Not fair

June 22, 2018

The federal prosecutors in the current school administrator case have admitted that they made “mistakes” by not turning over documents that they were supposed to give to the defense team.

Now the United States attorney for the western district of Texas has stepped in and will prosecute the case.

According to an article in the Times he evidently feels that the failure of his organization to follow the law did no significant harm to the defendants, after all they are accused of committing crimes.

The defendants deserve both a fair and prompt trial.

Their first trial was stopped by the sitting judge over a year ago when it became apparent that the feds had not turned over the documents.

They were evidently ordered to cough them up.

Now we learn that even more documents are about to be produced and they think that there may be still more.

I can only come up with two possible explanations for their behavior–either they are incompetent or they chose not to obey the law.

Shame on them!

We deserve better

Brutus

4 Comments | El Paso Independent School District, Federal Government | Permalink
Posted by Brutus

Ten empty buildings so build new central offices

June 21, 2018

EPISD is considering closing ten of its elementary schools.

At the same time they are building a new central office complex near downtown.

The district knew the schools were underutilized years ago.

The district has so far admitted to needing to issue at least $29 million in bonds to pay for the construction.  They say they will also be using money from their “reserves”.

Then again it looks like they are going to have ten empty schools with nice big playgrounds that could be used for parking for the legion of central office administrators that they are going to have to move.

Back in 2015 we published Thoughts about the new central office.

We pointed out what some other school districts spend on their administrative facilities.

We deserve better

Brutus

10 Comments | El Paso Independent School District | Permalink
Posted by Brutus

Shameful waste

June 20, 2018

The Times tells us that EPISD is considering the closure of 11 elementary schools that are underutilized.

That may be a good idea.

Then again we should not have any confidence in the belief that the district has figured out where to move the students and teachers to nor what the moves will do to their bus transportation needs.

Will the schools that receive these students have the capacity to handle them?  Don’t assume that the issue has been thought through.

For all we know they will decide that they need to build new schools to replace the ones that they are closing.

The taxpayers also deserve answers as to why the district spent millions of dollars on brand new multipurpose buildings for some of these elementary schools when they knew that the schools were underutilized.

The picture below was taken on June 21, 2016 at Carlos Rivera elementary school, one of the schools that they are thinking about closing.

The banner tells us that they were building a new building for the very school that is now on the list for closure.

The district knew that these schools were underutilized for years yet they wasted our dollars building unneeded facilities.

I wonder who will ultimately profit from these properties.

We deserve better

Brutus

 

21 Comments | El Paso Independent School District | Permalink
Posted by Brutus

Forming up sides

June 19, 2018

Yikes!

Even our state legislative delegation is upset over the rush job EPISD is trying to pull relative to the school closings.

How do we know that the schools that they have chosen are the right ones?

Part of what the legislators wrote to the school board is printed below.

They are not only concerned with the lack of time for public input but they point out that the district’s published budget numbers don’t make sense.

When one group of politicians gets on the wrong side of another group there is always a price to pay.

We deserve better

Brutus

12 Comments | El Paso Independent School District, State Government | Permalink
Posted by Brutus

Its too hot in the kitchen

June 18, 2018

According to KTSM our EPISD superintendent and one of the school board members will be out of town and will not attend the public meetings held to discuss the closure of ten elementary schools.

We have been told that the out of town meeting is important and has been scheduled for months.

Simple

The superintendent and school board members should be at the public meetings.  The simple solution is to reschedule those public meetings so that the officials can attend.

The solution is so simple that many of us can see that in reality our superintendent does not want to attend.

We deserve better

Brutus

22 Comments | El Paso Independent School District | Permalink
Posted by Brutus

« Previous Entries
Next Entries »