According to Claudia Lorena Silva of El Paso Matters, more than 900 teachers left the County’s three largest school districts during the 2021-22 academic year!
That is a catastrophic figure.
In a previous report on this same topic, Silva shows that EPISD has the highest teacher attrition rate (11.9% in 2021-22).
In her reports, Silva focuses on teacher pay, classroom size, and workplace culture, but it would be interesting to know how many of those 900 teachers took jobs at local charter schools, which are growing rapidly.
We recently reported that in EPISD alone, the number of full-time employees decreased from 8,402 in 2014 to 7,229 this year, a drop of 14.0%; but we did not examine how many of the employees who left were teachers.
In the same nine-year period, student enrollment at EPISD declined 23.5%, from 61,290 in 2014 to approximately 47,500 today, and the number of school campuses decreased from 92 to 76.
Our local school districts consume more than 40% of our property tax and are burdened by bloated administrations that have never been subjected to a thorough structural audit.
There is real trouble on the horizon.
PHOTO CREDIT: CGU