EL PASO, Texas — State Rep. Vince Perez of El Paso is pressing the Texas comptroller to explain why a review billed as a look at El Paso Independent School District spending also asked for counts of how students are identified at enrollment.
Staff from the office of Comptroller Don Huffines spent Monday through Thursday at EPISD going through district records, Perez said at a downtown news conference Thursday. Most of what they asked for was financial, such as payroll, budgets, audits, contracts and staffing counts by month. Perez got the full request list through a records request he filed with the district on Oct. 28.
Three items on that list drew his objection. The state asked for an electronic copy of the library catalog, board policies on how parents can see and complain about human sexuality lessons and the process for approving instructional materials, and a tally of students who enrolled with a Social Security number compared with those who used a state-approved alternative ID number.
Perez said none of those items have anything to do with central office spending and called the review politically driven. He has sent the comptroller a formal request seeking a list of every record the state wanted, the reason student data was included and the safeguards in place, and he set Nov. 4 as the deadline for an answer.
Huffines has said his look at EPISD, along with three other districts, is meant to check whether school spending follows state law and reaches classrooms instead of feeding administrative growth. Perez questioned why EPISD was picked, saying other districts spend more on administration.
Members of Texas LULAC stood with Perez and said they back financial oversight but want it done openly and within federal student privacy law. According to Perez, the state plans a written report roughly six weeks from the start of the review, and he urged families to keep sending their children to school.
Section: More El Paso TX education news
Filed under: El Paso TX Education News
