Lamar Elementary School, one of eight El Paso Independent School District schools that was to close next year, will remain open indefinitely after the newly elected school board on Tuesday voted 5-2 to reverse the previous board’s decision.
Daniel Call and Valerie Ganelon Beals, the only remaining trustees on the board who voted in favor of the closures in November, voted against keeping the school open.
“The numbers used to justify the closure of Lamar were not just flawed, they were disingenuous,” board President Leah Hanany said ahead of the vote. “This is an opportunity for us to correct the record, and I believe we need to do that transparently, in partnership with the district and in partnership with our community, because academic achievement is not negotiable.”
During the meeting, former Lamar students, parents and community advocates urged the board to keep the school open.
“You all are correcting the injustice to our community and our children in Lamar Elementary,” said Erica Morales, a parent of a Lamar Elementary School student. “My hope is that the new school board in the next four years works with our wonderful school and community to address the structural needs and support that our building needs.”
Trustees also voted 5-2 to change the district’s employment policy to require the board’s approval before hiring certain administrative and campus leadership positions, including directors, assistant superintendents and high school principals. This was previously Superintendent Diana Sayavedra’s exclusive responsibility.
Call and Beals voted against the policy change.
The votes come just weeks after the May 3 school board elections led to a significant change to the board’s power dynamics, when four aligned school board candidates won their respective elections. Trustees Israel Irrobali and Isabel Hernandez, who voted in favor of the closures, were ousted; trustees Hanany and Jack Loveridge, who opposed the closures, were reelected and chosen by the new board to serve as president and vice president, respectively.
The plan to close Lamar along with seven other schools was part of an initiative known as Destination District Redesign put forward by Sayavedra to address declining enrollment by closing campuses and improving the ones that remain open.
Hanany has been critical of the metrics used to decide to close Lamar Elementary, which was an A-rated campus in 2022 and 2023 and a two-time National Blue Ribbon School, that serves a majority socioeconomically disadvantaged population. The school is in her district.
EPISD chief organizational transformation and equity officer Marivel Macias said the district estimates Lamar will be a C-rated campus in 2024, after the Texas Education Agency changed its accountability metrics.
Call was critical of the decision to only consider reopening a school in Hanany’s district, as EPISD faces a multi-million dollar budget deficit and other school districts in the area lay off employees to cut their budgets.
“Reopening Lamar Elementary is going to cost $3.2 million a year. … Next school year, we are facing a deficit of $31 million,” Call said. “That $31 million does not include the reopening of Lamar. … This is gambling our future.”
Though Hanany did not give specifics on how the board will address the budget deficit for the coming school year, she told El Paso Matters the board will “pursue every available avenue to make sure that we are we have financial austerity measures that center student outcomes and student success.”
Beals said the money used to keep Lamar open could be better used in other areas of the district.
“The $3.2 million needed to reopen Lamar can go towards saving 46 teachers from being laid off or bought out,” Beals said. “The $3.2 million in savings from closing Lamar respects our residents and taxpayers, provides additional opportunities to our students and secures jobs for our teachers. It puts our people first.”
To decide what schools to recommend for closure as part of DDR, administrators gave each campus a “seat score” based on student attendance, the number of extracurricular activities it offers, teacher vacancies and other factors. Those with a score of 72 or above were considered “destination schools,” which have facilities, programs and resources that attract students, teachers and parents.
Lamar Elementary, which has roughly 280 students, received a seat score of 79.
The school is only being used at 30% capacity and about 39% of elementary school-aged students living near the campus go to school somewhere else.
The 63-year-old school is considered to be in poor condition and has 20% of its buildings equipped with evaporative coolers that will likely need to be upgraded.
Throughout the process to decide what schools to close, residents who opposed the process, including members of the Save Our School Coalition and the Amanecer People’s Project, raised concerns with the information provided to the community.
“Although there are many conversations within the community about a lack of transparency, I do believe that the district made a good-faith effort to engage the community. I realized that the decisions that we were faced with were very difficult,” Sayavedra said before the vote.
The decision to keep the school open comes as the EPISD school board prepares its budget for the coming year, while the Texas Legislature debates whether it will increase school funding for the first time since 2019.
The post El Paso ISD board reverses plan to close Lamar Elementary appeared first on El Paso Matters.
Read: Read More