4 EPISD Elementary Schools Will Be Closing – What Should We Do With Them?

If you live in the El Paso Independent School District, you know that our taxes are sky high. Declining student enrollment in our land-locked district means less state and federal money coming in and that means district taxpayers have to pony up more and more money to keep the district running.

A number of schools in the district were being looked at as either being potentially closed or consolidated. Now we know which schools will be affected:

Alta Vista, Beall, Burleson and Schuster elementary schools will be closed.
Alta Vista students will attend Coldwell Elementary School.
Beall students will attend Douglass Elementary School.
Burleson students will attend Zavala Elementary School.
Schuster students will attend Dowell Elementary School.

The closures will happen at the end of this school year, so what to do with those closed schools? I have a few ideas:

1. Turn them into Chico's Tacos - There could be a Chico's on every corner and you would still have to wait for your double order with extra cheese. Get with the Chico's people and give us more soupy flautas!

2. Turn them into satellite EPISD offices - The district is building a new Central Office but with empty schools available, why bother. It would be easier to use the closed down schools and a helluva lot less expensive. Plus, district administrators would be closer to the schools they, um, administrate. It's a win/win.

3. Turn them into Millennial housing - Buzzfeed says Millennials don't want to own a home, and the Montecillo smart-code area on the westside is a huge success. We could turn the closed down schools into the next smart-code/Millennial cool-kid developments.

4. Turn them into malls - No. Wait a minute. We don't want to have a Sunland Park mall disaster on our hands. *Sorry Sunland Park mall. I know that was a low blow.

I guess all we can hope for is that EPISD doesn't do something boneheaded with the closed schools. Oh, no, wait, this is EPISD we're talking about. Sorry, not sorry EPISD. You have a history of boneheaded moves.