Age of consent

December 29, 2013

The December 11, 2013 agenda for the Ysleta Independent School District (YISD) tells us a lot.

The consent portion lists 15 items for consideration.  Included are millions of dollars of spending.  As usual, the material does not tell the public anything about who the contracts will be awarded to.

The agenda contains this jewel ” (5 minutes maximum for all items, inclusive)”.

If these items are really universally supported by the board members the whole thing should about 30 seconds.  We understand that.

My problem with this is the lack of discussion about what is being done, why it is being done, and how they are doing it.

YISD’s published core belief number 7 is:  “Except where prohibited by law, the entire District system should be transparent”.

It seems like staff has control over the board.

We deserve better

Brutus

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Not making the grade

December 28, 2013

This document from the board book of the December 17, 2013 El Paso Independent School District board of managers meeting raised my eyebrows.

The state of Texas now tries to measure each individual student’s academic progress from year to year.  Some will argue that the standardized tests are not good indicators of what the students are learning, but the tests are what the state wants to use.

The board presentation summarizes the results by high school and the feeder schools that serve it.  Three slides are shown for each high school, overall student progress, students that are categorized as English language learners, and finally special education students.

Overall student progress

The slides give us three numbers for each category of learning:

  1. The number of students that did not make adequate progress
  2. The number of students that did meet the state’s progress goal
  3. The number of students that exceeded the goal

The portions highlighted in yellow show areas where a school had half or more of the students that did not make the expected progress.  There are some turquoise segments that show areas where the school and it’s students did better than expected.

Some of the results are horrible.  At Ross Middle School out of 154 7th grade math students 144 of them scored below the state’s expectation.  Then somehow at the same school when measuring the 8th grade algebra students the state found that out of 74 students a whopping 52 of them exceeded the state standard and only 4 of them were below the standard.

What does this mean?

Are the state tests inappropriate?  Do our students have some disadvantage?  Are the poor results and the good results the product of different teachers?

I suppose that this document can cause many debates.

The fact remains however that we are not meeting the state’s expectations.  Does this predict accreditation problems in the future?

We deserve better

Brutus

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Working overtime

December 27, 2013

Our current county judge was quoted recently in the Times:

“…we can’t afford to go backward now, as there’s still too much work to do.”

Work means money

The county judge is entertaining tearing down our 1980’s jail building, building a new county administration building, and expanding the Camino Real Regional Mobility Authority as a few of her projects that will require “work”.

Remember that this year the commissioner’s court voted to spend $160 million to remodel our county hospital (which the hospital’s chief executive officer claims is profitable) and to build health clinics that will compete with private physicians.

I believe it was the city manager that claimed that the county judge was part of our local “dynamic trio”.

Three of a kind

The trio is evidently our new congressman (who has already had a brush with the House Ethics Committee), our tax and spend county judge, and a former city representative who lost the election for mayor by 74%.

I like the congressman and think that we should give him a chance.  He has hopefully learned that elected officials are not above the law, at least at the national level.  He’s not in El Paso anymore.

Our former city representative hopefully learned that giving the voters a say in what goes on might help you get elected.

Since we should be enjoying baseball in the spring remember that three strikes make an out.

We deserve better

Brutus

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Help support other governments during the holiday season

December 26, 2013

The December 16, 2013 Times editorial urged the approval of a transportation plan.  Again the Times advocates higher local taxes instead of more effective representation at the state and feral levels.

El Pasoans are being taxed to pay for facilities that should be paid for by the state and the Times recognizes the situation.  From the Times editorial:

No one likes to pay additional taxes or fees. And in this case, it can be justifiably argued that El Paso County vehicle owners are getting stuck with a tab that should be picked up by other governments.

But El Paso has serious traffic congestion issues that are getting worse by the day. That leaves local leadership with two choices — complaining about the failure of others, or taking control of our own destiny.

Whining is not much of a strategy. The results of the bold but controversial choice made by Commissioners Court will become evident today, as the 16 mobility projects are outlined at the Commissioners Court meeting.

Border administration

This year El Paso’s city council voted to create a fund with our local money to pay overtime for U. S. government employees in an effort to improve bridge crossing times.  Many parts of our country suffer from river flooding and hurricanes regularly and get extraordinary assistance from the feds,  yet somehow immigration has become a feral issue but needs to be paid for by local citizens.

Even university systems

The separately funded Texas Tech system leased our train station for  one dollar a year from the benevolent citizens of El Paso.  That was in addition to the Albert Fall mansion that we rebuilt with city funds and then gave to the university for another dollar a year.

Go local

If we have to raise taxes, can’t we at least spend the money on something that we are clearly responsible for — like local roads?

We deserve better

Brutus

8 Comments | City government, County Government, El Paso Times, Federal Government, State Government | Permalink
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Merry Christmas

December 24, 2013

We plan to be back Thursday, December 26.

In the mean time, please enjoy the holiday.

Brutus

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