Town hall meetings planned to discuss damaged school district

Former state senator Eliot Shapleigh is calling on the community to participate in a forum seeking changes at the embattled El Paso Independent School District.

“Our kids, our schools, our future are worth the fight,” said Shapleigh.

Shapleigh was among the first to point out discrepancies in EPISD records that led to several investigations.

In 2010, he accused EPISD administrators of faking improvements on student standardized test scores used to hold districts accountable.

Shapleigh singled out then-superintendent doctor Lorenzo Garcia, saying he was “teaching the town to cheat.”

Garcia denied the allegations at first but finally admitted to taking part in the cheating scheme in federal court last month.

Garcia said he worked with six unnamed, unindicted accomplices to cheat students by manipulating their enrollment thereby artifically boosting scores.

“Those six need to be identified by (EPISD’s) board of trustees right now and action needs to be taken in respect to them,” said Shapleigh.

EPISD’s board president has said the district is cooperating with the FBI and wants advice on how to improve district policies from a committee of local business leaders headed by state education administrator Dr. Jimmy Vasquez.

Shapleigh said he disagrees with the decision to make the committee business-leaders only and is calling for the community to gather at a town hall meeting this Wednesday to explore EPISD’s past troubles, its current concerns and its future plans.

“From that (meeting) a blueprint will come out on how to reform the district,” said Shapleigh. “What a great christmas present this year if we had an entire new approach, if we had a superintendent that was qualified and rooted out all of this corruption.”

Shapleigh encouraged El Pasoans to come to the meeting at the El Paso Community College’s Valle Verde campus. It is set to start at 5:30 p.m. In the cafeteria annex.

“Citizens have the right to remove people who are doing an incompetent job. Government is us, it’s us taking care of our own kids,” said Shapleigh.

Shapleigh said he envisions a series of town hall meetings where everyone is welcome to point out problems and suggest solutions.