Senator Eliot Shapleigh - El Paso, Texas

HOW THE SUPERINTENDENT AT EL PASO INDEPENDENT SCHOOL DISTRICT

MAKES STUDENTS “DISAPPEAR” TO INCREASE DISTRICT WIDE TAKS TEST SCORES

State Sen. Eliot Shapleigh opposes a tax increase for the El Paso Independent School District, saying its leadership is inefficient, central administration salaries are bloated, and Bowie High School has violated the civil rights of students.

Lorenzo García, superintendent of the El Paso Independent School District, said Saturday that he stands ready to cooperate in a federal investigation of standardized testing programs and is confident the findings will show he runs an honest system.

State Sen. Eliot Shapleigh on Friday accused Austin High School of being part of a scam to improperly raise standardized test scores in the El Paso Independent School District.

Three years ago, 352 underperforming sophomores disappeared from Austin before they could take the Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills test, Shapleigh said.

Confused by the back-and-forth between state Sen. Eliot Shapleigh and the administration of the El Paso Independent School District?

You're not alone.

Part of what happens when you have high-profile community members like Shapleigh and EPISD Superintendent Lorenzo García going at it in public is a muddying of fact and a soiling of reputations.

El Paso State Senator Eliot Shapleigh (D) isn't giving up on his claim the El Paso Independent School district is sweeping some students under the rug to improve standardized test scores.

District leaders, students, and parents gathered at Coronado High School to respond to the allegations that Senator Eliot Shapleigh has made of the El Paso Independent School District.

Senator Shapleigh has accused the district of telling some students to stay home on standardized test days to boost the district's scores. But on Thursday, supporters of the district said this is not true.

The El Paso School District is defending itself against allegations from State Senator Eliot Shapleigh.

The state senator is asking the U.S. Department of Education to investigate EPISD, saying the district found ways to make some students "disappear" on TAKS testing day in order to bring up campus scores.

State Sen. Eliot Shapleigh has asked the U.S. Department of Education to investigate the El Paso Independent School District, which he said has manipulated standardized tests so that certain low-performing students did not take them.

Canutillo High School seniors who failed the standardized TAKS test and missed graduation last month were asked by administrators to withdraw from the public district and obtain their diplomas from an online high school.

In a vote of confidence in his administration, the EPISD school board tonight voted to extend Superintendent Lorenzo Garcia's contract.

Lorenzo García, the El Paso Independent School District superintendent, received a vote of confidence Tuesday night when the district's trustees voted unanimously to extend his contract.

The extension comes without a pay increase as the board voted to continue paying him $280,314 a year -- the same amount he received last year.

I am a teacher, parent and a taxpayer in the El Paso Independent School District and I will be voting "no" in the upcoming Tax Ratification Election.

I cannot trust an incumbent school board and a superintendent that have shown irresponsible fiscal leadership for the past years to have another $37 million , even if it is "only" $10.83 per month per $100,000 of property value.

A light-rail commuter train that will take people from the southernmost neighborhoods of Juárez to the international bridges in Downtown could be in service as early as 2013, officials from there said Tuesday.

Un Abrazo Fuerte!

In our family, public service is the highest calling. Way back in 1846, on Christmas Day, our great, great grandfather fought here near the Rio Grande so that Texas might join the Union, not secede from America. His dreams then are yours and mine now—a more just society for all Texans; great public schools to educate all our children; strong Texas universities to make us proud; super highways to move commerce and create jobs; and fundamentally, government of the people, by the people and for the people, not just the privileged few.

What can Texas learn from ducks? By that I mean Oregon Ducks, that strain of independent westerner whose university's duck mascot comes often to entertain El Paso in the Sun Bowl. From our view here in God’s Country—in a state that is first in those without a high school diploma, last in insured, and about to face a $17 billion deficit in ten short months—we can all learn a lot from ducks.

Below you will find a letter to Lieutenant Governor Dewhurst regarding the recent proposals to swap the property tax and dramatically increase the sales tax:

No one knows what history will make of the present — least of all journalists, who can at best write history’s sloppy first draft. But if I were to place an incautious bet on which political event will prove the most significant of February 2010, I wouldn’t choose the kabuki health care summit that generated all the ink and 24/7 cable chatter in Washington. I’d put my money instead on the murder-suicide of Andrew Joseph Stack III, the tax protester who flew a plane into an office building housing Internal Revenue Service employees in Austin, Tex., on Feb. 18. It was a flare with the dark afterlife of an omen.

A jury has ordered Houston homebuilder Bob Perry to pay $51 million to a retirement-age Mansfield couple who fought for a decade over a defective house that Perry Homes refused to fix. Perry is the biggest campaign contributor in Texas and a major figure in tort reform championed by Gov. Rick Perry (no relation) to limit lawsuits and cap jury awards against business. Bob and Jane Cull say Perry wouldn't fix their house and so went to arbitration, where they won an $800,000 judgment. The homebuilder refused to pay. He appealed for years through the court system to the Texas Supreme Court, which overturned two lower courts and sent the case back to district court in Fort Worth. Every member of the high court had each received contributions from Perry -- more than $260,000 from Perry, his family and his political committees.

Hi Guys:

Here’s a great piece by SAEN. All of these cuts will most massively affect—you guessed it—El Paso.

Massive cuts were predicted by your humble Senator when he called the Craddick//Perry tax scheme a “Giant Texas Tax Shift”. Swapping property taxes that fund schools, for risky business income taxes that have never been collected, resulted in exactly what we predicted—additional property tax burdens to El Paso homeowners mostly at schools struggling so hard to keep class size down---all because state leaders flunked the test of solving school finance in Austin.