Socorro school superintendent disputes trustees claim that ‘many students’ graduated despite not meeting requirements

SOCORRO, Texas -- The Socorro Independent School District's superintendent defended SISD's standards at a news conference Wednesday, seeking to rebut claims made by several trustees that the district graduated "many students" last year who didn't actually meet the graduation requirements.

Superintendent Jose Espinoza said an internal audit of 2018-19 graduates initially flagged 276 students who were allowed to receive diplomas without having met all the graduation criteria. However, he said all but 29 students were later cleared.

As a result, Espinoza said over 99% of all students met the graduation requirements.

"That's pretty darn close to 100%," he said, but added, "I take all deficiencies seriously. We want to be perfect."

The superintendent said he was implementing a "corrective action plan" with district staff aimed at meeting the 100% threshold. However, he maintained the audit showed SISD has "high-accountability standards that are second to none."

Trustees Paul Garcia, David Morales and Eddie Mena first raised questions about graduation requirement compliance in a social media post Tuesday evening (see bottom of this article) where they claimed the audit indicated "many students" didn't meet the standards.

"This is completely unacceptable and the adults that made these mistakes -whether intentional or not - will be held accountable," the three SISD board trustees vowed.

After their post, Espinoza scheduled his news conference to publicly "answer questions regarding the report."