Wanting to see what other school districts have done with their central offices, we started looking around on the web.
We started with the San Antonio Independent School district and could not find a link to the location of their central office on their web page so we tried to look up the locations of some departments that are likely centralized and found this:
Attendance Accountability–1700 Tampico, Room 215 (in a school building)
Curriculum Management Department–406 Barrera Street (in a portable building)
Facilities Services Division–1702 N. Alamo, Suite 307
Human Resources–141 Lavaca (don’t know how to describe this building so see for yourself)
Purchasing–1215 Austin Street (stand alone building)
It does not appear as though the district has one location for it’s administrative offices. We did not specifically pick these departments, they were the first (and only) ones that we tested.
The Tucson Unified School District administration offices were built in 1942 and have been added to as the district has grown.
When the Ysleta district wanted new central offices years ago they bought a shopping center instead of designing and building a new complex.
There are several large industrial facilities available in the area. Wouldn’t it be more cost effective to buy and remodel one of those? Evidently the idea of using a school that they will be closing is out of consideration. The number one excuse is lack of parking. Most of us would convert the playground to parking spaces.
We deserve better
Brutus
elpasospeak 
Catering to the administration and the superintendent has gone on for so many years and it has led to hiring outsiders who stay a few years, implement their stupid changes, and quickly move on to greener pastures without batting an eye. Our latest superintendent ended up in jail and almost took several others with him; that would be the ultimate bad example of what all this catering does. The effort to create the entitiy that can issue bonds without voter approval to build an un-needed, probably mulitmillion dollar facility is more of the same catering bull! This must all end.
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How much did Morningside Mall (the YISD offices) cost to purchase and renovate in today’s dollars? How much did the new SISD offices cost to build? This is kind of an exercise in futility Brutus. Anyone can find examples of district offices on old worn-out buildings and also find examples of district offices is fancy new digs.
If you recall, moving to an old donated building like EPISD into the Blue Flame downtown (total cost $1), was a nightmare. So bad and costly were the habitations that they moved back into Boeing street.
I don’t really understand this argument. Let’s move it away from a school district office and make it something else for instance. How about the new westside hospital going up on Ressler? Why build new when they could have moved into the old Hoover plant? We saw what happened when the City moved away from a central office into a scattered mess of offices around town. If I recall, the folks on this blog complained about that as being inefficient and costly.
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This seems to me to be an example of being damned if they do and damned if they don’t. EPISD has to move out of their current digs because the city demands it. That means all of the technology server farms, the Planetarium, the police services, the bus repair depot…all of that. It is not simply a bunch of office space. Yes, maybe there are some large spaces available in El Paso, like the warehouses on the west side, but they are not located in EPISD. That are in Canutillo ISD or in SISD on the east side.
What is your plan exactly? Move to the schools that may or may not close? Scatter services around town, so parents and employees can run all over the place like the city did with the ballpark?
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Yes the city could eliminate this problem by extending the ground lease for the school district.
Maybe pressure should be applied there.
Brutus
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Despite all the complaints, Boeing street central offices have worked fine for years. The impetus is the expiring lease with the city. The city wants to “develop” the land in the area around where the 4 star hotel is planned. The city could redo the lease to give more time for the elected board to do planning and making a suitable transition someplace else, but they won’t with the current progressive/economic development mentality and the probable pressure coming from campaign-financing-private-investor developers and relationships. Money talks. The taxpayer be damned.
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Find a suitable building, estimate costs of renovation. I would hope that the school administrators would find buildings that would accommodate all the services in ONE area.
Perhaps, its time to trim the fat on all these corporations that should be “school” administrations.
I find it amusing that they need PR sections to tell the truth! In reality the PR sections are there to present the administrations in the best possible light. Just do your job without sneaking around around. What’s wrong with consolidation of server farms. Oh here comes, the bs. We have different “requirements”. What’s wrong with consolidation of bus maintence terminals. Oh but we……What’s wrong with consolidation of security services. Oh but we …….
The truth of the matter is turf protection and job security. That’s why there is so much duplication of services.
Get rid of that system and the need for a 40 acre school administrative system will disappear. Will it happen, doubt it. We live in the city of winks, nods, and greased palms.
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Numerous local public entities each have their own paid spokesperson. Some have multiple people in PR. When you add all those up, we’re paying a lot of money for local government to spin and deceive us and excuse their mistakes and wrongdoing. Hell, even the city Department of Public Health has its own spokesperson.
PR people are easily costing us more than $1 million annually, probably double. Add to that the amount of money spent on paid advertising to promote things like bus service and you’re talking real money.
The current Public Information and Marketing Corporate Manager (yes, that’s really the title) for the City of El Paso was hired in 2004, which just happens to be the year Joyce Wilson became city manager. That position did not exist prior to 2004. That’s just one more example of how city overhead increased during Wilson’s empire building regime.
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