EPISD Looking For Missing Bowie High School Students

The El Paso Independant School District is looking for students who were caught up in the TAKS test grade fixing scheme cooked up by former Superintendant Lorenzo Garcia.

In case you've been under a rock for the past six months or so, EPISD has been rocked by a couple of scandals, so let's bring everyone up to speed.

Former Superintendant Lorenzo Garcia got arrested earlier this year for giving a girlfriend a contract worth hundreds of thousands of dollars.  As if that wasn't bad enough, we found out a little while later that he had directed district employees to falsify TAKS test results so that the district's numbers would be better than they really were, and so he could line his pockets with bonus money.

Notice I didn't say "alleged" in regards to any of that stuff?  That's because he admitted to all of it.  Real winner, that guy is.

So, fast forward to the district announcing that it's trying to find the kids who were left out of TAKS testing altogether, or were actually prevented from attending Bowie High School because their test scores would mess up Garcia's plan.  Operation Kid's First is the program EPISD has put in place to "recover" students who went missing after the Garcia scheme cheated them out of an education.

Yeah, I said "recover", you know, like "recover bodies that have been left behind by Garcia who wanted to make some bank while kids who relied on EPISD to educate them got lost in the shuffle of money that he left in his wake".  Yes, that kind of "recover".

I suppose EPISD should be thanked for trying to find these kids who were screwed by Garcia, but considering they are still doing things like kicking a state monitor out of a meeting who was brought in from the TEA to keep an eye on them because, clearly, they can't be trusted to keep an eye on themselves, I'm not so sure I'm ready to pat them on the back and say "Good job!"

I am sure, however, that my fourth grade teacher, Mrs. Smith, is turning over in her grave over that previous run-on sentence.  She used to make my homework bleed with red pencil over stuff like that!

If you want some more information about Operation Kid's First, click here.  We'll see how much follow-up is done to help the kids who were treated so poorly by Garcia and the district.