The readers are doing a great job sending me private emails with links to articles about matters of interest.
I appreciate them all.
In an effort to get more of this information out I would like to suggest that you consider using the Saturday open forum opportunity to share your links with the rest of the readers.
Today is open forum Saturday.
Tell us what’s on your mind.
Brutus
elpasospeak 
Here is a question for your EPISD trustee, but don’t expect a valid answer!
Is the EPISD able to spend as much money on Episd resident students when out of district students are allowed to be educated in the EPISD free?
The answer is OF COURSE NOT! And the reason is that the students from out of district bring NO LOCAL PROPERTY TAX MONEY to the EPISD, thus EPISD in district students split theirs with them and all students get less per student.
Isn’t that nice of the EPISD taxpayers?
Let’s close some schools to help them out!
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Open enrollment was done for the benefit of residential developers. It makes it easier to sell homes outside the EPISD district.
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Yes, and the EPISD taxpayers are subsidizing them at OUR student’s expense.
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Thanks Dan for surfacing a funding disparity issue our local media seems uninterested in examining.
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The EPISD has for the last 5 years tried to make the district as the “district of choice. They have spent millions of dollars on Marketing firms, software companies, curriculum and staff development, the superintendent’s dues and fees to all kinds of organizations around the country, trying to build a brand, in order to get students from other districts to attend the EPISD.
What is the cost of this effort and what is the real reason behind this effort by Trustees and the Administration. The reason is the open enrollment policy makes it easier to sell homes that are not in the physical boundaries of the EPISD. People buying homes on the Westside did not want to send their children to Canutillo schools. I don’t know why because Canutillo is doing better in the accountability ratings than the EPISD. But, this was the driving force behind “Open Enrollment.”
Property tax payments to school districts help fund public education in the EPISD and this tax amounts to about 30 percent of the money received. The state supplies about 52 percent of the money and for every extra body or open enrollment student the EPISD gets this extra money. Of course it costs more than the 52 percent received from the state to educate a student so they take money away from the property tax money allocated to local students. In other words the local property tax payers are subsidizing the open enrollment students. The EPISD ever started an all girls school hoping to get students for other school districts to transfer. The New Tech Network was used to try and get students from other districts. The whole educational system of the EPISD is geared to making the district the “DISTRICT OF CHOICE.” And what is the cost of these policies? Well, the EPISD now says they are short of money so they are going to close schools that do not have a lot of students attending them.
So, we have the taxpaying parents of children who live a couple of blocks from their neighborhood school, who have been help pay for out of district students, being forced to put their in district children on busses twice a day to take their children to a new school. (Please note that if the school is not more than 2 miles away the district can tell the parents to get their children to school themselves as the law says the district is not responsible.)
One of the rules the Trustees promise to follow is in all dealings and decisions that concern the children the children will always come first.
Closing of any schools violates their promise to the taxpayers and VOTERS!
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Dig through the City of El Paso website and try to find an e-mail address for your city rep, your mayor, the city manager, or anyone else for that matter. Impossible to find. They provide phone numbers, but calls go to voice mail hell. They do not even provide easy links to council rep pages. They do not want to talk to you or hear from you except in controlled situations.
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Students attend EPISD schools who live in the state of New Mexico and the Republic of Mexico. Is that allowed by ‘open enrollment’?
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With this being a Trost building I wonder if the EPISD will need some type of Historical permission to do anything with this building.
Alta Vista School
El Paso, Texas
Description: Alta Vista School
Other Names: none
Address: 3500 La Luz, between Grama and Montana Streets, El Paso, El Paso County, Texas
Type: educational: elementary school
Original Client: El Paso County Board of Education
Historic Inventory: none
Date: opened September 3, 1912
Condition: extant; in use as an elementary school
Architect or Firm: Henry C. Trost
Associated Architect or Firm: Trost & Trost
Contractors: contractor for the 1916 additions and remodeling was Kroeger, Mayfield & Shaw
Dimensions and Orientation: as expanded in 1916, two stories with elevated basement, T-shaped, 212 feet, 4 inches across the west facade; 15 classrooms, other facilities, and an auditorium (see Remarks, below); faces west
Budget/Cost: total cost of 1916 additions and remodeling: $73,000
Foundation: concrete
Wall Materials: reinforced concrete, stuccoed
Roofing Materials: flat roof
Other Materials Used: wood window surrounds
Remodeling and Additions: see remarks
Present Owner: El Paso Independent School District
Location of Drawings: El Paso Public Library: Ponsford 597, a photograph of first floor plan
Location of Documentary Photographs: El Paso Public Library: Ponsford 420, First unit, side entrance and wing; Ponsford 419, perspective view with landscaping. Aultman 5403, (identical to Ponsford 419).
Bibliography: (1) El Paso Herald, August 26, 1916, Progress and Building Section, page 2 (includes exterior photograph, states that work of enlarging the Alta Vista School is nearly completed, describes the enlarged building, names architects and contractor, gives budget, adds that Alta Vista School is one of the few reinforced concrete school buildings in the country)
(2) The American School Board Journal, volume 64, number 5, May, 1922, page 66, photograph of general view, three ground plans
(3) William George Bruce, compiler, Grade Schools Buildings, Book II (Milwaukee: The Bruce Publishing Company, 1925), pages 236-237
Remarks: The building was planned and built in stages. The original unit, eight classrooms, opened in 1912; this was expanded in 1916 to include 15 classrooms, a kindergarten, an auditorium, and a full basement including manual training and domestic science rooms, as well as a Boys Play Room and a Girls Play Room. (Vilas School was planned in the same manner, except in the case of Vilas, only one unit was built.)
Presently, there are several additions which are not by Trost & Trost: a north wing including living quarters for maintenance personnel; a south wing with connecting corridor, and a large addition at the area of the original north entry.
Alta Vista is believed to be the first school in the Southwest to be constructed of reinforced concrete, as Henry Trost claimed (letter and Two page enclosure, Henry C. Trost to Robert E. Vinson, January 4, 1917 [University of Texas Presidents’ Office Records, Barker Texas History Center of the University of Texas at Austin]). In the two page enclosure accompanying his letter, Trost wrote: Alta Vista School Building. It was the first reinforced concrete, fireproof school building in the entire southwest.
Commission – number 2348.
Prepared for the El Paso Public Library by Lloyd C. and June F. Engelbrecht under a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities, 1990
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Alta Vista School is not presently listed on the Historical Registry, at least I could not locate it. It has also been added on to numerous times by other Architects.
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