The facts are out about our new superintendent’s compensation from the El Paso Independent School District (EPISD).
He will receive a base salary of $285 thousand per year. I have no problem with a qualified superintendent earning that kind of money from this district. He does not have a state mandated superintendent’s certificate. He will be given three years to get one. Our contract with him requires the taxpayers to pay for the costs related to getting the certificate. That will probably mean travel, lodging, tuition, books, fees and maybe other things. I suspect that we will pay for those costs and then probably give him a raise since he will have become qualified. Who will do his job when he is working on his certification?
In addition he will receive $1,500 a month for a car allowance. In my opinion we should pay by the mile instead.
He will receive $1,200 a month for home office costs. Bunk! This is nonsense.
Another $2,500 each month will go to incidental benefits. I have no idea what those might be. Hopefully they are not bribes.
That comes to another $62,400 a year for things that would come out of a normal person’s pocket.
I haven’t included the $35,000 for moving expenses he will be eligible for.
Nor have I mentioned that that we will pay for his spouse to travel with him when he is out of town on district business. This is simply outrageous to me.
Then we have the up to $20,000 annually the district will pay into a special annuity and the fact that the district will pay the superintendent’s portion of the employee’s contribution to the Texas Teacher Retirement System.
Sick leave will be 10 days per year, starting with a balance of 10 days effective September 3, 2013. Vacation will only be 10 days his first year, but will be 20 days each year thereafter.
Personal protection will be paid for by the district.
The district will pay $3,500 per month for housing rental while the superintendent looks for a house.
A KVIA report from 2012 put the salary of the highest paid superintendent in Texas at $347,834.20 .
It’s all good
Congratulations El Paso! We are getting closer to the top. Our superintendent can get $347,400. Neat coincidence, huh?
This isn’t bad for a guy that earned $182,000 last year.
Other options
I have never met the superintendent. I hope that he does well by us. He negotiated well for himself. I do object to some of his perks and to the fact that he is willing to take them. I would think that for this kind of money we would get someone who showed some moral leadership.
I don’t understand our board of managers.
Editor’s note:
This article was written by Cato. I mistakenly attributed it to Brutus. Consider me chastised.
elpasospeak 
I think he should go back to $182 K until he is qualified
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This is the kind of information El Paso needs from a newspaper. Thanks for providing it free. And you don’t raise your rates.
I agree with everything you said.
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Why does it say, searching for something that is not here? Did you remove this or something or did somebody pressure you to remove it? I was trying to comment. It’s a good article. Marc
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No pressure, just a hiccup publishing.
Article should be back up.
Brutus
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When they hired a lawyer instead of an educator the message was clear: EPISD is getting ready for an onslaught of litigation. Litigation rather than education is the future of EPISD.
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Dee Margo has gone around to each of the Superintendent high school meetings and said how much the district needs to run more like a business and that Juan Cabrerra was the best candidate they could find “by far.” (That of course, is a lie, but I suppose when you have Lorenzo Garcia to compare yourself to, anyone is “a better candidate by far.” Margo didn’t look very far and he knows it. Cabrera was the choice of the TEA Commissioner and Perry appointee Williams. Margo, who kisses the butt of Perry and Williams pretty much went along with their choice, What else could he do? If he wants to start again on some cushy commission in Austin when this gig ends, he better follow the party line.)
I guess that this contract with Cabrera is Margo’s way of showing how to lead that effort to make EPISD more businesslike: Pay the CEO an ungodly amount, surround him with other folks paid well above what they were making in their previous jobs, and then have a big payoff when they leave a few years later. Very Wall Street-ish. Cabrerra has on multiple occasions, compared the district to a business, saying stuff like he considers himself like the president of McDonald’s and that each school is like a franchisee of the big corporation. The only problem with that analogy is that EPISD doesn’t produce chicken nuggets, they produce students and the product takes 12 years to make, not 30 seconds. His lack of education experience pretty much is evident when he takes questions from parents about how he plans to improve this or that..it always ends up with the answer “I have a great team that will do…”
I wonder if parents like the idea that their kids are being compared to mass produced fast food?
