WE WON’T GIVE UP ON SCHOOLS

EPISD votes to close down schools. The fight is not over.

A slim majority votes to close down schools, we refuse this path.

Tuesday Nov 19th, the El Paso Independent School District voted to move forward with the closure of 8 elementary schools. Under this plan, Carlos Rivera, Lamar, Newman, Putnam, Rusk, and Zavala elementaries would close their doors next school year Stanton and Travis elementaries would be set to close in the 2026-27 school year.

Trustees Israel Irrobali, Daniel Call, Isabel Hernandez and Valerie Ganelon Beals voted in favor of the closures. All four of them have received donations from funders of the charter school movement.

Community champions Leah Hanany, Jack Loveridge and Alex Cuellar voted against the school closure proposal..

Amanecer People’s Project is not giving up on these schools. We will continue organizing in the months to come to reduce the harm of this decision. Our campaigning led to EPISD removing Hillside and Park Elementary from the chopping block, and delaying the closure of Stanton and Travis elementary. Organizing work, our job is not finished. La lucha sigue.

Our movement is strong, determined, and united. 

Over the last 5 months Amanecer has spoken with hundreds of parents and teachers who will be affected by the closures. These parents and teachers want EPISD to thrive, they understand the attacks from the state of Texas on public education, and they want to be a part of finding a solution together to make EPISD truly a destination district. The district will continue to fall short in decisions like these if they continue to dismiss these efforts.

Over 50 community members came to speak on their love for their schools, the harm these closures would cause, and the concerns they had over the closure process. Tangible common sense requests were made by parents around transportation, transition support, accountability processes, and equity. The Save Our Schools Coalition gathered more than 1,500 signatures on our petition in support of protecting neighborhood schools. We asked that the board wait for an equity assessment to be completed before closing schools and that Board President Irrobali recuse himself from the vote due to his conflict of interest as the Executive Director of the El Paso Association of Contractors.

Parents and teachers consistently stated that they wanted to be partners with the district. What those four trustees said that day is that they have no interest in this partnership. Amanecer appreciates the efforts made by trustees, Loveridge, Cuellar, and Hanany who listened to the community and fought for alternative solutions to the rushed, mass closures. 

The dangerous role of the Charter School movement 

EPISD is facing a budget issue–we need more funding to maintain and improve our schools. The backdrop of this budget challenge is the Charter School movement, which aims to divert public funds away from public schools and towards their for-profit charter schools. This includes the local charter-school interest group CREEED and Governor Greg Abbott at the state level. Abbott has prevented the state legislature from acting in the best interest of our children by holding hostage needed fund increases to support his anti-public school agenda. Locally, the pro charter school organization CREEED funded the campaigns of Israel Irrobali, Daniel Call, Isabel Hernandez and Valerie Ganelon Beals–all four who voted in favor of mass school closures. The decision of these four trustees was not to seek creative solutions to save schools, their decision was to give up on schools. We refuse to allow this to happen.

We celebrate our victories and we continue the fight

Our movement saved 2 of 10 schools on the chopping block–Hillside and Park Elementary. We also delayed the shutting down of two schools–Stanton and Travis Elementary. EPISD their original plan to close down 10 schools swiftly and simultaneously was announced October 17th. It was because of community organizing–canvassing, protesting, petitioning, coalition-building–that the Superintendent walked back EPISD’s original plan to give concessions to the Save Our Schools coalition. These concessions were not guaranteed or inevitable. They were the result of the hundreds of community members who organized to pressure EPISD to do the right thing. 

A victory of this campaign was the creation of the Save Our Schools coalition itself. Members included: LULAC, NAACP, Ciudad Nueva, El Paso High PTA, Rio Grande Neighborhood Association, Central Neighborhood Association, and more. We are excited to continue the fight for our schools alongside coalition members. 

In the span of two weeks, the Save our Schools coalition amassed more than 1,500 signatures of El Pasoans who opposed the school closure process. This movement was directly cited by Congresswoman Veronica Escobar and TX Senator Cesar Blanco in their letters to EPISD opposing the school closure process.

Amanecer knows the people closest to the problem are also closest to the solution and we are committed to the long term work needed to make sure that public institutions work FOR the people so it’s our needs and interests that guide decisions.