Open enrollment finances

June 3, 2014

There has been some discussion in this blog’s comments lately about the financial aspects of the new open enrollment policy that the El Paso Independent School District has adopted.  The policy allows students residing in neighboring Texas school districts to attend EPISD schools if they complete the enrollment process.

Of the $483 million dollars in revenue that the 2013-2014 EPISD budget projected, 2.19% was to come from federal funding.  State funding was projected at 63.9% of the total and local funding was expected to account for 34.8%.

Texas law provides for the portion that they would pay the old district to be transferred to the new district along with the student.  Federal funds account for only about $10.6 million of the $483 million and are not primarily based upon attendance.  It appears that some federal money would be lost to the old district and the new district might gain some depending upon the student’s situation.

Local funds not transferred

I have not been able to find a provision in our laws that requires the local portion (in the case of EPISD 34.8%) of the revenue to be transferred to the new district.  In fact Texas law goes so far as to make a provision for the receiving school district to charge tuition if they want to.  From the Texas education code:

Sec. 25.038.  TUITION FEE FOR TRANSFER STUDENTS.  The receiving school district may charge a tuition fee to the extent that the district’s actual expenditure per student in average daily attendance, as determined by its board of trustees, exceeds the sum the district benefits from state aid sources as provided by Section 25.037.  However, unless a tuition fee is prescribed and set out in a transfer agreement before its execution by the parties, an increase in tuition charge may not be made for the year of that transfer that exceeds the tuition charge, if any, of the preceding school year.

I hope that one of our readers will let us know if I am wrong here.

Who benefits?

The transfer does not seem to make a financial difference to the parents of the student being transferred.  Since EPISD is operating with a budget deficit it would appear that the EPISD taxpayers will have to make up the missing money.

Are the developers and home builders the beneficiaries of this policy?

We deserve better

Brutus

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

EPISD shift

May 3, 2014

Studying the 1968-1969 El Paso Independent School District personnel directory, I am beginning to understand judge Session’s ruling in Alvarado v. El Paso Independent School District.

The judge’s order is remembered by most of us as the one that caused school busing here in the 1980’s.  Now I see that it also affected personnel, facilities, and curriculum.

The directory lists the employees of the district, including educators and support staff.  Looking at some of the hispanic surnames explains some of the judge’s concern.

The web site genealogy.about.com lists Garcia as the most common hispanic last name.  The district directory lists 35 Garcias with 14 of them being educators (40%)  and 21 being support personnel (60%).

Eight out of the 27 employees with the last name Martinez were educators (30%).

Of the 37 people with the last name Smith, 25 were educators (68%).  Jones came in with 14 listings and 7 educators (50%).

Something got better

Brutus

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

CBP thanks you

April 15, 2014

The City of El Paso signed an agreement with the U. S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) organization at the end of January of this year.

The plan was to use $1.5 million of city money to fund overtime pay for customs officers in order to shorten waiting time at our international bridges.

The Times quoted the the CBP port director as saying:

“The goal is to get the wait times down to 15 minutes and no more than 30 minutes. We can’t go out and guarantee that. But the goal is to keep the wait times low and manageable.”

And the answer is

The folks over at Newspapertree.com post a “bridge wait times” section on their home page.

The CBP reported numbers for April 12, 2014 at 3:41 PM show the wait time at the Cordova bridge (aka Bridge of the Americas and free bridge) to be 50 minutes.

The user submitted passenger data section shows a 117 minute wait at 7:15 AM on the same day and 127 minutes at 12:49 PM.

We deserve better

Brutus

7 Comments | City government, El Paso Times, Federal Government | Permalink
Posted by Brutus

Bipartisanship

March 8, 2014

This made its way to me through a friend:

M. Stanton Evans, Texas author, educator, and journalist observed that in America there are only two parties, 

“One is the evil party, and the other is the stupid party…Occasionally the two parties get together to do something that’s both evil and stupid.   That’s called bipartisanship.”

We deserve better

Brutus

2 Comments | City government, County Government, Federal Government, State Government | Permalink
Posted by Brutus

Unnecessary change

February 23, 2014

According to this article the officials at Fort Bliss are about to rename Robert E. Lee road.  The new name will be Buffalo Soldier Road.

The buffalo soldiers were a significant part of our local history and certainly deserve to have things named in their honor.

My problem here is that we could have named some significant new road or facility after the buffalo soldiers instead of changing the name of something already named.

Money is being wasted as addresses have to be changed.  History is being lost since past references to the old name will not be easy to follow in the future.

One fear is that this is revisionism at work.

We deserve better

Brutus

5 Comments | El Paso Times, Federal Government | Permalink
Posted by Brutus

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