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Opinion: Socorro ISD rushes layoffs with little thought about impact [1]
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Date: 2025-02-21
By Brenden Malacara-Hawkins
The Socorro ISD Board of Trustees has approved a plan to fire 300 district employees, including teachers and support staff.
To the board: Doesn’t it feel good now that you have some stress off your back? Doesn’t it feel good when you have some time to make an informed decision? Doesn’t it feel good to save some money?
Brenden Malacara-Hawkins
You didn’t tell anyone how you would. You just sprung it onto us at the last, legally permissible minute; now we’re scrambling to find jobs in a near-empty job market. The brain drain in this city is real, and this only exacerbated it.
You just cost kids their favorite part of the school day when they can be kids. You cost them the dream of growing up and performing in a symphony or having their art hang in a gallery. This decision made the city fill an empty cell in juvenile detention.
But what about the teachers? For some, half of their paycheck still pays for unpaid student loans. The degrees they worked tirelessly for are now suddenly worthless in the eyes of the school district. Their colleagues, who also are their friends, are now scared for their own lives, too. These teachers built connections with students who have similar backgrounds, but those connections are now shattered like glass.
Board President Michael Najera’s advice? Just polish up your resume and find another job; things like this happen.
And where are the cuts to athletics? Technology? Environmental science? If we want to cut the programs that make our students come to school and buy into learning – and express their passions or creative outlets – at least let it be fair across the board.
Just because a class doesn’t give a certification doesn’t mean it’s worthless.
It is not the teachers, the staff or the students who are the reason for this mess. This mess was created by continuous mistakes by the school board – including former Superintendent Nate Carman’s open checkbook, and letting board members who have allegedly committed crimes keep their seats and not attend their elected duties.
Yet, because it was an “uncommon” inconvenience for HR, we inconvenienced nearly 300 teachers and other employees about to lose their jobs.
This cowardice displayed at Wednesday’s school board meeting is why people and good-quality teachers leave SISD and El Paso altogether.
Sure, we have evidence to believe that declining birth rates are the reason. But blaming the young adults who don’t want to have kids and have no money (like me) will get you nowhere.
It’s a shameful situation that we had a board approve a recommendation from executives by executives, with no input from teachers or stakeholders, to find ways to cheat someone out of a job immediately.
Doesn’t that feel great?
Brenden Malacara-Hawkins is a tutor at Socorro ISD and a member of Socorro American Federation of Teachers.
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http://elpasomatters.org/2025/02/21/opinion-socorro-isd-layoffs/
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