Community Forum for EPISD Board of Trustees Candidates to be held on Saturday, February 27, 2021, from 10 AM to 1 PM. The event will be conducted via a Facebook Livestream in consideration of the current COVID situation.
The following grassroots organizations, unions, and community members will serve as panelists conveying concerns and questions to the candidates, in a manner that will both educate on the impact of decisions made by EPISD trustees and administration, as well as seek commitment from the potential trustees to advocate for community during decision-making processes:
Familias Unidas del Chamizal
Border Network for Human Rights
El Paso Teachers Association of El Paso
TX SBOE Representative Georgina Perez
The Black El Paso Roundtable
Democratic Socialists of America of El Chuco
Our moderator will be Attorney Veronica Carbajal, former El Paso mayoral candidate.
The format will be as following:
- Each organization will have fifteen minutes to provide insight to issues impacting their respective school feeder patterns; followed by a question-and-answer period for the candidates.
- Due to time constraints, questions will not be provided in advance.
- Organizations will independently decide how to allocate their resources in rendering assistance to their candidates of choice, i.e., volunteers for canvassing and phone banking, as well as in-kind donations.
- The organizers of the forum will then compose a collective statement, and express support for the candidates that best espouse our collective platform, of which promotes equity and social justice.
- Candidates that accept campaign funding from CREEED will not be considered, given that organization’s support for the privatization of public schools, voucher programs, and charter schools.
The grassroots organizations are hoping to identify a cadre of candidates in order to optimize our resources, so that we can provide volunteers for phone-banking and canvassing during the months of March and April, leading up to the May election.
A Zoom link will be sent to the community panelists and candidates as the date approaches.
Additionally, our forum will be streamed through our FB page, EP Community Forums, in order to allow for public viewing and streaming.
EPISD site with official declaration of candidates can be found here.
The following thirteen candidates have confirmed attendance:
District 1:
Leah Hanany: https://www.facebook.com/search/top?q=leah%20hanany%20for%20episd%20district%201, http://www.leahhanany.com, leahhanany@gmail.com
Arturo Dominguez: octaviod@gmail.com
District 3:
Joshua Acevedo (incumbent): (915) 257-4953
Leslie Hoard – LeslieDHoard@gmail.com
District 4:
Fainot Pierre: https://www.fainot4episd.com E-mail: fatnop@gmail.com Cellphone:(917)745-7802
Betty A. Haliburton: bettyhaliburton@hotmail.com
Francis De Santos Whitaker: fwhitaker50@gmail.com
Diane Dye (incumbent) – marcam@earthlink.com
District 5:
Stephen Hayes: stephen.hayes.sr@gmail.com
Vanessa Betts: vanessabetts33@gmail.com
Jerome Tilghman: crytilghman@aol.com
Willeta I. Corbett: willets.corbett@yahoo.com
Israel Irrobali: IIRROBALI@gmail.com