The appointed board of managers of EPISD has published its 2014-2015 proposed budget.
They list five “immediate” and six “long term” goals. As of this date they have told us that they are facing a $17 million budget shortfall next year unless some things change.
Their third listed goal in the immediate list is:
Beginning with the Fall of 2014, every high school student will participate in community service as part of the EPISD learning experience.
How?
Laudable as this sounds, how will it be accomplished? Getting the students to attend regularly and do the things that they are required to do already is a big part of the job the schools try to perform. Now we are going to enroll the students in some kind of job corps. How will this be administered and tracked? How much money will this cost or do they plan to do away with something else, like civics classes?
Eventually we will do our job
Goal five in the long term category promises:
The annual budget will allocate the proper resources to ensure academic success.
Isn’t that something that should be done right now?
Declining enrollment
Their budget predicts a loss of $11.8 million in state revenue due to declining enrollment. Why then are they planning to spend $57 million that was previously approved by the voters to build a new high school on new buildings that will increase our operating and maintenance costs every year?
Increasing taxes
Of the four “Options Available to Balance the Budget” that they present in the proposed budget the first one is:
Increase the General Fund Tax Rate and hold Tax Ratification Election
Neat, really neat. Have the board of managers that has taken the place of our elected board use the situation to ask for a tax increase that is so large that it triggers an election.
Teach me
Everyone should know by now that I am not an educator and I do not understand much of what happens in our education system. I hope that some of our readers will take the time to explain some things to me.
Class sizes
The proposed budget proposes a maximum class size of 22 students per class in grades K-4 and a maximum of 26 in grade 5. They then propose an average class size of 21 in grades 6 through 12. Given a limited budget wouldn’t we want to have more teachers per student in the elementary grades and fewer teachers per student in the upper grades? What is the thinking in having the 5th grade the way they do?
Spending per student
Why is it that the budget proposes spending $4,313 per student per year in the least expensive elementary school and then increasing amounts going all the way up to $8,079 in the most expensive elementary school. Do these numbers include building and overhead costs? Middle schools will cost between $4,226 and $5,284 per student while high schools will range from $4,571 to $5,863 per student.
I suppose that if we had a superintendent that was qualified and a board that answered to the public we might be better off.
We deserve better
Brutus
elpasospeak 
“I suppose that if we had a superintendent that was qualified and a board that answered to the public we might be better off.” Brutus, why would you supposed that? We had that with Lorenzo Garcia and his board. We have students taking remedial classes all the way through EPCC and UTEP. For all I know they have remedial classes in the Ph.d programs. They offer explanations for the drop in enrollment, but one thing they don’t talk about is students who are going to private and parochial schools, nor do they talk about home schooling which is taking more students each year. Look how many public school employees have their kids in private schools. How did they ever get so many kids from Juarez enrolled in the first place. The fact an American citizen is living in Juarez does not mean they are residents of the district. They can attend school here if they pay tuition. The same for New Mexico students. I would love to see combined teams from the school district and law enforcement and the county tax office check the driver’s license of all the students with out of state tags.
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All taxpayers would love to see accountability, instead school officials and the board are looking for ways to deviate from their roles. What about going back to basics? That is preparing our kids to go to college. Instead, EPISD is sending a very strong message to their students “depend on taxpayers without having to be accountable.” The superintendent and the board need to set the example. Why are private schools like Loretto accountable to all El Paso drivers and not EPISD Hillside Elementary? Because Loretto needs to keep parents happy in order to keep students. In contrast, EPISD does not care whether taxpayers are happy or not, their attitude is “taxpayers better pay their taxes or else.” The people of El Paso are paying a very high price for decissions made by incompentent officials at the EPISD. I agree with you, taxpayers should not be paying for Juarez residents to attend our public schools and get medical care at UMC.
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Well, it is obvious that you don’t know much about the education system, all right. But, first, let me try to explain something to you about the Job Corps. Job Corps students do, indeed, perform a lot of community service, but that is part and parcel of their training in whatever field they have entered, and it is done by entire classes, or – in the past, anyway – entire programs. Job Corps is there to allow some kids an opportunity to learn a trade (used to be, when I worked there many years ago: Automobile mechanics & body shop, Carpentry & construction trades, Allied Health[mostly Nursing Assistants], culinary arts, and I think clerical/bookkeeping skills.
I, too, do not understand the need for all students to perform some sort of community service, but maybe it’s because there doesn’t seem to be as much community involvement in today’s schools, since the schools have gotten so damn big. Big classrooms, with a high student to teacher ratio, are very bad for all concerned. Ideal – and at one time, mandated by State Law – classroom size would be right around 20 kids per teacher, but all Districts get away with much larger sizes, and have been doing so for a long, long time.
Your question about that money that was provided for a new high school that they have now decided is not needed is one that has been asked for months. Why, indeed, is this money not perfect to handle their immediate budget shortfall while they bring in an elected Board? Meanwhile, maybe instead of always hiring these hotshots from other places to be Superintendent, this District needs to promote from within. Get somebody in that position who knows the community, the students, the campuses, and the frickin’ JOB!
I do enjoy your efforts. Keep it up.
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YISD already has a community service requirement in place. No one is questioning that.
On the budget side, one should ask Mr. Margo if he still supports the vote he had while win the Texas legislature to cut education funding by $5.4 billion. He is seeing what happens when a school district gets hit with a few million dollars of cuts.
On a side note, where are all the protesters? What happened to Kids First El Paso? Where are the elected board members? They can still speak, Why aren’t they? Where is Idiot Shapleigh, and all of his political buddies that were so quick to denounce the previous administration (and rightfully so). What happened to all those parents that said that they were now going to be more involve with education?
Their silences say volumes about what they really care about. And it was not education.
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The community service requirement is in other school boards. As someone else pointed out it’s already in YISD. When my son attended the Burnham Wood Charter school they required it as well. It has nothing to do with job corps as much as teaching kids to give back to their community. You realize we are breeding a bunch of selfish kids these days someone is going to need to take care of you in your old age. Do you want to raise a group of kids that spend more time with their face in their hand held device or wouldn’t you want them to look up every now and then and realize that there is a world out there and that it needs real human being to take care of it.
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I did not mean to imply that I am against community service. In fact, I said it was laudable.
My question is how they will administer it and pay for it. Will we have to create positions for community service coordinators?
brutus
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The plan to have classes take part in community service sounds like they are trying to outsource EPISD’s responsibility for part of the kids’ day. Community service equals less time in the classroom.
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Requiring a student to volunteer for service is not volunteering. It is a type of forced labor .my child or grandchild would not be part of the program and every parent or guardian says it is not going to happen. I have been a professional volunteer all of my life it was learned from my parents not forced by anyone. Let Cabrera volunteer as super. Time for mr hide from the public to leave put Miller in his place. Enough! Sent from my iPhone
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Excellent point! As a result, the students will do the right thing for the wrong reason. It makes one wonder if EPISD isn’t doing this to simply push the kids out of the classrooms and onto some other organization to relieve some of the school’s work and responsibility for the kids. I have observed Franklin and Coronado students doing volunteer work over the past couple of years, supposedly because the school is already forcing some to do it.
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