Recently there has been talk about a reporter who did some digging and found a former Bowie student who was evidently kicked out of school as part of the EPISD cheating scandal.
The EPISD superintendent was asked on a local news broadcast how an individual could find students like this but the school district could not.
I think the superintendent’s answer was fair. He essentially said that the district has several resources dedicated to finding the students but that the district will probably fail to find all of them. He asked the public to help and to contact the district if someone has information that would be helpful.
A sound clip of the former student talking about what happened to her was played on the air.
What no one commented about was the fact that the said that after she was kicked out she went to Juarez to talk with her mother about the situation. Is it possible that in this particular situation the reason the student was denied access was that the student was not eligible to go to Bowie?
Denying students access to schools to help improve statistics is horrible. Those involved in doing this to kids should be dealt with. However, not all that wander are lost.
We deserve better
Brutus
elpasospeak 
You have to wonder how many of the “disappeared ones” that Senator Shapliegh claimed were there (didn’t he say there were 100’s? ) really weren’t supposed to be there to begin with, thus making finding them impossible. This is a good example. She gets kicked out and then goes home to Juarez to tell her mother.
Of course what Garcia et al did to game the system was wrong. No one disputes that. But now that we have some distance between the act, maybe the local press who apparently can find these kids at will, can start to see how many actually live in El Paso and how many live in Juarez.
One of the kids that KVIA highlighted early on in the scandal was a 21 year old convicted car thief, something they conveniently forgot to mention.
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Possibly the same diligence that’s been used in reporting the story should be used to rewrite the requirements for attending school in the US.
I had neighbors who rented the house next door so their baby could be born here and be a US citizen. At the same time their older kids enrolled in EPISD and the father worked in El Paso. Then on weekends and holidays, the family went to what they considered their real home in Juarez. In an international city like El Paso this is probably the norm.
I personally don’t know how EPISD with the current policies can prevent people from living in Juarez and enrolled their kids. In the case of my neighbors, they were eligible to enroll their kids in EPISD because they had a current utility bill and evidence of rent payment here. They paid school taxes indirectly through rent. It is a border culture. So many work and go to school in El Paso but their national identity is with Mexico.
Maybe it makes sense to have more dual language schools. Native Spanish speakers and English speakers alike could both learn good Spanish, not the kind of Spanish we usually hear. One cannot learn a second language well until they know their native language well.
Test scores continue to be the problem. Is there any solution?
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I am the reporter who found this student. She is a US citizen who was living in El Paso when she was kicked out of Bowie. Her mother lived in Juarez but she had family in El Paso. She continues to live in El Paso today and is married to an El Pasoan — born and raised on the South Side — who was also illegally kicked out of Bowie.
Debbie Nathan
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In 1997 while at Franklin High School, my counselor did everything to get me to not take what was the T.A.S.S. test or what ever that joke was. When that didn’t work the At-Risk counselor pulled my girlfriend ,now my wife, out of class to try to convince me to dropout of school. Now, by no means was I a model student. I would ditch class and when I did show up I would just sit in the back and draw or sleep. I tried not to make waves and my teachers never cared as long as I didn’t bother the class. My girlfriend on the other hand was the complete opposite. She was in different Honor Societies and even got offers for college. It didn’t bother me so much but it pissed her off and she ended up …….”cutting me off”, unless I studied and took the test. So I took the test. I later spoke to my counselor to see how I had scored. She told me that I had scored horribly and that I should really consider dropping out and taking a trade course…….plastic injection molding was the popular one back then. A while later I be came ill and ended up having surgery , I was not able to return that year as it was already May and close to the end of the school year. By registration time the following year I was healed up and ready to return but when I did I was told that I could not return and if I wanted to go to school it would have to be at Raymond Telles. So I just accepted that I was now a Highschool dropout. A while later, at the behest and may i say bribery of some of my wifes old teachers, I scheduled an appointment with my old counselors so I could see what areas I needed help in so I could go get my G.E.D. When I went asked for my T.A.S.S. Test results, they were sealed. My counselors were shocked to see I had gotten all A’s and B’s with the exception of the math portion which I scored a 70, just passed. SCREW EPISD. The only person worth anything in that school administration at the time was Terry Jordan who was an assistant principal back then.
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