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:
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
Has anyone asked city council what they intend to do about the atrocious condition of our neighborhood streets?
Aren’t the streets more of a necessity than the arena?
The city’s pavement condition index is available here: pavement condition index
Unfortunately it does not work.
We deserve better
Brutus
12 Comments | City government | Permalink
Posted by Brutus
The other day we had a conversation with an EPISD employee who works in a school, not the central office.
She indicated that her personal opinion was that the “teaching staff” should get a 10% pay raise.
School finance in Texas is very complicated.
From a local property tax perspective school districts are allowed to set two tax rates, one for operations and maintenance (O&M) and the other for debt service (interest and sinking fund).
EPISD essentially cannot set an O&M property tax rate above $1.17 per hundred dollars of property valuation.
EPISD has currently set their O&M rate at $1.07. At that rate their 2016-2017 budget anticipates bringing in $165,104,344 from the O&M portion. Raising the rate to the maximum of $1.17 would bring in another $15.4 million dollars.
The district has approximately 4,000 teachers. The starting salary for a first year teacher is $44,900. We don’t know what the average salary is so we will do our computing using the lowest (least paid) pay rate.
A 10% increase would amount to $4,490 per teacher. The cost to the district would increase by more than that because of benefits, but we will leave that out of our cost computation. The raise of $4,490 multiplied by 4,000 teachers comes to $17.96 million dollars.
The district could only raise another $15.4 million in local property taxes and that would take facing a roll back election from the voters.
The district simply cannot raise taxes high enough to pay for a 10% teacher raise unless they cut costs elsewhere.
In this article last year the Times delivered more bad news for the teachers:
Trustees said the 1.5 percent raises were all the district could afford now, as student enrollment declines.
School districts receive state funding based on attendance, so fewer students means fewer dollars.
Unless the district cuts their other costs don’t look for big pay raises for the teachers.
We have a basic marketing question here.
Will parents choose to send their children to EPISD schools because of shiny new buildings or because of the quality of education offered?
We deserve better
Brutus
13 Comments | El Paso Independent School District, State Government | Permalink
Posted by Brutus
There has been some discussion on the blog about the Texas Rangers’ involvement in the public corruption and open meetings issues we have been having in El Paso.
Many of us were under the impression that the Rangers operated out of Austin and that our access to them would thus be limited.
As it turns out El Paso is home to Texas Rangers Company E which you can read about here.
According to the Texas Rangers web site one of their responsibilities is:
The telephone number for Company E is (915) 834-7664.
We deserve better
Brutus
3 Comments | City government, County Government, State Government | Permalink
Posted by Brutus
We will be having a city election in May of this year.
We would like to encourage our readers to promote awareness in the community.
There is a lot at stake.
We deserve better
Brutus
11 Comments | City government | Permalink
Posted by Brutus
elpasospeak 
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