Canutillo ISD board discusses potential layoffs, student program cuts

The Canutillo Independent School District is considering layoffs and program cuts after discussing their budget for the 2025-26 school year.

In their board meeting on Tuesday, board members discussed efforts to save costs.

"We've had a pandemic, we've had 22% inflation, we've had a rising costs. Those all impact school districts just like they impact families," said Gustavo Reveles, Canutillo ISD communications director. "So the state is basically telling us to fund our school systems in our schools with the same budget that we had in 2019." 

A budget update presentation in their agenda shows that 85% of the budget is allocated to payroll costs. From their personnel budget, 51% of it is distributed to teacher payroll, which is $29,998,516.

"My concern is that the campus should always come first, the teacher that's in the classroom, and the campus classrooms, and central office," said Armando Rodriguez, president of the board, during the meeting. "And so, you know, there's going to be some tough decisions that are going to have to be made."

Among layoffs, cost-saving options included increasing class sizes, removing locally-funded travel, a hiring freeze of non-essential employees, cutting operation budgets by 10%, implementing a student programming assessment, and selling their Central Office, Lone Star and other properties.

Canutillo ISD is the second school district in El Paso to publicly discuss plans of layoffs, after Socorro ISD, the second largest school district the county, announced in February their plan to layoff their employees.

"What we need the community to understand is that the state has put us in this position. Again, we don't want to cut these programs, we don't," said Reveles. "We believe strongly in them. But the state has not done its part in funding us appropriately." 

The district gets funded for every student that attends their schools, so with less students enrolling, they receive less money from the state to maintain their schools.

"We are triple A-rated. We have been serving our community well academically. And some people don't like that," he added. "They don't like it because they want to privatize public education, and this is the way to do it." 

And in regards to Trump's plan to "dismantle" the Department of Education…

"We do know that we get federal support and federal funding for things like Title I and special education. These are some of our of our most vulnerable populations," Reveles continued. "So we need to figure out how that impacts us."

The board will meet again on March 25 to further discuss the budget consideration and vote on the layoffs.