Commentary: Parents in the Chamizal neighborhood on June 15 sued the El Paso Independent School District (EPISD) to reopen two Beall and Burleson elementary schools and force the school district to pay for critical building and environmental safety improvements in the area.
The suit, filed in U.S. District Court in El Paso, seeks to require EPISD to fund improvements to Chamizal schools consistent with the money being allocated to other schools as a result of the $668 million schools bond approved in 2016.
The suit was filed by Texas RioGrande Legal Aid on behalf of Familias Unidas Por La Educación, a community nonprofit composed of parents and students in South Central El Paso. Familias Unidas is also asking the court to require EPISD to conduct testing and remediation to make sure schools in the Chamizal neighborhood are environmentally safe.
The Chamizal neighborhood has one of the highest rates of poverty in El Paso and has been the subject of repeated discriminatory practices well before the U.S. and Mexico ratified a treaty in 1964 to divide the area between the two nations.
More than half of the population in the Chamizal neighborhood lives below the federal poverty level and 98% of residents are Hispanic. In El Paso as a whole, 20% of the population lives in poverty and 81% is Hispanic.
The Chamizal schools were a key part of the Alvarado v. EPISD school desegregation ruling in 1976, which found vast and systemic disparities in educational opportunities in virtually all aspects of the El Paso school system.
The EPISD has hardly avoided legal trouble since. The school district’s discriminatory practices have required intervention by state and federal agencies including the FBI, the U.S. Department of Education, the U.S. Department of Justice, and the Texas Education Agency.
The Familias Unidas suit stems from actions the EPISD took in voting to close and consolidate schools in 2019. The process resulted in Hispanic students from impoverished neighborhoods being concentrated in schools that are among the oldest, most poorly maintained, and most dangerous in EPISD.
In deciding which schools would need to be closed, EPISD rejected the recommendations of its own engineering firm and instituted a seemingly random calculation to determine whether a school was underutilized. This led to schools in less Hispanic neighborhoods being kept open and Chamizal neighborhood schools being closed.
At every turn in the process, the school district declined to take the simple steps needed to consider the concerns of Spanish-speaking parents. The EPISD failed to provide translation for Spanish-speaking parents at school district meetings, ensuring that their concerns about the closing or consolidation of the Chamizal schools would not be understood by a majority of the trustees.
Familias Unidas’ advocacy regarding school closures started with voicing concerns about the environmental hazards at Douglass and Zavala elementary schools since 2016. Although EPISD in 2016 promised to study the environmental concerns at Chamizal schools, no full environmental report has been undertaken.
As Familias Unidas members have long contended, the closures of Beall and Burleson schools have harmed the Chamizal students who have been forced to attend other schools.
Some parents have been able to utilize the transfer program so their children do not need to attend Douglass or Zavala. Others have moved away from the area for that purpose. Some students are now subject to daily two-to-three-hour round-trip commutes to school. Student grades and morale have suffered.
Familias Unidas has been asking EPISD to address these issues for years. The group’s members have voiced their concerns in informal conversations, public comments, parent complaints, protests, and administrative complaints to the Texas Education Agency and the U.S. Department of Education.
By filing suit, Familias Unidas intends to force EPISD -- whose trustees are elected by the public -- to fully consider the needs of their children.