New school board members elected amid tumult, layo | RSS.com
Diego: Earlier this month, the landscape of public education in El Paso shifted. Voters in El Paso and Socorro independent school districts elected a few new school board members who will govern the two troubled school districts. In El Paso ISD, a new majority will govern the board as the district proceeds with a controversial plan to close eight school campuses in areas of town where student enrollment has declined and facilities have deteriorated.
The four candidates in EPISD who won their races either outright opposed the district’s closure plan, or were more skeptical of closing schools and their opponents.
The election and the debate over whether to close historic schools became so heated that even the former president of EPISD’s board, Israel Irrobali, who adamantly supported closing schools, was unable to beat a relatively unknown political newcomer, Robert Osterland.
Claudia: Now, at EPISD, we’re going to be seeing a major shift in the power dynamics between two factions on the board.
Diego: That was Claudia Silva, education reporter for El Paso Matters, who has been tracking the district’s financial pressures and its board politics.
Claudia: And these factions were formed when the district decided to close eight elementary schools. Four members essentially voted in favor of the closures, and three other members wanted to wait.
Now, two of the members who voted for the closures, Israel Irrobali and Isabel Hernandez, have been voted out and will be replaced by Robert Osterland and Mindy Sutton. Leah Hanany and Jack Loveridge, who voted against the closures, both kept their seats on the board.
Diego: So, the big obvious question that follows the election this month is will EPISD’s new board push to keep school campuses that are currently slated for closure open?
Claudia: You know, at this point, there’s really a lot of unknowns about what’s going to happen. There has been some talk about trying to reverse the closures of some of the higher-rated schools. Lamar Elementary is one that comes to mind, but these have just been very preliminary discussions and there hasn’t been any really solid talk that I’m aware of at least. About trying to reverse the school closure plan.
Diego: One sign of how contentious the race for control of EPISD’s board was the fact donors poured tens of thousands of dollars into the different races, a staggering sum for a school board election.
One political action committee spent $41,500 to back three EPISD board candidates, all of whom lost their races. The PAC was associated with CREEED, an organization backed largely by wealthy El Pasoans that has funded public school initiatives but also spent heavily to attract the IDEA charter school network to El Paso with the idea of challenging the city’s public schools.
Claudia: This has likely been one of the most expensive, if not the most expensive, school board race in El Paso’s history. It’s certainly the most expensive since I started reporting on education two years ago.
CREEED has become somewhat of a controversial figure simply because they spent millions of dollars trying to bring IDEA public charter schools to El Paso. And that’s something that has been very controversial in the public education world.
CREEED’s ultimate goal is to try to improve the educational outcomes in El Paso. The funders of the organization essentially see other cities with large tech sectors that bring in lots of money, and they want a piece of that pie. And in order to get it, they feel that we need a highly educated workforce in El Paso. And that’s one of the main reasons that they’ve been contributing to school board races. But they’ve also been donating and contributing thousands of dollars to public education initiatives.
So, if CREEED wants to have any say in El Paso school board races, they’re probably going to have to do a lot to gain the public’s trust, especially when it comes to IDEA Public Schools.
Diego: The school board governing Socorro ISD, the region’s second largest school district, is adding three new members as that district wrestles with a financial crunch and teacher layoffs, particularly in school music and art departments.
Claudia: SISD is going to be getting three new board members, Manny Rodriguez, Ryan Woodcraft and Charles Smith, who are newcomers to the world of public office.
Then we have four board members, including the only incumbent that ran for reelection, Paul Guerra, who have been on the board for a while now. Some a little longer than others. A couple were elected two years ago. And they’ve all been already working on all of these issues that have been going on at Socorro ISD.
So, it’s going to be interesting to see how these new trustees will work with the current ones. An interesting thing to note is that Guerra has been around since before a lot of the financial issues at SISD started. So, a lot of people feel that he is partially responsible for (it), so it’s going to be interesting to see what kind of decisions he makes now that he’s going to be continuing to be on the board
Diego: EPISD and Socorro ISD are both staring at budget deficits for next year, tied in part to lower-than-expected state funding, but also overspending by Socorro ISD.
Claudia: Well, in all districts here in El Paso, declining enrollment has been the biggest factor responsible for the districts’ budgetary issues. EPISD has had declining enrollment for years and that’s one of the reasons that they’re deciding to close schools. SISD enrollment was growing for a while, but then it started to decline. And because funding relies on attendance, the less students the district has, the less money that it’s going to bring in.
SISD has also had issues with overspending that we discussed in our last episode together. But even with all of that, there’s still a lot of unknowns about next year’s budget. Lawmakers are still debating whether they’re going to increase school funding. Right now, both districts are looking at ways to address any potential budget deficits. If the state does not give more funding, we can expect larger deficits, and it’s safe to say we’re going to be seeing bigger budget cuts.
Diego: Socorro ISD already sent notices laying off some teachers, although fewer employees lost their jobs than initially expected.
Claudia: Yeah. So, there’s been a lot of surprises and unexpected developments when it comes to this story. Initially, the district announced that it would lay off up to 300 employees. And I think that those announcements definitely caught people off guard. And, now, the district ended up deciding only to lay off 43 employees, all of them teachers.
Now, that’s because the district made a pretty concerted effort to try to reduce the number of layoffs. One of the things that they did is that they offered a $2,500 separation incentive for the first (100) employees to resign or retire. In the end, about 116 teachers submitted their resignation letter by the deadline, and we were told by the interim superintendent that the district is going to try to grant all 116 teachers that separation incentive. But we are unsure if it’s just going to be limited to the first hundred that it promised.
The district also tried to place as many teachers as it could in vacant positions that hadn’t been filled yet. We know, in total, about 200 teachers resigned from SISD after the initial layoff plan was announced. And we know that about 110 employees were moved to new positions within the district.
Most of the teachers that were laid off were art teachers, but some of the other subjects that they taught included math, science, P.E. and a lot of career technology and education teachers were also affected by this plan.
Diego: And are any other of El Paso’s school districts looking to lay off teachers as well?
Claudia: Yeah, at this point it’s definitely too early to tell if layoffs are on the table for any other districts in El Paso.
One thing that we’ve been seeing all districts in the region do is try to cut down their staff through attrition. So, they are trying to reduce the number of overall staff that the districts have.
Because there are less students enrolled in these districts, they obviously need less teachers and less staff to work there. So, as time passes, as people resign and retire, a lot of those positions are no longer going to be filled in the future.
So, while we don’t know if they’re going to be any layoffs for any other school districts in El Paso, we do know that they are going to be cutting down on staff.
Diego: So, we’re seeing all of the school districts in town dealing with these financial challenges, enrollment declines, looking at laying off teachers, right, and closing schools. Just wonder if you have any thoughts, Claudia, on the state of education in El Paso going forward and what we should expect?
Claudia: Yeah, I mean, there’s definitely a lot of contentious issues surrounding the state of education. And the reality is that there’s just a lot of unknowns right now.
I think most parents, teachers, educators, administrators, we’re all just going to have to wait and see, you know, what happens when it comes to school funding, enrollment and all these other challenges.
Certainly the school boards are going to be playing a big role in trying to resolve a lot of these issues. But we really just have no idea how it’s going to go.
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