El Paso ISD superintendent hopeful for new school year amid challenges

Students in the El Paso Independent School District head back to school on Monday.

EPISD’s superintendent Juan Cabrera is excited about the new year. He talked with ABC-7 on ABC-7 Xtra Sunday night about exciting opportunities the district will have for students this year.

“We are opening a brand new, one of the first in the country dual language project-based learning school at Hart,” Cabrera said.

Cabrera said the program will provide an exciting new, environment for students.

The school district has been challenged by decreasing enrollment numbers, leading to potential school closures.

“Every urban school system, the original core system, like El Paso or Dallas, Boston, Chicago, they’ve all had declining enrollment over the last 25 years,” Cabrera said.

Despite the challenges of being an urban school district, he says EPISD has made progress in slowing the decline.

“We have also begun to be able to stable [the decline] off, working really hard,” he said. “We have actually seen a steep decline of the drop rate. So we hope that with the programs we are offering, we are going to try and make sure our families know that the public schools in El Paso are the best that they can be.”

El Paso ISD has 59,000 students enrolled for the 2018-19 school year. It remains the largest district in the city.