It's Time to Excel, El Paso
Public education is the cornerstone of a great city. I was born and raised in Central El Paso. I know we can do better for our students, our community, and our future.
Since my unanimous appointment to the El Paso ISD Board in April 2024, I have put students first in financial and policy decisions, guided by input from families, teachers, and staff. My education, policy, and entrepreneurial experience equip me to lead EPISD toward a brighter future.
Over the past year, I fought to save schools in Central El Paso and strengthen the Austin H.S. Feeder Pattern. I voted against the elementary school closures plan, which included Rusk E.S. and Travis E.S. I sought to delay the closure of Travis and communicated community concerns that helped keep Park and Hillside open. I also voted to lower tax rates for homeowners and worked to secure EPISD’s financial sustainability.
We must strengthen schools, stabilize finances, and equip teachers to elevate El Paso ISD. Every child, regardless of their neighborhood, deserves outstanding educational opportunities for a meaningful life.
Campaign Focus
Academic Excellence
Schools are more than just buildings. El Paso ISD is more than just a giant construction site, ripe for real estate development. Schools are learning communities, gateways to a meaningful life. We should be an A-Rated District—second to none.
The Board of Trustees must work together to improve the academic quality of schools in all neighborhoods, so that we see year-on-year increases in student achievement. Delivering on the promise of a quality education with proven outcomes needs to be our top priority as a Board.
We must set the goal of rising from a de facto C-Rated District, to an A-Rating with three years. To do this, we must recruit, support, and fairly compensate talented educators, respecting their roles in the classroom and fairly incentivizing achievement.
We must invest in eighth grade Algebra for All, early childhood and dual language education programs, integrating STEM instruction with a practical Social Studies curriculum, and devoting more resources to Special Education (SPED).
Further, the district should seek collaborations with UTEP and other local education institutions to find the cutting edge in learning about, using, and building technologies that benefit society.
El Paso ISD must openly engage and communicate with parents to reinforce what's learned in the classroom at home and to ensure the needs of our most vulnerable students are wholly met.
In particular, this includes the hundreds of military families the El Paso ISD serves on a yearly basis. Military families have unique needs and also the potential to contribute to our community in vital ways.
Engaging our military community and supporting them them dedicated resources will strengthen academic programming at schools like Austin HS and Navarrete MS, as well as Bliss ES, Milam ES, and Hartley K-8. In turn, this will raise the bar on academic achievement across the district.
Academic excellence means investing wisely in proven academic programs and learning resources that deliver results, leading students toward rewarding careers and active, thoughtful lives. Austin HS, for instance, deserves extra attention to build on its recent successes.
Finally, can reinforce and expand Austin's Sandra Day O'Connor Public Service Academy, for which I have advocated consistently during my year-long tenure on the Board. This will attract students to this historic campus and offer career-preparedness programming that is second to none. Go Panthers!
Financial Sustainability
Math teachers ask their students to “show their work.” The Board and the Administration need to show theirs. Show taxpayers how each dollar moves the District toward an A-Rating. Show that their investment translates into measurable student success.
The El Paso ISD, to which homeowners pay the largest share of their property taxes, needs to coordinate with other local taxing entities to keep the overall tax burden reasonable. Communication across local governments shouldn’t be this difficult.
Generally speaking, El Pasoans are eager to invest in our public schools — but only when they see a demonstrable return on their investment and they know that their money is kept closest to the children the district serves.
Overall, we must account for the full costs associated with closures before we make such decisions in the future — including additional expenses, enrollment losses, student performance and welfare impacts, and effects upon neighborhood businesses and residential property values. This is our responsibility as a public institution.
Finally, El Paso ISD must reduce waste and inefficiency at all levels. We must be bold in applying audit functions to find financial inefficiencies in vendor contracts, systems, and processes and root them out.
With a challenging state funding outlook for public education, we must prioritize effective teachers and child-focused services over Central Office positions and expenditures.
Where possible, we must change local policies that implicitly compound our district's financial difficulties. Where necessary, we should invest strategically in policies, programs, and grant opportunities that strengthen the district's attendance numbers and reverse declining enrollment.
The Board of Trustees must meet a standard of transparency and accountability that demonstrates that our elected officials respect our entire community, its concerns and aspirations.
On November 19, 2024, in my comment regarding the El Paso ISD's closure of eight elementary schools, I said, "We can do better than this, El Paso." I believe that we can.
This means engaging the public openly and honestly, respecting their tax dollars and their time. We must treat the public and all district employees like adults — not as enemies or as resources. We must fully account for the costs of large-scale initiatives like Destination District Redesign (DDR) and be upfront about what interests drive policy decisions, new projects, and bond proposals.
Public service is a duty, not a privilege. It comes with a high burden of transparency and accountability. As members of the Board of Trustees, we must hold ourselves to the highest standards of integrity, going above and beyond the letter of the law. We owe that to the people of El Paso — all of them.
High school students have four years to graduate. Board members should hold themselves to a similar standard — if we can’t achieve significantly higher academic outcomes for our students within four years, it’s time to go.
Honest Government
Improve Attendance
El Paso ISD shouldn’t be a “District of Innovation” in name only. There’s nothing innovative about closing eight elementary schools to cut spending while we needlessly lose over an estimated $9 million each year to poor daily attendance.
School attendance rates directly tie to funding for school districts in Texas. A recent internal audit report found that the El Paso ISD lost over $700,000 in state funds to poor attendance numbers in one semester … at one high school alone.
Further, initial projections on the effect of closing eight elementary campuses assumed that 10% of all affected students would leave the district permanently. At least in the short term, enrollment loss means funding loss, too.
This is unacceptable when the administration projected a $32 million defect for the 2025-26 school year in its justification for the recent closures. We cannot permit unnecessary funding losses when we struggle to balance our annual budget, particularly when this situation is used to justify school closures.
It's fixable, though — we can review policies and practices and strengthen programming to raise student attendance rates. This will counter millions of dollars in avoidable state funding losses.
On the topic of school closures, some campuses do need to be closed and consolidated. This is something we have to face as a community in light of demographic trends. At the same time, we must take great care to meaningfully engage the whole community and invest in neighborhood schools that predominantly serve economically disadvantaged students.
Neighborhood Focus
If we don’t accept excuses for students who don’t do their homework, we should expect no less from the Board of Trustees. Plans for school closures and consolidations should always be grounded in published research regarding best practices for reducing negative effects upon students and neighborhoods.
El Paso ISD should ensure that such structural changes like closures and consolidations do not disproportionately affect certain neighborhoods across Central and South Central El Paso — including Barrio Chamizal and Segundo Barrio — which have historically born the brunt of past rounds of closures.
Closing a school should be a last resort to address our financial situation. In particular, we must not disrupt the lives of hundreds of economically disadvantaged student without providing them significant additional resources to make up for historical inequities. This is only fair.
Further, when a campus is closed or relocated, El Paso ISD should already have a plan to sell or repurpose the property, again with serious community input, in cooperation with our city and county governments where possible, and with minimal disruption to the fabric of the neighborhood.
We need to think more carefully and collaboratively about how some of these properties can be used strategically to attract families back to Central El Paso. It is a great place to live and learn.
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