The El Paso Independent School District Board of Trustees voted unanimously Monday to appoint a new member to the District 3 seat instead of holding an election.
The seat was left vacant after former Trustee Josh Acevedo was elected to the El Paso City Council in January. Acevedo took office on the EPISD board in 2021 and his most recent term was set to expire in May 2025.
School boards are required to fill any vacant seats within 180 days, either by appointment or election, if there is more than one year remaining in the term, according to the Texas Education Code.
The appointed trustee would need to run in the next school board election in May 2025 to keep the seat. Trustees do not get paid and serve four-year terms.
Some trustees said they were in favor of making an appointment to avoid spending money on a special election, which was estimated to cost the district about $46,000 or up to $95,000 if the Central Appraisal District election does not go forward as scheduled in May. The cost would double in the event of a runoff.
“In this day and age, when school finance is so tight and with the Texas Legislature really not doing us any favors, I think it would be prudent (and) financially responsible to have an appointment rather than an election,” Trustee Leah Hanany said during the meeting. “I think we need to appropriate as many dollars as possible directly to the classroom. …The only thing I would ask is that there’s a way to involve the community.”
Leah Hanany, secretary of the El Paso Independent School District Board of Trustees, prepares for the start of a board meeting. (Corrie Boudreaux/El Paso Matters)
Board President Israel Irrobali said the vote established an ad hoc committee that will design the appointment process. He said the process would then be brought to a vote during the board’s regular monthly meeting in February.
The committee will include Hanany and Trustee Daniel Call, who will serve as the committee’s chair.
In previous years, this process included a public forum and a school board meeting where applicants would answer questions and make their case on why they should be appointed.
Call said that this time he hopes it will include a procedure to verify applicants’ credentials after the board several years ago appointed a trustee who lied about her background and an educator.
The board appointed Mickey Loweree to EPISD’s District 7 seat in 2017. At the time, Loweree claimed she had a degree in kinesiology from the University of Texas at El Paso and was a former EPISD teacher. An El Paso Times investigation later revealed EPISD had no record of her working as a teacher and UTEP had no record of her diploma.
Loweree lost her seat after Call defeated her in a 2019 school board election.
“The trustee that was selected in the process totally misrepresented a lot of things in her background and it didn’t come out until later,” Call said during the meeting. “One of the things I want to add to the process this time is some type of verification mechanism where any claims for education or work history can be verified.”
The post EPISD school board to appoint new member to replace Josh Acevedo appeared first on El Paso Matters.
Read: Read More