We read the other day that EPISD took some money out of its rainy day fund to pay for teacher training relative to literacy.
Has someone invented a new method of teaching reading and writing?
Shouldn’t we expect that college trained teachers have learned how to teach these subjects?
Why did the school board elect to do this?
We deserve better
Brutus
elpasospeak 
Maybe it is the literacy of the teachers themselves that is in question.
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Ain’t that the truth? I recall sitting next to recent a High School graduate in a English Composition class during my time at EPCC who never turned in a completed assignment because the instructor would not accept his illiterate papers. Also remember attending UTEP classes with people attempting to flounder their way thru classes in search of teaching credentials who had failed to achieve a Texas teacher’s certification multiple times.
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It’s like fingernails on a chalkboard when I hear a teacher say “Me and the other teachers” or “those ones.”
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Below is supposed to tell you what the money is being used for but I give up. I do know the new Executive Director probably needed a lot more money. On another page, the My Virtual Reading Coach costs $169,650. I think it is strange when students are having trouble reading they stick them behind a computer screen and give them a program to teach them. No rhyme or reason to anything they do. I have never heard of going into the fund balance for something like this unless they have put money there that should not have been there like the 2015-2016 High School Allotment that was not spent on helping students like it was supposed to be spent. (Over 1.1 million dollars)
DISTRICT IMPROVEMENT PLAN OBJECTIVE, GOAL OR NEED ADDRESSED:
60% of students will experience engaging and challenging
learning aligned to EPISD 2020 student learning goals by 2021,
increasing from 54% based on Gallup survey results.
SUMMARY: Pursuant to Board Policy CE (Local) – Annual Operating Budget, the Board shall amend the budget
when a change is made increasing any one of the
functional spending categories or increasing revenue object
accounts and other resources.
The budget amendment presented is to request funding for the Literacy Plan. Funding will come from the District’s Unreserved Fund Balance.
The allocations will be made to the following functions as noted below:
GENERAL OPERATING FUNDS 185
11 –Instruction $1,774,000
13 – Curriculum Development and Instr. Staff Dev. $ 91,434
S1,865,434
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Mr. Wever (and all),
They stick them in front of a computer screen because to their way of thinking, it is the “modern” or “futuristic” way of “learning”. “They” being the EPISD upper admin and their middle admin lackeys.
There is an actual belief among these people that there is somehow an actual difference between the “21st Century Learner” and say, a 17th century learner.
Just because we have new tools (with bright shiny screens) and PhD’s out there desperate to justify their education and enormous compensation for their say-so on all things education, they really believe that somehow, humans have changed.
This is false. And, the claims to this “change” are lies.
But! These lies serve as a large part of the excuse they use to push for all of this expensive technology and all of these new “cutting edge” educational strategies (at obscene costs) down the throat of the tax payers. And, of course, down the throat of the teachers, parents, and the students they are so ardently trying to indoctrinate.
Human thought and the way our brains process and store information (otherwise known as learning) has not changed significantly over the course of recorded human history.
It is for this precise reason that we can even understand literature from the distant past! Our passions, our failings, our moments of nobility, and our reasons for doing everything we do as humans are the same today as they were for our ancient ancestors!
Men and women have the same drama, rivalries, and faults. Young kids and teenagers think and behave the same now as they did in ancient Greece and in every era and culture from then to now.
My thought on this particular issue is that monies are being diverted for one of two reasons:
1. The fact their “Educational Reform” isn’t working. More and more kids are getting into EPCC and UTEP (and other colleges) with a severe lack of literal knowledge. And. it is now finally happening on a large enough scale as to be noticed even by the general public (although the colleges have known it for a while now) and they have to do something to shore the whole failing system up. In effect, they are preparing to deflect the failure of their political narrative based ‘education’ into a show of them “boldly taking the steps to correct this ‘crisis’ that, of course, is somebody else’s fault”. [MORE SCREENS NEEDED!!!]
or
2. The money is being funneled for some other purpose than actually stated to support some OTHER form of corruption they are involved in. And, they are hoping that the obscure language, along with the absolute lack of communication with anyone outside of the vaunted inner circle, will cause any knowledge of the existence of these funds to vanish from the public memory in a couple weeks (as has happened SO many times in the recent past!). I’ve lost count of the sheer number of massive multi-million dollar programs and systems that the district has purchased, half way implemented, then tossed aside 6 months to a year later.
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Well said.
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