SISD to employees to walk door-to-door promoting district, some teachers say they feel forced

The Socorro Independent School District is planning to walk door-to-door to promote the district but some teachers feel they’re being forced.

On Saturday March 3rd, 3,000 teachers and staff members will walk to student’s homes to explain innovative programs and share the benefits of attending SISD.

The ‘Stand and Deliver’ walk is inspired by the 1998 film starring Edward James Olmos. SISD Superintendent Dr. Jose Espinoza tells ABC-7 they want to promote the district by taking the school to parent’s homes.

“Many parents they work so they can’t come to that school function, that school meeting, that district meeting. So on Saturday morning, we are knocking on their door and informing them of all the endless opportunities we have in our school district,” Dr. Espinoza said.

Several teachers reached out to ABC-7 anonymously because they were concerned they were being forced to do it as a response to the upcoming opening of IDEA Charter schools in the area. While Dr. Espinoza said it wasn’t true, he did admit there is competition to keep students.

“No, this is happening because we want to make sure that we inform our parents. You have school districts in El Paso and IDEA who are trying to come and take our students and we’re a school district that is not going to just sit back and let everyone come in to our families home and our school homes and our school district and come and pluck our students. We want to make sure that they are receiving all the information, all the facts about other school districts or charter schools but what we offer. And what we offer, no other school district, no other charter school offers,” Dr. Espinoza said.

Dr. Espinoza also added tht charter schools could impact enrollment and funding.

“It has the potential because every child that leaves the school district in our case it’s about $6,000.”

In an anonymous email one teacher stated during a recent half-day, they were forced to watch the 2016 documentary titled, “Backpack Full of Cash” which negatively portrays charter schools. Dr. Espinoza confirms they did show the documentary but only to inform staff about what was taking place across the country.

“We shared that with teachers because we want to make sure our employees are educated and know what’s taking place across the country. To be honest with you, this attack on public education in my personal opinion, it’s not healthy. It’s not healthy for specific communities, it’s not healthy for the state of Texas, it’s not healthy for the country. And I just want teachers, faculty to understand what is happening in other communities and the possibilities always of it happening here in our community.”

Dr. Espinoza says the walk is not mandatory. Teachers were given the option to participate in the walk or attend a professional development course at their school.

“This is not mandatory whatsoever and we have a fantastic relationship with the teacher association. We received a tremendous input from them as well and again by no means I want for any employees, teachers, secretaries, anyone to feel the pressure that this is mandatory. This is 100% optional. If someone doesn’t want to participate, it’s 100% optional. They will not be retaliated against,” Dr. Espinoza said.

The American Federation of Teachers confirms they took part in the planning of the walk.

“We made sure to talk to the superintendent that nobody would be forced to do this. This is totally voluntary. We made sure that teachers understood the facts, we provided them with the facts, we even did a couple of factsheets for them,” Socorro AFTA President Veronica Hernandez said.

Hernandez says they also fully support teachers participating and their jobs are not on the line.

“That’s one of the first things when we met with the superintendent, we said there would be no retaliation of anybody that wouldn’t want to walk. That’s why we made sure that well in advance, we went out there, we’re talking to the teachers, we’re giving them the facts of why this is happening, why we wanted to push. This is just a promoting of the Socorro district,” Hernandez said.

When asked about some of the concerns from teachers, Hernandez says teachers need to view this walk as a benefit to them and not necessarily as a benefit to the district.

“If private schools start taking our students and of course it’s going to affect us financially. It’s going to affect class-size, it’s going to affect them material-wise and it might even affect them staff-wise. So on the contrary, instead of being afraid of losing their jobs because of walking they should be afraid of not walking because what’s going to happen if we lose students?”

The district says the cost for the walk is minimal and that the district purchased t-shirts and caps. Employees will also carpool within a 4-5 mile radius.