The Tuesday, September 16, 2014 agenda for the El Paso Independent School District board of managers includes two construction items.
One approves a contract to spend slightly less than one million dollars for classrooms at Crockett elementary.
The other commits $4.2 million for a new classroom wing and kitchen and library additions and improvements at Milam elementary.
Finally
These projects are being funded from the 2007 bond issue. For the record we are in 2014 now. They were part of what the public was promised when the bond issue was being promoted.
Why has it taken so long to get around to making these improvements? Were they not necessary back in 2007 or 2008 or 2009 … ? Have we been paying interest on these bonds?
Are these people so smart that they can tell us what our needs will be seven years in advance, or have they been busy with more important things like football fields?
We deserve better
Brutus
elpasospeak 
crockett just got a new roof. it took three months @ 5 hrs a day to complete because it was so damn hot this summer. guess who the contractor was?
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Usually bonds are issued as needed from the authorized amount in tranches rather than all at once. I don’t know if that is the case at EPISD.
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Seven years out?
Brutus
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If you really want to understand the entitlement mindset of EPISD constituents and the wasteful ways of the EPISD board, you need look no farther than the new $1.6 million Franklin football stadium.
In many communities, it is not uncommon for schools to share stadiums and sports facilities. Franklin and Coronado are separated by only 2.1 miles, yet we’re spending money for a new stadium for Franklin. This isn’t your father’s high school stadium. It will have a Jumbotron video screen, which Franklin parents and boosters think is the best use of $125,000 which they apparently raised from within the community.
Yes siree Bob, life is just a bowl of cherries. We’re living the dream. Un pollo en cada olla and a football stadium for every school, but when that new stadium wasn’t ready for homecoming, people were not cheering. It became a major news story on the evening news with parents and students upset about this injustice, even though the stadium was not originally scheduled for completion by last week.
Who cares about English language proficiency, test scores, teacher/student ratios, or graduation rates when football is at stake? What’s a little more debt as long as the money is going for construction of a football stadium?
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