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Yesterday the EPISD Board of Trustees voted 5-2 to reopen Lamar Elementary, which will cost more than $12.5 million to repair and upgrade and approximately $3.2 million per year to operate. Enrollment at Lamar is at 30% capacity, with only 206 students attending.
Trustee Daniel Call reminded his colleagues about the $31 million deficit for FY 2025-2026, warning about financial calamity and impending layoffs if his colleagues refuse to do what is financially necessary to keep EPISD solvent.
He clarified that while Lamar may have been a “blue-ribbon” school with an “A” rating four years ago, it is calculated that the school will have a “C” rating for 2024.
He pointed out, over the objections of his colleagues who attempted to silence him twice, that Lamar lies within the jurisdiction of Leah Hanany and that the proposal to reopen it (rather than any of the seven other schools that were recently closed) is both arbitrary and political, with no rational basis.
Trustee Valerie Beals added that the $3.2 million in savings from closing Lamar “respects our residents and taxpayers” and can be used for more productive purposes for the benefit of students and teachers.
None of this moved Hanany, Loveridge, and their allies, who seemed more driven by the applause and heckles of the Amanecer People’s Project than by any financial logic.
Thanks to them, the children at Lamar will continue to be educated in a dilapidated building from 1961 that still employs evaporative coolers and will require $12.5 million to bring up to standard. That works out to $60,680 per student, more than the undergraduate tuition at Harvard University.
The district’s internal analysis assigns the building a “poor” rating for electrical, roofing, plumbing, and its exterior enclosure, and a “very poor” rating for fire protection.
Please be certain to congratulate Trustees Hanany, Loveridge, Cuellar, Sutton, and Osterland on their victory for social justice!
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