elpasospeak

If for some reason you need to send your child to an EPISD school and must pay out of state tuition, the bill looks like it will be $933 per month.

Can someone give us an example of where this would apply?

We deserve better.

Brutus

EPISD considered approving a contract with an out of town firm to provide summer school classes at their Tuesday, April 18, 2017 meeting.

The purchase would be made through a buy board.  Twenty-six companies were awarded contracts by the buy board as a result of the “bidding” process.

Each of the offerings from the companies were rated on a scale of zero to ten.

The company that EPISD has chosen was rated at 7.2, the lowest rating given to any of the companies.

The services that the buy board authorized the company to sell under their contract were “Paraprofessionals, web technologies, and design”.

EPISD appears to have chosen the “For a summer learning program with a 1:30 teacher to student ratio staffed by certified teachers at $12 per hour” option.

EPISD considers certified teachers to be professionals according to the EPISD web site.

The company’s contract with the buy board does not authorize them to offer professionals.  There seems to be a conflict here.

Will certified teachers work for $12 per hour?  Thirty children per class.  Is that a fair wage?

We deserve better

Brutus

It looks like the EPISD board is having some internal dissension about where their new central office should be.

Under the state appointed board of managers the board chose to hire an architectural firm to design a building to be located on Trans Mountain.

The current board recently changed that and is moving forward with the purchase of land and a building on North Stanton.

Now two of the board members have requested that the issue be reconsidered at the Tuesday, April 18, 2017 board meeting.

From the background packet:

(To afford greater transparency for public consumption; to make clear that BEST VALUE for the public and EPISD has been considered for this costly expenditure and that the move will benefit and support current EPISD operational requirements and those of the several decades to follow; and, to have an environmental impact study/survey or the like ,with a statement furnished about the two (2) aforementioned properties that shall be provided to a committee of citizens for final relocation determination.) Presenter: Charles Taylor

Group Approval

MOTION: I move that the Board approve the requested withdrawal; commission an Environmental Impact Study/Survey, or the like, to seek a BEST VALUE statement; appoint a committee of citizens from the 7- single-member Districts to assist with the BEST VALUE determination; and, then provide the EPISD constituency with that BEST VALUE Board decision.

Hmm.  Public input?  Best value?

We’ll see how that goes.

We deserve better

Brutus

The YWCA in El Paso runs an after school program at elementary schools in the El Paso District.

The children are supervised up to 6 PM.

We were approached the other day and told that district staff has let the cat out of the bag and said that the YWCA program was going to be replaced by one administered by a group from out of town.

From what we have been told the district has not communicated any problems or desires to the YWCA.

This would be a massive blow to another local organization.

We deserve better

Brutus

According to the Times our EPISD board viewed a presentation from the out of town engineering firm that the district has chosen to manage the bond projects this last Tuesday.

The Times article said “The presentation to the board was the first public discussion on what the campuses could look [like] after they’re transformed with bond dollars”.

Public not invited

The only item on the Tuesday agenda was posted this way:

“Discuss and Take Appropriate Action on Jacobs Project Management Company “Sprint Start” Document for Bond 2016 Projects (Approval is needed to proceed with contract negotiations with the selected firms and for selected firms to begin their formal design process for Bond 2016 projects)”

The “Sprint Start” document was not posted on the web site as part of the agenda packets sometimes available to us.

Maybe some of our readers could have read the agenda wording and figured out that there would be a show and tell about what their thoughts were.

According to the Times they are already considering making changes to what the bond projects will turn out to be.

We deserve better

Brutus