Ector County ISD will no longer issue news releases about minor threats made at schools.
“We recognize that some of our students are copycats,” Superintendent Scott Muri said in his media call Wednesday. “They hear something, see something and then many times they want to do that same thing themselves. We know that some of the misbehavior of a few of our students is a direct result of the misbehavior of other students, so we want to take that incentive away from our students and give them the incentive to behave appropriately. … We’re simply not going to continue to report those minor incidents anymore.”
The minor incidents, he said, involve threats in words that result in arrests.
“Typically the students do not have the means to carry out these threats, but our commitment continues to be anytime there is a serious situation, a serious threat, or something that warrants attention, we will certainly communicate that out. Our desire is really to stop our kids from continuing this negative type of behavior. We appreciate the cooperation of our families and the cooperation of our community as we work together to ensure that our kids learn to behave a little more appropriately when they’re on school grounds,” Muri said.
On a separate topic, the ECISD Board of Trustees discussed budget priorities for the 2023-24 school year Dec. 13.
“Each year during the budget development process, the staff of ECISD listens to what our trustees consider important,” Muri said.
Compensation was one topic the board agreed on.
“They want us to continue to ensure that our employees are paid a competitive wage. (They) want to continue to increase the amount of money that our employees make. They want us to pay attention to our lowest wage employees,” Muri said.
Muri said paying competitive wages helps retain high-quality employees and attracts people to the area.
“Compensation is important to each of our employees and our board really doubled down on their commitment that our employees are well paid,” Muri said.
Security for students and staff was another item trustees discussed.
“We know that the state of Texas has already released an amount of money, an allocation, to every school district in the state of Texas, along with a new set of rules to make sure that our staff members are safe while they’re on school campuses. In addition to that, we fully anticipate that the Texas Legislature will tackle the issue of school safety during this upcoming session and we fully anticipate more funding coming from the state of Texas to help us address the safety, not only of our staff members, but certainly our students as well,” he said.
“We’re just not sure at this point what that funding may be that’s coming from the state. Our board was really clear last night (Dec. 13) in their budget priorities that school safety, the safety of our staff members and the safety of our students must be put at the forefront,” Muri added.
In a separate but similar vein, Muri said a new ECISD police chief was announced Tuesday, Jeff Daniels. Muri thanked Chief Todd Hiner, who is retiring, for his service. Hiner made $102,672. Daniels will make $105,000.
Daniels will officially take the helm Jan. 1, Muri said. Daniels, he said, has been a member of the community for many years.
“He was a student in ECISD — elementary, middle school and high school. He has served as a law enforcement officer and been a member of the Ector County Independent School District Police Department for the majority of his law enforcement career and now joins us in leadership as the new chief of police,” Muri said.
Care and maintenance of district facilities was another priority.
“Our trustees recognize, through a recent facility conversation, that some of our facilities are up to 85 years of age and we need to continue to maintain those, so making sure that we’re investing in the care and maintenance of our aging facilities in ECISD was important to them,” Muri said.
There were other items as well such as special education, the social-emotional well being of students and their mental health.
“Once again, this is the beginning of our budget development process. We always start with what our trustees are prioritizing and then over the next several months the staff of ECISD will continue to work on developing that budget and then bring back a budget proposal for our trustees for approval during the month of June,” Muri said.
He noted that they are putting the final touches on the bond committee. They will begin meeting at the end of January and emails will be sent out Friday.
On special education, Muri said they look at the program seriously on a regular basis.
“Our special education students are among the most fragile students … that we serve. We provide a significant amount of funding to ensure they have the type of support that they need. Staffing in the special education area continues to be a national concern,” Muri said.
“We’ve experienced a special education shortage in public education for many years now and it just continues. It’s exacerbated by the current regular ed teacher shortage, so yes, our board last night (Dec. 13) was really clear that they want us to continue to pay attention to the needs of our special education students. …,” Muri said.
“We now have a pipeline that we’ve developed to create diagnosticians in ECISD. In fact, today we have five diagnosticians that we’re providing full funding for their college tuition so they can become diagnosticians and then serve in ECISD. We’re doing a lot already to address the staffing shortages within special education and then we’ll continue to work in a variety of ways to make sure the needs of our kids are met.”
The Odessa Chamber of Commerce is having a celebration and appreciation for the 4,200 employees of ECISD from noon to 5 p.m. Friday at Barn B on the Ector County Coliseum grounds.
Lunch will be provided for all employees. They will receive T-shirts, tickets to a Jackalopes hockey game and other items donated by local businesses.
“We are deeply appreciative of the Chamber of Commerce for recognizing the good work of our employees. We thank our business community for really stopping for a minute to demonstrate this level of appreciation to the members of team ECISD. Our teachers, our administrators, bus drivers, counselors, all members of the team, have gone above and beyond over the last three years to make good things happen for our kids and the validation of our business community is much appreciated,” Muri said.
