I’ve been thinking about the bond issues that the El Paso and Ysleta school districts have been talking about.
Much of the money in question is to handle “deferred” maintenance. By not performing regular maintenance to our school buildings the school boards can adopt budgets that appear to be balanced but are not.
Of the $451 million that Ysleta is asking for, $303 million will be for maintenance. The El Paso district has not decided to propose a bond issue yet but their recently finished facilities master plan indicates that there is $504 million of deferred maintenance to be done as well as the need for $348 million in capital upgrades.
Charter schools
On the other hand we have some charter schools in El Paso. These schools do not participate in local property tax levees but do get extra assistance from the state. While the exact numbers differ I am told that the charter schools end up receiving about 10% less funding than our public schools and that’s before the regular districts raise money through bond issues.
Yet somehow these schools manage to acquire their own buildings and operate their schools.
Maybe someone can help us to understand this.
We deserve better
Brutus
elpasospeak 
If you look at a lot of charter schools, they exist in rented spaces, such as in strip centers or unused warehouses. In the case of Harmony school in Northeast, they are a national chain of charter schools (with deep pockets that run all the way back to Turkish Billionaires) that rent out of a closed supermarket space in the old Rushfair Shopping Center. When you rent or lease, you do not have to pay any money to take care of your own facility, thus no maintanence costs other then utilities. I am sure the Foster/Jordan/Mimco cabal would love to rent space to EPISD for facilities, And to UTEP too for that matter! And YISD! I can see it now: Andress High School Sponsored by Southwest University.
(And it isn’t all hunky-dorey with the Charter Schools either. Burnham Wood runs a few around town and they were investigated for shady land dealings having to do with their schools. The allegation, I believe, was that they were selling themselves their own land for their schools at a substantially inflated price.)
Charter schools are typically much smaller than a public school, so the ability to find rentable space is much easier. It is easier to find rentable space with parking for a school of 50 and 10 staff members kids compared to a school of 700 or 2000. They don’t have to have sports programs, or fine arts, or things that take up large spaces (stadiums and stages).
One thing you do not mention Brutus is private schools. Schools like Cathedral High DO own their own space and do have to pay for their own maintenance.
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Mimco is not part of the Foster/Jordan/Hunt cabal. Mimco is not feeding at the public trough.
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The idea that property renters do not pay for maintenance is a false one.
The lease either requires the property owner to maintain the property to a certain standard or the renter to maintain the property.
If the property owner is responsible they will build the maintenance costs into the rental rate.
Either way the property will be maintained and the renter will be the one paying for it.
Brutus
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EPISD has to keep deferring maintenance because its income has been sucked up by bloated administrative overhead expenses associated with the central office.
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Brutus,
But the renter themselves is not responsible for the major upkeep of the property. Renters of mall space don’t put the roofs on, don’t fix the busted water heaters etc. Yes the cost is rolled into the rental agreement. However, to compare a single space small operation charter school that has a two or three room 3000 sq ft space to a organization that has millions of square foot space is like comparing the needs of the Fat and Juicy Burger on Mesa to McDonalds.
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So, let’s focus on the more important stuff. Which do you prefer, McDonald’s or Hot & Juicy Burger?
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Brutus, I agree with you. But, we live in a city that has maintenance crews and yet buildings are demolished because they are beyond repair?
Charter schools do well because they operate on a realistic budget. While public entities operate on the idea to simply just demand more money without discussion and planning.
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The general tone of today’s dialogue seems to be that charter schools succeed and do well while public schools fail. Sadly, the world of charter schools has its own failures and closures, including one co-founded by Jeb Bush in 1996 and which he once promoted as a model school and “a source of pride and joy”:
The overall national closure rate for charter schools is about 15% according to the Center for Education Reform and some of those close prematurely before the end of their contract period. Nearly two thirds of the closures are reportedly a result of finances or mismanagement. The closing of some charter schools gets pretty emotional and heated as well according to some reports.
My conclusion is that education as a whole is filled with a lot of less than trustworthy non-teachers who rape and pillage.
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the dawg is right. charter schools usually rent, not build but da vinci built their school using mueller steel bldgs and dont have high maintenance issues and empty strip malls are the culprit for other charters. great post brutus. never thunk about how they get by but they do pay teachers way less than competing school districts and can have vending machines, which are amazing revenue generators.
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They also can simply pack up and leave if they want to. DaVinci is owned by Burnham Woods, which was part of the investigation about the land deal. Aunty Wood is correct: Charters can hire non-certified teachers and pay them much less. Where do all the teachers go that can’t even pass their simple certification exam? You guessed it.
Read more about it here: http://www.elpasotimes.com/ci_21124138/problems-bring-tea-monitor-district
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This is from the TEA website:
To fulfill the No Child Left Behind federal requirement to be highly qualified, charter school teachers must demonstrate content mastery in their assignment. Charter school teachers must demonstrate competency in the same manner as teachers in public schools.
Brutus
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Reality Checker has the winning response, folks. The public schools are eaten up with unnecessary administrative costs, of which we all know salaries take the biggest slice. At the same time, most campus maintenance people (we used to call them janitors, remember?) do very little. Actually, that is their specialty: appear to be very busy, while actually accomplishing next to nothing. I think most Administrations do have maintenance teams, but they do little more than cut the grass, when there is grass.
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As an example, I’m told that EPISD has their own people do roof repairs while the roofs are still under warranty from the manufacturer.
Brutus
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Mr Dungan, Let me fill you in on why Janitors seem to be doing less than they used to. Back about 15 years ago the administration started thinking the same way as you and increased the area the Janitors were supposed to clean. They used buildings in New York to show what a janitor should be able to clean. Of course they did not have the dust that El Paso has but they did not care. They also needed some more central office administrators so they took all the tools away from the janitors and made them fill out work order forms if something needed done in their schools. They were no longer able to fix an overflowing toilet or broken water fountain by orders. At a school my wife taught at there was a water leak that dripped into a gallon coffee can all day long and was emptied 3 or 4 times during the day but overflowed at night. It took the work order 10 days to get it fixed and when a new roof was put on black mold was found and had to be cleaned up at great cost. I wish you could work a week with one of them and then see what you think. Do you like to clean up puke daily?
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