EPISD–one of the hardest jobs in America

February 13, 2017

We missed the Friday, February 10, 2017 article in the Times titled “EPISD leader’s new contract includes more perks” and thank a loyal reader for pointing it out.

Some of us may be upset with the shell game that the district played in hiding the details.  The Times persisted and after three weeks the district finally provided a copy of the contract changes.

Failure to provide the requested information within ten business days is probably a violation of the Texas public information act.  Will we see a county commissioner writing a personal letter to our district attorney asking the prosecutor to look into this?

Obscene

There has already been a lot of public outcry about the superintendent’s contract.  The newly disclosed provisions will cause more.

The galacticly stupid comment the superintendent made to the Times when they were looking into the hidden contract benefits will cause even more outrage:

“Cabrera called his position “one of the hardest jobs in America” …

It is hard to imagine that he could think that much less say it out loud.

Any of us could site classroom teaching jobs in his district that are more difficult than his.

It almost seems that the superintendent wants to be fired.

School board

Other than the president of the school board, the district’s board has been quiet about this.

We have an election coming up this May.

We deserve better

Brutus

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

It’s who you know not what you know

February 10, 2017

El Chuqueno published a piece the other day that included this quote:

As you commence your seventh term in office, I write to respectfully urge the office of the Disrict Attorney of the 34th to investigate recent possible violations of the Texas Open Meetings Act and actively pursue any enforcement measures deemed appropriate, if violations occurred. These alleged violations involving county boards and municipal representatives weaken public trust in our local government entities and I firmly believe that your office’s examination into these important matters can help reassure the public that violations of the Act are taken seriously, and that appropriate measures are actively used to enforce it.

That evidently came from a letter from one of our county commissioners to our district attorney.

Commence

“As you commence your seventh term in office”–what is that about?

Was there a message there that we are missing?  Starting the request with “I write …” explains the purpose of the letter.  Why the reference to the district attorney’s tenure?

Action

It seems that the district attorney plans to take some of the issues to a grand jury.  Why now?  Where has our district attorney with six terms of office been during the other corruption situations that have been plaguing us?

We deserve better

Brutus

8 Comments | City government, County Government, El Paso Independent School District | Permalink
Posted by Brutus

EPISD–picking school principals

February 9, 2017

We keep hearing from EPISD that they want community input in the selection of school principals.

In fact the district creates a separate committee for each principal being selected.

We spoke the other day with a lady who has served in the past on two of these principal selection committees.

She told us that the committee is allowed to observe the questioning of the top three (chosen by the district) candidates.

Observe is the operative word here.  The committee members are not allowed to ask questions of the candidates.  The questions are asked by a district employee.

This situation is one more example of our government agencies pretending to do things that they do not.

We deserve better

Brutus

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

EPISD lags behind other local school districts

February 5, 2017

If you take the Texas Education Agency’s recent A-F ratings of our schools and convert the letter grades to a four point average, this is our local school districts did:

a-f2016teahighschoolsgpa

We deserve better

Brutus

 

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

EPISD board needs training

February 4, 2017

Evidently our elected EPISD board needs training.

It also appears that we need some expensive folks from out of town to do the training.

The document below shows the charges for two one day meetings:

training

Each one day session evidently requires a half day of preparation by the facilitator.

Each day of board training costs over $4,000 plus expenses.

From what we’ve heard the training is largely about how to cooperate with the superintendent.

We deserve better

Brutus

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

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