Superintendent James Vasquez started his career in education roughly 30 years ago with the Socorro Independent School District, as a teacher at Hueco Elementary School.
Now, he holds the highest position in the district after the SISD school board last week approved a three-year contract with a $285,000 annual salary, following over a year-and-a-half of service as interim superintendent. As interim, he was paid an annual salary of $230,000.
“I’m excited and eager to keep moving in this positive direction,” Vasquez told El Paso Matters in an interview at his office this week. “The transition has been smooth, and our Board of Trustees has been amazing. We all have a common vision for what we want to see with the district, so, it’s exciting, and I’m eager to continue moving.”
Vasquez took over as interim superintendent in April 2024, after an audit found former Superintendent Nate Carman had awarded contracts to a company he had previously done business with before joining the district.
Vasquez served as deputy superintendent before being named interim.
Since then, Vasquez has helped the district navigate financial challenges that led to the layoffs of over 20 teachers and the adoption of the first balanced budget for the district in nearly a decade. He has worked with two Texas Education Agency conservators appointed to oversee the district after a state investigation found widespread failings under previous leadership.
Now as superintendent, Vasquez will be paid less than his predecessor and other El Paso area superintendents. When he signed on with the district in 2022, Carman was paid a starting salary of $335,000 a year. By the 2023-24 school year, he made over $348,000, according to the TEA.
Last year, Ysleta Independent School District Superintendent Xavier De La Torre, who is among the highest-paid superintendents in the state, made over $451,000. The El Paso Independent School District’s former superintendent, Diana Sayavedra, was paid $320,000 a year before suddenly resigning in June under a controversial separation agreement.
Vasquez’s new contract includes other compensation and benefits similar to those awarded to most superintendents, including reimbursing his premium for a life insurance policy with a benefit up to $500,000, paying a supplemental salary equal to his contribution toward the Texas Teacher Retirement System and deferred contributions toward other retirement plans, as well as reimbursements for travel expenses for district business.
The state approved a waiver that allows Vasquez to serve without a superintendent certification, though he is currently pursuing that certification. His three-year contract may be renewed with the condition that he obtain certification or other waiver to serve as superintendent in Texas.
Vasquez became the first SISD superintendent in recent history who is an El Paso native and who was hired from within the district’s own ranks.
Throughout the superintendent search process, trustees, employees and families expressed the importance of hiring a local superintendent who understood the community and its needs.
“The board was very clear that they wanted someone from El Paso, they had been burned by someone who didn’t know the community and they didn’t want to go back there,” said TEA conservator Michael Hinojosa.
Though Hinojosa did not reveal if any other candidates were El Paso residents, he said many had connections to the area.
As superintendent, Vasquez will manage and oversee the district’s operations, including an annual budget of $454.2 million, 5,700 employees and over 46,000 students.
He will also lead the march in convincing voters to approve a tax rate beyond what is allowed by the state, which could bring in up to $49.2 million in revenue a year.
Vasquez met Monday with El Paso Matters to talk about his goals as SISD’s new leader and the future of the district.
Here are highlights from the conversation, which has been edited for brevity and clarity.
El Paso Matters: Tell us about yourself.
Vasquez: I was born and raised here in El Paso and graduated from Riverside High School. I got both degrees, my bachelor’s and my master’s at UTEP. I’ve never left El Paso and I began teaching here in 1995 as a third-grade teacher. I worked my way up here from a teacher to curriculum coach to assistant principal to principal all here in Socorro. I left to Ysleta (ISD) to be a director, an assistant superintendent, and returned here as a deputy superintendent.
El Paso Matters: What are going to be some of your top priorities during your first year as permanent superintendent?
Vasquez: The first one is pursuing that voter-approval tax rate election, or VATRE. We’re currently in the process of getting the information out to constituents, just to let them know what it is, what will be on the ballot and what the money will be used for. I’ll be visiting every single one of our campuses, and I’ll be doing community meetings as well. So, that’s going to take up a lot of my time over the next couple of months.
