Our current congressman could have done more to help a situation that he evidently feels passionately about if he had worked on writing legislation to make the changes he wants.
What he did was grandstanding in my book.
We deserve better
Brutus
EPISD classroom sizes
June 24, 2018Please note that this was mistakenly published yesterday. We took it down to keep with our habit of only posting once each day.
According to data available from The Texas Tribune if EPISD increased the number of students per teacher up to the overall state average, EPISD would need 53 fewer teachers (not to mention administrators).
The Tribune also tells us that the average salary for an EPISD teacher is $51,576 excluding benefits. We don’t know what percentage to apply to the basic salary in order to compute the cost of benefits. We do know that the state minimum retirement contribution is 6.8% and their lowest contribution to pay for health care is $350 a month for a teacher with no other family members being insured. That adds another 8.1%.
If somehow the benefit costs only add up to 15% of the teacher’s salary increasing the class size up to the Texas average would save the taxpayers over $3.1 million per year.
We deserve better
Brutus
23 Comments | 
El Paso Independent School District | 
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Posted by Brutus
City council candidates
June 23, 2018Max Grossman sent this in:
Friends,
What do all six new candidates for City Council share in common? They are all opposed to the City’s plan to build an “Arena” in Duranguito!
CANDIDATE DISTRICT SUPPORTS “ARENA” LOCATION
John Hogan 5 No
Kizito Ekechukwu 5 No
Eric Stoltz 6 No
Dylan Corbett 8 No
Nicholas Vasquez 8 No
Rich Wright 8 No
Well, that is quite a wave of opposition. Apparently the City’s “Arena” PR campaign, paid for with our tax dollars, has utterly failed. These candidates would not be running on this position if they did not feel it were in the best interests of their constituents.
Rep. Peter Svarzbein of District 1 is the only incumbent who has filed his campaign paperwork with the City so far, and he is of course pro-demolition and pro-displacement, after changing his mind twice. We wish him good luck with that. We are informed that some formidable challengers will be throwing their hat in the District 1 race soon.
9 Comments | City government | Permalink
Posted by Brutus
Not fair
June 22, 2018The 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, 2018EPISD 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
elpasospeak 
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