outside his authority.

“We continue to be cognizant and very focused on making sure our classroom ratios and experience don’t change. With that, we know the hard decisions that need to be made,” Lusk told El Paso Matters Friday.

“It’s important to note, it’s not the employee’s fault that there might be a redundancy in the work that they do compared with somebody else. That’s just how it was set up, and we’ve just got to really right-size,” he added.

Interim Chief Financial Officer David Bates said the district will also look at other ways to cut costs, including reducing stipends.

“It won’t solve the whole problem, but it’ll help us for sure,” Bates said.

These decisions come just days after a financial consultant on May 19 recommended the district declare financial exigency after discovering a surprise $52.8 million deficit for the current school year, along with a $42 million deficit for the next if drastic cuts aren’t made.

There is little the district can do at the end of the school year to reduce the current year deficit, so the focus is on making deep cuts in the 2026-27 school year budget, which the school board must approve by June 30.

EPISD employees said the sudden development announced just weeks before classes are scheduled to end for the summer has them feeling nervous about their job security and financial future.

Sandra Perez, a high school testing coordinator who’s been with EPISD for 27 years and is only a few more years away from retirement, said she is worried about losing her health insurance and retirement benefits. 

“I worked so hard just to be cut two years away from what I’ve earned,” she said

Lusk’s lists of potential job cuts include testing coordinators, who oversee and help conduct standardized testing. Agenda material posted Thursday indicated 10 testing coordinators would be eliminated, but updated material posted Friday no longer includes specific numbers of positions being targeted. 

Middle school physical education teacher Michael Mendoza, who is not a probationary employee, said he feels like teachers and campus-level staff are being punished for a crisis caused by the district’s leaders.

“I am extremely worried about losing my job because of mistakes leadership in the district has made. Teachers and campus staff are absolutely not at fault for this deficit. Yet, we are losing our jobs,” he said.

Cuts the district plans to make at the campus level appear to be limited to probationary employees in their first or second year on the job, who don’t have the option to appeal contract decisions made by a school board with the commissioner of education.

El Paso Teachers Association President Norma De La Rosa said the district has already started the yearly process of rearranging and cutting positions in preparation for enrollment declines, which often leads to employees being temporarily displaced while finding a job for them.

De la Rosa said this process normally makes employees nervous about their job security, but it has been amplified this year by the threat of layoffs.

“One of the things that the district has always done is that when a teacher has been displaced, they’ve always assured them they still have a job for next year. Now, with everything that’s happening, I don’t know what’s going to happen,” De La Rosa said.

“Because there’s just so many unanswered questions in this entire process, I think you can understand why teachers are very antsy and very nervous and very stressed out about this,” she added

Though the district had already been in the process of eliminating vacant positions and downsizing its administrative staff size, Lusk said the district has “made zero moves in relation to financial exigency.” 

“We’ve had zero board approval at this point. Once the board approves, we will take the actions at the appropriate time,” Lusk added.

EPISD currently has over 7,400 employees and 3,500 teachers, according to a Texas Education Agency staffing report. Reducing 10% of that workforce through layoffs, attrition and unfilled vacancies – as Lusk suggested – would take the total number of employees down to about 6,700. 

Both Lusk and Bates experienced the fallout of financial exigency when working for the Dallas Independent School District. The district declared financial exigency in 2008 and laid off hundreds of employees to deal with a $64 million deficit.

“I was a principal, so it had a significant impact. This is very different, because obviously I have to make hard decisions in the chair that I sit in. It’s difficult. I do lose sleep, and we’ve got to keep thinking and working for our students, and our families, our teachers, and our staff to make the best decisions possible,” Lusk said.

Fewer than 2% of Texas school districts have filed for financial exigency in the past decade, according to the Texas Education Agency.

Though Lusk initially focused on moving the district forward during a news conference last week, he later said in an interview with El Paso Matters that he wants to hold accountable the employees responsible for the surprise deficit. Because of privacy laws, he said, the district  likely won’t be able to give the public many details.

“I don’t spend a whole lot of time looking backwards, because I think the future is what’s more important. But you also have to understand history. In this case, we have to understand how it happened,” Lusk said.

“You’ll see over time that those who need to be held accountable will be held accountable. We’re not gonna make announcements about it, but we’re gonna handle things the way we need to professionally,” he added.

On Thursday, EPISD released documents listing about 70 probationary contract positions that could be up for elimination. This includes occupational therapists, diagnosticians, testing coordinators, instructional coaches, social workers and school psychologists, among others. 

The updated supporting material posted Friday no longer has numbers tied to specific positions. The district didn’t explain the change. 

Though the district will have fewer instructional coaches, who help train and support teachers, Lusk said teachers will still get that help as part of the state’s Teacher Incentive Allotment program. That training will be provided by administrators such as principals and assistant principals, he said.

Under the program, high-performing teachers recognized by the state can earn an extra $3,000 to $36,000 a year on top of their base pay.

Lusk said the district will look into helping teachers get certified in high needs areas, such as special education, which is a strategy the Socorro Independent School District used to reduce layoffs in 2025.

“The team will look at that possibility as a consideration, but we’re not there yet,” Lusk said.

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