The Texas Education Agency (TEA) wants to strip the El Paso Independent School District Board of Trustees of its power.
When the TEA placed the district on probationary status they evidently laid a land mine that allows the commissioner of the TEA to appoint a board to run the district. However other provisions of the Texas Education Code make the board the ultimate power.
I guess it will be up to the courts to decide who will be in control.
For my part this board should be replaced. The question is how.
We, the citizens of El Paso, elected this board. Good or bad they are what we wanted at the time. Our school district is supposed to be “independent”. We are to choose it’s leaders — not some appointed bureaucrat at the TEA.
The TEA should have the right to demand certain types of performance. They should have the right to sanction districts that do not perform up to state standards. They should have the right to remove accreditation from the district. After all they are the ones that grant it. Removing accreditation from the district would put the voters into a frenzy. The voters would solve the problem themselves.
I would like to see the board resign if somehow it can be reconstituted with new members before the next election.
Certainly we should vote for different people next time.
An unspoken problem is who we can vote for. Ask virtually any person of integrity and proven skills (of running a large organization) to stand for election and they will say no — often colorfully. The grief that they would expose themselves to is overwhelming.
The TEA is trying to install a board of managers to control the district. The chosen composition of the board is a disgrace. See Foxes in the Henhouse. If this must happen, can’t we have better choices? The commissioner chose poorly when he constituted his group.
What do we do if after the election the commissioner still feels that his board is better than our choice? He is under no obligation to dissolve his posse.
Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty
Cato
elpasospeak 