Word is going around town that our non-elected EPISD board of managers is going to try to close some schools, tear down others, and yet build new ones before they leave office after the May elections.
One of the suggestions evidently is that they tear down two high schools and build a new one in their place. The schools were built in the 1960’s and according to the report that the board commissioned are in bad condition.
How does a school get in such bad condition that tearing it down and building a new one is the most economical option? The simple fact is that our school board has not been allocating money to maintain these buildings.
Some of you might argue that buildings do not last forever. Without providing a list of many of the nicely maintained buildings that are in El Paso that are older than these schools, let’s just consider El Paso High and Austin High as examples of schools that are considerably older that are not being considered for destruction.
We should have some say in this issue regardless of what the board tries to ram down our throats. The district will probably have to try to pass a bond issue for the construction projects.
Somehow we have to find a way to make these people protect our assets.
We deserve better
Brutus
elpasospeak 
It was the criminally-incompetent bozos on the previous elected board who should have made these decisions. Don’t blame the current managers.
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Yes this has been going on for years. Can you think of a way to stop it?
Brutus
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I don’t know how you make someone do the right thing.
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I’ve requested the RFP for the $1.3 million study the Board of Managers commissioned. It should have been put out to bid. The Jacobs Engineering firm specializes in closing schools, without referencing US Census and US Fed Reserve figures. The surveys and presentations were too technical for many to understand—it takes 20-39 minutes to answer 4 questions. The options are framed in a manner that are limited.
The BOManagers has hired an administrative team that has not done right by district employees, as evident by the denial of due process, low morale, and teacher/principal upheavals. Many of us have over 170 students enrolled in our classes, some up to 225 students. Custodians, many of them with 10 years of service, have been dismissed because they lack diplomas and certifications, yet our own superintendent does not have the necessary credentials. He does not even show up to community meetings to answer questions. However, we pay him a salary that exceeds $300K, plus foot the bill for his wife’s travel expenses.
Many folks don’t even attend the board meetings given the intimidation and disregard by the district administrators and board managers.
The business reforms that are currently implemented are not serving our children.
Please come out to the Board of Managers meeting on January 20 at the Boeing offices. Sign up to speak and demand that the closure of 22 schools be postponed until duly-elected trustees are in place. They would at least reflect our interests, rather than Texans for Educaton Reform and the Koch Brothers. The ALEC connection and formula are quite evident.
Xavier Miranda
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Elected trustees will usually not close a school for any good reason. Too much blow back. This is actually a benefit if an appointed board that it can act on data and not on opinion.
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Without regard to which board makes the decisions it will still be necessary to have capital money and that means a bond election.
Brutus
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There are buildings in Europe that are over a thousand years old and still in good shape. Nothing in the US is expected or wanted to last that long. But buildings that went up a hundred years ago were probably built to last longer than the ticky-tack we threw up in the 1960s. How many houses in El Paso are over 50 years old and still in good shape?
You are right about good maintenance being important, but a poorly-constructed building could well cost more to refit than just tear down. There is a great deal of hostile comment here about Paul Foster and the Plaza, but it is my understanding that he spent a huge amount of money redoing the Mills Building and making it an asset to downtown, in contrast to, say, the Borderplex REIT which simply tore down the Muir Building on the other corner of the Plaza and replaced it with an empty lot.
At this point, the board may be right in determining that these high schools cannot be saved at a reasonable price and a better course would be to build a new and better one. It’s up to the taxpaying public to keep the board honest on this one, as Brutus and other “watchdogs” are trying to do. (At least the Times this morning refers to Lisa Turner as a “watchdog,” rather than the “anklebiter” epithet they have used in the past.)
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This should not be a surprise to anyone. The district did the same thing a few years back and the study then found over half a billion $ in deferred maintenance. That is why Wainwright was closed and replaced by a new school: Moye. That is why Alamo closed. That is why Roosevelt closed.
We, as a community, have a selective and short term memory about almost everything.
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