Ballpark funding

September 26, 2017

Remember how the increase in the hotel occupancy tax was supposed to pay for the ballpark?

Take a look at this:

The city has been collecting about $2.9 million each year from the increase.

Now look at this:

The principal and interest due in 2017 will be $4.27 million.

The shortfall will have to come out of your house occupancy tax.

We deserve better

Brutus

13 Comments | Ball park, City government | Permalink
Posted by Brutus

EPISD–active learning

September 25, 2017

Dan Wever sent in a link to a published study of active learning.

You can read the report at https://publications.iadb.org/bitstream/handle/11319/6825/Challenges%20in%20Educational%20Reform%3a%20An%20Experiment%20on%20Active%20Learning%20in%20%20Mathematics.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y

The study divided schools into “treatment” (those that applied active learning interventions) and “control” (non active learning) groups.

The study’s results

Surprisingly, we find that the control group learned significantly more than any of the
intervention groups. The students using only the active learning approach learned about 17
percent less than the status quo. The loss in the group that also received technology was 25
percent of a standard deviation. We also find that the best students were harmed the most by this
intervention.

We deserve better

Brutus

 

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

Whither Mr. Moore

September 24, 2017

An astute reader sent us an email and asked if our soon to be gone newspaper editor plans to go to work for the county judge’s congressional campaign.

Then again she wondered if he might go work for our current congressman–the one who is running for senate.

We deserve better

Brutus

6 Comments | County Government, Federal Government | Permalink
Posted by Brutus

Council agenda manipulation?

September 23, 2017

This came in from Jud Burgess:

Mayor Margo was busy making sure no Duranguito supporters went beyond their 3 minutes, including a priest for Sacred Heart Church speaking on behalf of Bishop Mark Seitz.

 
I watched him give a signal and nasty look to the city clerk EVERY time a speaker hit the 3 minute mark.
 
Click on this link to watch video of his obvious and reprehensible attempts to control time to the second, even towards a priest representing Bishop Seitz.

He wanted to make sure and limit to the absolute minimum every speaker advocating on behalf of Duranguito.

Remember new Mayor Margo wanted to limit speakers to one minute?

Today’s city council meeting ended up a FUSTERCLUCK when Mayor Margo refused to let anyone else talk after some city staffer purposefully removed an agenda item which had several Duranguito supporters scheduled to speak, depriving people of their free speech rights.  Nice little trick but no cigar.

And the other little trick was visually censoring Duranguito speakers images as they talked from the video screen, and then showing video of pro-arena anti-El Paso history advocates when they spoke.

Stranger than fiction.

22 Comments | City government | Permalink
Posted by Brutus

EPISD–improving employee relations

September 22, 2017

We heard from two different sources that EPISD is sending expensive cupcakes to employees on their birthdays.

From a reader:

Now employees are receiving a double cupcake package in the MAIL from Nothing Bundt Cakes for their birthdays from their sweet loving district?  I wonder who they know at Nothing Bundt Cakes.
First of all, do we know how much those cup cakes cost x the number of district employees x the delivery fee….
Second of all…was there an RFP to decide who would be the vendor awarded for the bday cakes?
Third of all…do we know how many employees there are in this district with birthdays….do the math…
Fourth…where did they get the funds for this stupid idea and couldn’t this money be allocated better when we all know there was a reduction in departments in order to get our stupid raise.
On a teacher salary…yet we cannot get printer ink because our campus budgets were cut drastically….
We deserve better
Brutus

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

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