I can’t afford to stay in the classroom

October 19, 2013

Looking further into the El Paso Independent School District (EPISD) employment practices, I wanted to see how their teacher salaries compared to the salaries of the administrators.

EPISD publishes a set schedule explaining how much money new teachers are paid.  By the way, teachers that have been working for the district since before 2008 are paid slightly differently.

Teachers

A new teacher with five years of teaching experience is paid $46,536.82 this year.  Teachers with a master’s degree receive $1,000 more and those with a doctorate get another $1,000 more ($2,000 total).  I believe that the contract requires the teacher to work 187 days, making their work year 9 months. That works out to $249.00 a day for the teacher without an advanced degree.

We know that good teachers spend time at home grading papers and preparing for class.  Some teachers dig into their own pockets to buy supplies and materials for their classes.

Administrators

A budget analyst must have a bachelor’s and five years of experience to start.  They get paid a minimum of $248.85 and top out at $353.17 daily.  The job requires 227 days of work, yielding between $56,488.95 and $80,169.59 per year.

An instructional applications analyst provides “training to campus personnel and offering technical support in the use of hardware and software on campus”.  They must have a bachelor’s, a teaching certificate, and two years of teaching experience.  This is a 227 day job that pays $230.43 a day to start and tops out at $326.79 daily, yielding between $52,307.61 and $74,181.33 for the employee.

You get the idea.

Upside down

Unfortunately the job categories at EPISD reward good teachers by promoting them out of the classroom.  If you were a young teacher that needed money to support a family which would you pick — $46.5 thousand a year to teach in the classroom, or $52.3 thousand a year to teach other teachers how to use their computers?

By the way, in case you think that the situation gets better as the teacher gets more experience, a classroom teacher with a master’s and 30 years of teaching experience tops out at $60,269.65 per year.

We deserve better

Brutus

10 Comments | El Paso Independent School District | Permalink
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Planned Failure

October 18, 2013

The city commissioned a traffic study for the ball park.  The revised edition was published December 3, 2012.

The study dealt with Missouri and Santa Fe streets and not the broader traffic situation around the area.  The results were published with letter grades being given for predicted level of service  ranging from A (for good) to F (bad).  Charts were presented for inbound (before the game) and outbound traffic delays.

We all know that delays will occur whenever an event with a lot of patrons occurs.  The predicted results speak for themselves.

Inbound

The intersection of Santa Fe and Wyoming (leaving I-10 from the west) earned a grade of “F” with an anticipated delay of 202.8 seconds (the study did not specifically indicate that the number was in seconds but I believe that 202.8 minutes would be worse than an “F”).

As a point of reference the second worst intersection along Santa Fe (Santa Fe and Paisano) got a “D” with a predicted delay of 50.4.   If a “D” is not good at 50.4 then a score of 202.8 is really bad.  The term the report used was “excessive delay”.

Outbound

Santa Fe and Sheldon (the road just south of the civic center parking garage exit) got an incredible 433.5 with Santa Fe at Yandell (for those going west) getting  a “D” at 47.4.

It gets worse

The study tried to predict what would happen if there was an event at both the baseball park and the civic center at the same time.

Incoming traffic caused four intersections to be rated “F” (Missouri at Kansas, Missouri at Oregon, Santa Fe at Wyoming, and Santa Fe at Franklin).  Santa Fe at Wyoming jumped up to a delay of 467.4.  Two intersections got rated “E”.  Maybe some school kids should petition their schools to get “E” added to the grading system.  It is obviously better than an “F”.

Outbound traffic shows five intersections rated “F” (Santa Fe at Yandell, Santa Fe at Wyoming, Santa Fe at Franklin, Santa Fe at Main, and Santa Fe at Sheldon).  Sheldon takes the cake with a delay of 875.9.

Not complete

The study did not consider what base level traffic will be when the downtown cabal succeeds in revitalizing downtown and there are a lot more people down there.

