Bowie High assistant principal fired

The El Paso Independent School District board voted Friday afternoon to fire Anna Luisa Kell, assistant principal of Bowie High School and turn her over to “proper authorities.”

Kell, along with two other Bowie employees, was put on administrative leave by the district’s Interim Superintendent Vernon Butler in November following an internal audit. Kell had been an assistant principal at Bowie since 2008.

Former Bowie principal Jesus Chavez resigned last year.

Trustees made the unprecedented decision to turn her over to law enforcement during a special meeting Friday afternoon. Kell was not at the meeting.

“We have said as a board that we are committed to taking action as soon as we have evidence that will be supported in a court of law. That will stand in a court of law,” said Isela Castanon Williams, the Board President, after the meeting.

The board has been under pressure for months to take action against employees suspected of being part of the cheating scheme led by former Superintendent Lorenzo Garcia.

Bowie High School is considered the epicenter of the cheating scheme, that involved removing students from school and manipulating transcripts in order to inflate state mandated test scores.

School board trustee Rocio Benedicto abstained from the vote citing the fact that a female relative of hers has a personal relationship with a male relative of Kell’s.