Volume 59, Issue 12  - November 6, 2006

School board candidates tackle TAKS, dropout rate
By Hugo Rodriguez
Staff Writer

Diego Lerma/Collegian

Candidates or their representatives affirm that they are registered to vote during a forum for Brownsville School District board candidates Wednesday in the SET-B Lecture Hall. Shown are Jaime Escobedo (from left), brother of incumbent Place 1 candidate Enrique Escobedo; Moisses A. Gonzalez and Michael Rodriguez, Place 1 candidates; Cesar Muñoz, representing Eliceo Muñoz, Place 2 incumbent; Ruben Cortez Jr. and Christina L. Saavedra, Place 2 candidates.

Candidates for the Brownsville School District board of trustees pitched their ideas for improving education at a forum on campus Wednesday.

Present were Moisses A. Gonzalez and Michael Rodriguez, candidates for Place 1, and Ruben Cortez Jr. and Christina L. Saavedra, candidates for Place 2.

Dr. Enrique Escobedo and Eliceo Muñoz, incumbents for places 1 and 2, respectively, were absent.

Asked about the Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills, Gonzalez replied, “I think our teachers should not be teaching to a test, plain and simple.”

Rodriguez said, “I don’t know anybody at all … that wants to have their pay raise linked to one day out of the year.”

Cortez said standardized testing should be used “as a diagnostic tool, but not to gauge teacher performance because everybody has bad days. And if you went in when that happened to be yours, everything you did all year meant nothing because of that one day.”

Saavedra said “as an educator … we always have to assess our students--that’s part of what we do and part of our job. … As teachers, we know to use several instruments [of testing], not just one; we test a variety of ways.”

Asked what they intended to do about the dropout rate in schools, the candidates had several suggestions.

“You see these gaps … these freshman classes coming in at 900-plus students, and then four years later, you’re graduating 400 to 450 kids.” Cortez said. “It’s important for us, whoever is elected, that when one of those children falls, that we’re there to pick him up or pick her up.”    

Saavedra called for earlier identification of students at risk of dropping out.

“We need to identify these … these at-risk kids, not when they get to high school … but at a very young age, and target them into these various programs,” she said, including the district’s Career and Technology Education Department.

Gonzalez said the district should involve parents as well.

 “We should not just target the children, we also should have programs to assist and educate the parents,” he said.

Rodriguez said, “We need to increase the ability for students who want to take [career and technology] paths to do that. We need to increase our awareness in term of identifying these at-risk students… [and] raise the level of parental involvement in the lives of their children.”

The candidates also touted after-school programs.

“There is no question that participation in after-school programs is key,” Rodriguez said. “I think it’s vital, and I think it’s critical.”

Cortez said, “We’re having to take these children out of jail because they decided to drop out and go in the wrong direction. I think after-school programs would help that situation.”

Gonzalez, citing a need for viable alternatives for after-school programs, said he would “seek out the support of every government entity … and the community in general.”

Saavedra said, “We’ve got to find different ways in which we can motivate students through the use of technology, the use of innovative programs.  There’s a lot of places that our children have not even visited, just simply field trips to take them to different places. Experiences are so important.”

Voters will make their choices in Tuesday’s election.

The UTB/TSC Center for Civic Engagement, the League of Student Voters, the Student Government Association and Kappa Delta Pi, an international honor society, sponsored the forum.

About 100 people attended the forum held in the SET-B Lecture Hall.