El Paso ISD trustees say community feedback confirms academics and whole-child development as top priorities

The El Paso Independent School District board of trustees spent a special meeting reviewing community engagement and survey results that asked residents what students should know and what the district should keep, stop or avoid.

Facilitator Dr. Ben presented the findings and said safety and student experience were among the top values the community prioritized. “The first thing top of mind was safety,” Dr. Ben said, noting safety was mentioned 155 times across responses. He added that student experience received fewer mentions overall but was prioritized more often when respondents were asked to pick their top items.

Superintendent Dr. Lusk said the results largely confirmed what district leaders already expected about academic priorities. “From the academic perspective, that is our core competence,” Dr. Lusk said, and he highlighted college-and-career readiness, financial literacy and durable skills as areas flagged by the community.

Trustees and staff debated how some items were bucketed in the survey. When Trustee Osterland asked why science ranked lower than English and math, Dr. Ben replied that many respondents tend to default to English and math when ranking core subjects and that respondents who cared about science often used general academic language rather than naming specific subjects.

Trustees also discussed extracurriculars and athletics. One trustee said they were surprised athletics fell lower in the vision rankings, and Dr. Ben explained the survey separated athletics-specific mentions from more general extracurricular activity responses.

Trustee Sutton said some community members lack faith that input will lead to change, and urged that the board prove its responsiveness. “People here do not have faith or believe that this is going to be taken seriously,” Trustee Sutton said, adding that follow-up and visible action will be necessary to build trust.

In response, trustees proposed operationalizing a regular cadence of public follow-up — for example, annual or biannual community meetings — to report on steps the district has taken based on the feedback. Dr. Ben said he would prepare a geographic dispersion analysis of survey responses by zip code and noted that community meetings drew roughly 40 to 70 attendees each.

Dr. Ben summarized the district’s strategic pillars and the community’s relative prioritization: academic excellence and whole-child development ranked highest; culture of accountability, equity by design and destination district followed. He cautioned that lower counts for some pillars did not mean the community rejected them, only that they were less frequently prioritized in this survey snapshot of about 1,600 respondents.

Next steps include a required three-hour “team of eight” workshop for all board members and the superintendent at the end of April to use the community feedback to help codify priorities, goals and guardrails. Trustees were told administration will refine the outputs and return them to the board for consideration with the aim of adopting any adjustments before the end of the academic year.

The meeting, called to order at 8:04 a.m., was adjourned at 8:55 a.m.