Socorro ISD Board votes to approve budget cuts including staff reductions
UPDATE: The Socorro Independent School District Board of Trustees voted to approve the recommended cutbacks in order to slash millions of dollars from 2025-2026 school year budget.
The vote passed 3-2 in favor of the recommendations. Trustees Michael Najera, Cynthia Ann Najera and Alice Gardea voted in favor. Paul Guerra and Marivel Macias voted against. Trustees Pablo Barrera and Ricardo Castellano were absent.
Recommendations include cutting teacher and staff positions, changing class ratio sizes and "redesigning" elementary school fine arts.
District officials say they are not eliminating the fine arts programs as they are required by the Texas Education Agency (TEA). The say the changes could include training remaining teachers to teach those programs.
A district official says employees who will be laid off will be notified by April 1, 2025.
Watch the meeting live below:
EL PASO, Texas (KVIA)-- The Socorro Independent School District Board of Trustees is discussing a multitude of items tonight including potential layoffs of staff.
The agenda item has a breakdown of Interim Superintendent James Vasquez's proposal. These are the recommended changes that are listed, including the jobs that could be impacted:
- Central Office (Includes all non-campus locations)
- CTE Program Offerings
- Elementary Fine Arts Redesign
- Elementary staffing formula changes (class size change from 22:1 to 24:1; through approval of class size waiver)
- PK/Kinder Collabs Redesign
- Regulation EEB Staffing formula changes
- Restructure Staffing for academic programs with low student participation
- Secondary staffing formula changes (class size change for middle schools from 24:1 to 26:1)
- Secondary staffing formula changes (high school and middle school positions that were previously staffed above the staffing formula will now be evaluated)
ABC-7 will be inside of the meeting and will you keep you updated on air and online.