Beyond that, we want to get to a good financial place so that we don’t ever have to borrow money again like we did this past school year. That way, we never have to consider a reduction like we did this past school year.
El Paso Matters: What were some of your accomplishments as interim superintendent?
Vasquez: I think the biggest thing would probably be the budget. When I first started in this role, we were looking at a budget deficit between $30 (million) and $40 million at the time. We had just been appointed with the two TEA conservators. Shortly thereafter, we had two school board members who were arrested and charged with felonies.
We’re facing declining enrollment for the first time in our district’s history, so I inherited quite a situation, and morale was low at the time as well because of everything going on.
But now, almost a year and a half later, we were able to achieve a balanced budget. That was remarkable. On top of that, there was a definite change in the attitude and the morale. While things aren’t 100% better yet, I think they see we’re heading in a good direction now and they’re excited.
El Paso Matters: How is student enrollment going this year?
Vasquez: We had been publicly stating we’re facing declining enrollment. That’s a nationwide problem, that’s a statewide problem, and that’s the problem here in the city. We had projected that we’d lose about 800 students this school year, and that’s about where we’re at right now.
Our projected enrollment for this year was 45,900, and we are in that ballpark. So, our projections show we will continue this decline. They say by 2034, we will be down to about 42,000 students. Based on what the demographic study showed us, we’re hitting those targets.
El Paso Matters: We’ve received reports that some SISD campuses did not meet enrollment goals, leading to staffing changes. What is going on?
Vasquez: We’re gonna have to continuously monitor our enrollment and make sure that we are fully staffed at our schools. If there are extra teachers at some schools and other schools have vacancies, then we’re gonna have to make adjustments. It’s difficult.
I’m gonna put it this way: It’s relatively easy to be a growing district because you can add teachers. It’s much more difficult to be a district in declining enrollment, and you have to be conscientious that we’re not overhiring, because we don’t want to be in a position again where we do have to have a reduction in force. So, we’re being very conscientious about the way we do our staffing and where we place all of our teachers and staff.
El Paso Matters: Do you have an idea of how many teachers were affected by schools not meeting enrollment goals?
Vasquez: I don’t have that information. I will tell you that we’re going to examine staffing levels again. We did that in the summer just based on registrations. To make sure the schools are appropriately staffed, we’re going to be going back now that things have pretty much settled down and discuss that at some point next month.
El Paso Matters: Will SISD face layoffs again in the future?
Vasquez: That’s why we have to continuously monitor our enrollment and our staffing to make sure that that does not happen again. That reduction in force was extremely painful for everybody affected. During that time, we reported that we needed to reduce 300 positions to get us balanced. And that was pretty accurate, but because of retirements and resignations and very strategic staffing and placement of teachers, that number actually turned out to be 23. That’s 23 too many, but it wasn’t the 300 that had been anticipated.
El Paso Matters: SISD is conducting a study on the possibility of consolidating schools. Do you know what that will look like?
Vasquez: We don’t. What we want to do is just make sure that there’s a plan. We’re being strategic about this process. We don’t want to be caught years down the road, where all of a sudden we’re having to close five schools. We at least want to study it, look at what our enrollment patterns are over the next several years, look at the conditions of the buildings and look at boundaries.
We have some areas of the district that are overcrowded, and we have some where there are lots of empty classrooms. So we want to at least engage to see if there could be a possibility of shifting some of that enrollment from the eastern part of our district to the western part and fill up some of those empty schools. More than anything, we just want to have a plan.
El Paso Matters: What is your philosophy on education?
Vasquez: My mom was a teacher. Most of her career was at Ysleta. Both her and my dad thought education was going to be the way to success. If you wanted to have a successful career, you had to go to school, and that’s something that I firmly believe in for our students here. I want to be able to provide our students with opportunities to learn, to grow and have exposure to different activities and clubs. One thing that I want to continue to do during my time here is to make sure that we’re able to preserve programs and continue to provide our students with these endless opportunities.
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