El Paso ISD trustees hold team-building retreat, rank attendance and academic outcomes as top budget priorities

Trustees of the El Paso Independent School District met in a board-sponsored team-building and budget-development session where facilitators led exercises that produced a ranked set of short-term priorities and a simulated budget-balancing exercise.

The training, opened by President Itterbally and led by facilitators Dr. Michael Inahosa, Ben Mackey and Andrew Kim, asked trustees to name two top goals for the district and then to weight a longer list of potential budget priorities. Trustees collectively placed “improving enrollment and attendance” first, followed by “math and reading outcomes” and “reward and respect our educators” (compensation and workplace climate). “Increased quality seats” and supplemental special-education funding also ranked among the top five, according to the facilitators’ weighted scoring of trustees’ inputs.

Why it matters: Trustees and district leaders said the exercise was intended to produce a shared, short-term focus for the next 18 months and to inform the 2025–26 budget-development process. The district’s finance staff and facilitators used current district figures in a live budget simulation to show how changes in attendance, staffing and a potential tax ratification election (TRE) would affect the district’s bottom line.

At the session, Dr. Michael Inahosa, one of the facilitators, framed the exercise by saying trustees were “at a crossroads” and urged the group to control what they could amid uncertain legislative outcomes. Ben Mackey, another facilitator, summarized the governance role: “Boards ... set goals that drive the organizational behavior and focus,” he said, adding that boards must also establish values and monitor progress. Andrew Kim, who helped design the budget simulation, described the activities as “project-based learning” to connect governance, priorities and budgeting.

Trustees and staff discussed concrete numbers during the presentation by district finance staff. The district’s adopted fiscal-year budget referenced during the exercise showed roughly $529 million in revenues against about $542 million in expenses, a gap the presenters described as a $12 million deficit adopted earlier in the fiscal year. Finance staff reported an 81-day fund balance at fiscal year-end and said recent surplus-property sales generated $9.2 million for fund balance, with one pending sale that could add about $9.3 million.

District staff also walked trustees through other fiscal details used in the simulation: the maintenance-and-operations tax rate (reported as 0.7699 per $100 valuation in the materials), an average local home market value used in examples ($250,000), and a note that employee health-care costs have been held steady for several years under a self‑funded program that the district moved to in 2019.

In the live budget exercise, groups of trustees used weighted ballots (points of 15, 12, 10, 8 and 5) to rank priorities; facilitators tallied the results and presented the board’s collective top five. Facilitators then ran a simulated budget where trustees could test the fiscal impact of options such as a tax ratification election (TRE), changes to central-office positions, reductions in health savings account contributions, modest staff compensation adjustments and other measures. In the simulation, a TRE generated revenue that materially changed the projected surplus or deficit; several trustees noted the political and practical considerations that would accompany any real TRE decision.

Trustees and the superintendent emphasized that the session was intended to create a durable planning cadence: clear outcomes, aligned monitoring, and presentation of the metrics the superintendent requires. The superintendent said the board must “establish a cadence to monitor progress” and provide administrators with “a clear understanding of what pieces of information show progress.”

Facilitators and staff noted two implementation items: (1) trustees were asked to retain their written notes on the two priorities they chose so staff can use them later in budget planning; and (2) the superintendent’s office said the district must complete required Team-of-8 governance training tied to several Texas Education Agency (TEA) School Action Fund grants. The superintendent told trustees TEA had granted an extension but that the district needed to schedule two full days of training to meet grant requirements before the end of the school year.

What trustees said: Multiple trustees told facilitators they valued seeing the budget model in action and hearing peers’ priorities. Trustee Beals said the exercise deepened her understanding of average daily attendance (ADA) and its financial impact; Trustee Hernandez emphasized student growth as a primary priority; Trustee Call highlighted enrollment/attendance; another trustee said improving lunch options could support attendance and behavior.

No formal votes or ordinance actions were taken at the session. Presenters and trustees described the outputs as a set of board priorities and guidance for staff to use in drafting the 2025–26 proposed budget; the trustees will return to budgeting workshops and to formal adoption processes later this spring.

Ending: District staff said they will use the board’s prioritized list and the notes collected during the session to guide budget proposals; staff also signaled they would return to trustees with additional budget workshops in the coming months and to schedule the required Team-of-8 training connected to TEA grant compliance.