Socorro ISD employees worried about how district may try to cut deficit

EL PASO, Texas ( KTSM ) — The Socorro Independent School District is considering different ways to cut costs, as district officials are projecting a $41 million shortfall for the next school year.

This projected shortfall would be on top of the $33 million budget deficit the district is already facing as it is under conservatorship from the Texas Education Agency (TEA).

District officials presented this number at a special board meeting on Wednesday, April 24, where they also introduced recommendations to the board on how to address the potential shortfall.

Among these recommendations were to raise health insurance prices for employees, no pay raises, and reducing the starting salary for new employees from $15 per hour to $11.

Socorro ISD Trustee Ricardo O. Castellano expressed his dissatisfaction with some of these recommendations at the meeting.

“I’m talking about the real world, not market value. When will people just stop and say, ‘You know what? It’s not worth it, $11 an hour. There’s places out there that pay the $15.’ And that’s where I’m getting at, when you were going to say, ‘I can still fill 428 employee positions at $11 an hour.’ Are we kidding ourselves on that? Are we fully thinking that through?” Castellano said.

Rosie Perez, president of the West Texas Alliance, a local grassroots union serving employees across SISD and Clint ISD, said teachers across the district are concerned that the district is pushing a rhetoric that increased teacher pay is to blame for the deficit.

“The message that has been perceived by my members from campuses that have already been visited (by district administration) was that, ‘It was your fault because we gave you all employee raises. Now we are in this budget deficit,’” Perez said.

Perez, who worked as a teacher at SISD for 10 years, said there have been a “series of missteps” in multiple areas that have contributed to the district being in this deficit.

“It shouldn’t be about blaming anybody at this point. What is done is done. Right now, it should be about what we need to do together to get out of this situation, to fix it, to resolve it,” Perez said.

Perez said she tries to educate her members that many districts across the state find themselves in similar situations due to the lack of additional funding for public education from the State of Texas. She also said she understands why some of these recommendations are being made, specifically increasing the cost of health insurance, but some are at a very high detriment to employees.

“When they are choosing not to do a pay increase for employees, it’s going to affect not only their current income, the current increase on the health insurance, but then it’s also going to negatively hurt their retirement for the calculation of their retirement pay,” Perez said.

She explained that school district employees’ wages are calculated into their retirement pay.

The West Texas Alliance created a task force that has developed some suggestions as to how the district could tackle the deficit.

These include reducing the learning day for students, cutting travel time for staff development, reducing catering costs, and potentially adopting the 4-day workweek.

Perez said it would be important to have parents briefed on these suggestions, as it would impact them as well, and to see how the 4-day workweek has impacted San Elizario ISD, which adopted it for the 2023-2024 school year.

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