Nor did it consider what would happen if there was an simultaneous event at the Plaza Theater.

There are plans that have been presented to the city where the recommendation is to place the new sports arena on top of the civic center.  Yes, they suggest tearing down the civic center.  Who knows what will happen then.

Spend money

The report suggests:

COEP (city of El Paso) should consider the use police [sic] or code enforcement officers for traffic control at signalized intersections, and intersections where turning movements will be numerous …

By the way, the city’s contract with the baseball team requires the city to pay for the police.

We deserve better

Brutus

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

No reflection

October 17, 2013

Our El Paso Independent School District (EPISD) board of managers has shown us again that they make up the rules as they go.

In June they passed a board policy that did not allow the superintendent to hire or fire his most senior staff (the  cabinet).

Then when they decided to hire a new superintendent they evidently wrote something different into his contract.

Do as I say, not as I do

The Texas Association of School Boards stepped in and suggested that the district might want to keep their policies and their contracts consistent.

The latest board action changed their policy to require the superintendent to notify the board before he makes any public announcements about changes to his cabinet.  He evidently can hire and fire at will.

Telling us what he thinks

The president of the board was quoted in the El Paso Times:

“We have to have our policies aligned with contractual obligations we’ve entered into with the superintendent,” he said. “It’s perfunctory. It’s not material, it’s perfunctory.”

If the definition of perfunctory is “carried out with a minimum of effort or reflection”, I would certainly have to agree with the board president.

Existing policies evidently deserve minimum reflection from this group.

By the way, how can the district be “independent” when the State of Texas has engineered a coup and replaced our elected school board with an appointed one?

We deserve better

Brutus

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

Taxing Times

October 16, 2013

The El Paso Times recently reported that the city of El Paso’s sales tax revenue has increased 2.3 percent for the year through October.

What they did not report was what Brutus mentioned the other day in Bad Bets.

While the increase in the sales tax collections is good news, the bad news is that the city is counting on (they have already budgeted) a 4.3 percent increase.

Hotel Occupancy Tax revenues are down one percent while the city told us to expect a three percent increase.

Remember that the city is now telling us that they will have to use general fund revenue to supplement bond payments for the ball park.

Unless things turn around we are looking at a revenue shortfall.  What services will have to be cut or what fees will have to be increased?

There was a time when the reporters at the Times researched their articles instead of just printing what some government agency asked them to print.

Muckraker

8 Comments | Ball park, City government, El Paso Times | Permalink
Posted by Muckraker

Another ball park consultant

October 15, 2013

The city council agenda for October 15, 2013 has another interesting ball park contract on it.

The item would authorize the city manager to sign a contract in the amount of $347,474 (plus another $50,000 if it is needed) for “Construction Testing and Inspection Services for El Paso Ballpark’’.

The backup material for council indicates that the funding source might be the baseball stadium construction accounts.  That’s the one that has 50, no 64, no 72 million dollars allocated to it so far.  Unfortunately the resolution contains this phrase that we see all too often:

“and that the City Manager be authorized to establish the funding sources and make any necessary budget transfers and execute any and all documents necessary for execution of this agreement.”

In other words the city manager can take the money from whatever account she wants to.

There are millions of dollars being spent for projects around the ball park that are not being allocated to the $72 million dollar number that we see now.

Lots of technical help

In Inside Job I pointed out that we already have a contract for an owner’s representative for $853,000, and a contract with an architect for $3,820,680.  We have also paid for traffic studies and demolition studies.  One would think that with these professionals working along side of our city financial experts that we could build a $38 million dollar ball park for $38 million dollars.

Not another penny

The engineer being hired signed his part of the agreement July 1, 2013.  Why has it taken so long for this contract to come before council?  Could it be that other bigger fish had to be fried and city staff wanted to let the dust settle?

We deserve better

Brutus

1 Comment | Ball park, City government | Permalink
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