elpasospeak

This post was sent to me by Mr. Brownfield with the request that we publish it:

Despite my better judgement and general preference to avoid crowds I went to the Coronado High School Dr. Cabrera dealio on November 12. Early on I was disappointed by the Coronado Principal warning the audience that this was a welcome for Mr. Cabrera and not going to be an open Q and A session. Instead it was a presentation “aka infomercial” for the board of managers and the district itself. That pretty much set the tone for the evening.

Next they showed a video of the Coronado feeder pattern schools along with Coronado itself set to some good music, at least I liked the music. It was well done, but it was quite obvious it was done to put the audience in a good mood and to take the “edge” off the Q and A.

Next up was EPISD appointed board of managers President Dee Margo who introduced the Mr. Cabrera and the process behind his hiring. Despite what we were told, in that Mr. Cabrera was not looking for the job, as it turns out he was. I found this out once Mr. Cabrera began speaking and told us about his brief 3 years in the classroom and then about his law experience which lead to his long time desire to become a Superintendent.

I found the only compelling thing about Mr. Cabrera was his indecision as a young person to decide which path to take in life and that his choice was made by the ranking of the schools that accepted him. His overall grasp of the issues was extraordinarily weak and he had about 11 100k per year EPISD administrators sitting behind him to help him answer the censored questions. Oh yeah, I thought the idea of submitting questions via texting and then going through a censor was so typical of the old EPISD I found it laughable. Speaking of laughs, some of the answers from the 100k crowd behind Mr. Cabrera were quite funny in that they were either unable to answer the question or completely misunderstood the question and gave answers that were incorrect anyway. In fact the audience got so noisy during one lame answer from a 100k empty suit that Mr. Cabrera got up and stood right next to the speaker to let him know non verbally to shut up…the speaker didnt get the hint.  I didnt know whether to feel sorry for Mr. Cabrera or feel like we have a stooge “in charge” of a district with a ton of problems. I found it striking that Mr. Cabrera was very excited about EPISD engaging in a procurement for traffic/safety studies in and around schools. Now I understand why the business community is excited about this guy. More tax money avoiding the classroom and into the pockets of contractors.

One question about why not divide the number of West Side Middle schools that feed into both Franklin and Coronado evenly was simply hilarious. The administrators were running around like chickens with their heads cut off or simply sitting there trying to look important. I think it was Nick Cobos who finally got up and gave a decent reply. The answer was basically they will look into it and then a little history about the Freshman wing of the Franklin campus and how the two most recent middle schools to be built in West El Paso came to be.

Mr. Cabrera spoke about meeting with the principals and even the student councils/leadership during his time within EPISD. Notice who he is not talking to? Teachers! Simply incredible. He states that some kind of survey is going to come out before the end of the calendar year for teachers. This still scares me. The Old EPISD did the same thing and turned the survey results into SEE HOW GREAT THE ADMINISTRATION IS.

When the subject of Mr. Cabrera’s opinion on teacher merit pay was raised I listened to Mr. Cabrera answer the question  while I looked at the back of Dee Margo’s neck. When Mr. Cabrera answered the question with a flat out no he does not support it, I saw Dee’s neck go from a light pink to a blazing red. I then looked up at Mr. Cabrera and saw he was looking at Dee and he went on to modify his answer and spoke about programs in Texas and other states that are experimenting with merit pay for teachers and that EPISD would monitor those results to see if they worked. The color in Dee’s neck returned to his normal light pink.

The last funny moment for me was when Mr. Cabrera was asked about the media department at Coronado becoming a magnet. He praised the department and I was quite shocked to know that Coronado High has a radio station and some obviously good equipment from what we saw from the video at the beginning. Nobody seemed to know why it wasnt. So the principal got up and said something about it falling back in priorities and when Mr. Cabrera seemed interested, even excited, about the idea the principal said she was “all ears”. Well I can tell you right now, I speak BS, and her reply was NO please God No. I said this to a teacher next to me and was told its because a magnet school would allow kids from all over EPISD to attend Coronado and thus could endanger their lofty status in terms of academic performance.

I went to this thing with my wife who is a High School Math Teacher in the barrio. We are residents of the Coronado area and we chose to send our kids to her school rather than Coronado back when they were in High School. On our way home we lamented that choice. The difference in the campus and facilities was night and day. All I can say is that separate but equal is alive and well in EPISD. Which should sadden us all.

I decided to ask a question but rather than taking some i-pad and typing it in myself I found a student who was passing them out and asked her if she would type my question in for me. It was concerning the continuing practice of retaliation against teachers who are working with the FBI. The student and the few people who could overhear were quite taken aback, I didnt ask the question as a general question but used a specific campus, a specific teacher, a specific interim principal and named the former principal. Of course my question was not answered. I submitted my e mail and still (despite promises they will answer) I expect no response. Anyway I think the teachers that have reported legit items to the FBI should be publicly praised and acknowledged for their courage to do the right thing in the face of retaliation and intimidation.

W. R. Brownfield