Cabrerra spent the first few months going around to campuses telling parents how well-off he was, and how he really didn’t need this gig, but was doing it because he had some kind of calling, until someone got a hold of him and told him that that kind of talk doesn’t play so well in the Segundo Barrio with the Bowie alumni and Jeff alumni.. West side parents ate it up. Southside, not so much. He may know business, but he doesn’t know how to talk to people that are living in poverty and have kids at low performing schools.
What no one has even looked at was whether or not Mr. Margo or Mr. Cabrerra knew each other when both were in Austin. Where is the Times when it comes to doing even the slightest background work? Of course KVIA won’t do any work like that, since their lead anchor is the bro of the super. (How convenient that the highest ranking news show effectively is cut out of reporting negative news about EPISD?)
When the Times decided to destroy the EPISD, they had reporters from Austin reporting every single day about what was happening. Since then, mostly silence, which is probably what Williams wanted anyway. If you have noticed, the recent El Paso Times articles are all happy and loving when it comes to EPISD. Bob Moore is swooning with love because he is being told to by his PDN group handlers to lay off Cabrera. We as a community know very little about Cabrera’s background, such as what software company he sold, what his relationship with Williams and Margo is, his personal wealth, where he has stocks and other investments. While that may sound silly, if someone is highly invested in Google or Dell, or Pearson and the district all of a sudden starts buying Google or Dell or Pearson products, then we taxpayers should know about that.
We deserve better don’t we Brutus?
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Excellent post, LGBT.
Here is one thing that has not been disclosed or reported. Cabrera’s former law firm O’Hanlon McCollom & Demerath is best known for being a personal injury law firm.
The firm has two websites — http://www.txinjurylawfirm.com/ and http://www.808west.com. One website is for the ambulance chaser side of the house while the other talks about education law and other stuff. The media coverage of his hiring simply described the firm as an education law firm. Cabrera definitely picked a nice ambulance to chase when he went after the EPISD job. If I am not mistaken, he has also rewarded the search firm that placed him at EPISD by hiring that firm to help him fill his “cabinet” positions. (His use of the word “cabinet” gives me the sinking feeling that he sees himself as the president, king or emperor of a nation.)
The media took the press release and did no real homework on Cabrera. I’m not sure that our local reporters even know how to do a Google search. They just report what they’re given and told to report.
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Looking at all of different allowances and benefits Cabrera receives on top of his $285,000 salary, this reads more and more like welfare and entitlements for the privileged class. Let’s be clear: government employees are the new privileged class. The home office allowance, which is nearly as much as a minimum wage worker makes in a year, means we’re paying a nice chunk of Cabrera’s mortgage. His car allowance is MORE than a minimum wage worker makes in a year. Add the two together and his home office and car allowances probably total up to as much or more than the salary of many EPISD teachers. Sounds like trickle-up economics. The more I think about this the more disgusted I become.
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Dan Wever, who has spent years complaining about fiscal abuse in EPISD is conspicuously silent about this topic as well. He had no qualms about complaining about other Superintendent’s salaries. I wonder who got to him? Maybe Bob Moore told him to shut up.
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First, we need a board that will show some moral leadership. They are the ones who offered and negotiated the egregious terms of Cabrera’s contract. They also seemed to be committed to staying in their current positions and keeping the power and control that comes with it for as long as they possibly can.
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Still wonder why families or industries don’t want to relocate to El Paso?
The new superintendent comes with many questions, same as the last one. UTEP had one prospective professor, change his mind about a position, as soon as his wife learned about the El Paso school system.
When he states that this is just like a business, we are in real trouble as he views students as a product. We needed an educator. This situation will rival the county coroner fiasco. Only positive point, is they knew, when hiring him, he was not certified.
If paying for his certification is the answer, then why didn’t county pay for the last coroner’s certification? For that matter, why didn’t they hire a local educator and get them certified? Or, why not hire me now and I will “let” you pay for my certification!
That’s pure nonsense that the most qualified, just happen to be connected to a tv personality, that most likely has high placed friends in El Paso. Sorry, but nothing has changed, except this is theft by contract. I don’t blame him, I blame the ones that did the hiring.
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What about the Golden Parachute when he leaves in 2 or 3 years?
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