Socorro ISD Plans Up to 300 Staff Layoffs, Larger Class Sizes to Address Budget Crisis. A large crowd is expected Wednesday night at a Socorro Independent School District board meeting that could end with hundreds of layoffs next school year, larger class sizes, and other changes that could reshape the struggling school district. If you’d like to know more about the plan of Socorro ISD to lay off 300 employees and make class sizes larger to address the budget crisis in detail, please keep reading the article below.
Socorro ISD Plans Up to 300 Staff Layoffs, Larger Class Sizes to Address Budget Crisis
The Socorro Independent School District (ISD) is planning to lay off 300 employees, make class sizes larger, and cut programs in an effort to save itself from financial ruin. The employees of Socorro ISD received an email late Friday. The email was from Acting Superintendent James Vasque, informing them the district needs to reduce its budget by $38 million for the 2025-26 school year and will need to cut staff to do so.
In that email, Vasquez said, “We are currently working to identify exactly how many employees will be impacted. Once this has been determined, employees will be notified, and we will do everything we can to help them through this painful process.” A spokesperson from Socorro said the district wouldn’t comment on the financial challenges beyond Vasquez’s email.
There were several individuals who were acquainted with the plan who asked not to be identified, who said they were told the district could lay off up to 300 people ahead of the next school year. That includes removing dedicated fine arts teachers at elementary schools. An agenda for Wednesday’s Socorro school board meeting said the plan includes a “fine arts redesign.”
Reason Behind This Decision
The major reason behind this layoff is that the school is facing inadequate funding and declining enrollment. Socorro ISD is the second largest school district in El Paso County, with about 47,000 students. Though the district has expanded rapidly in the past 30 years, it has been losing students more recently as El Paso’s birth rates have decreased by more than 20% in the past decade.
Over the last year, the SISD school board accepted a $479.6 million budget with a $22 million surplus for the 2024-2025 school year, reduced its employee health plan contribution to save money and took out a $25 million loan to cover payroll expenses after reducing its cash reserves.
Voice of Teachers
As of 2025-26, there will be no fine arts in the elementary schools. There will be no music, no art in any of the elementary schools,” one teacher said they were told, adding that Socorro’s two fine arts academics were exempted. “And then, in addition to that, they’ll be eliminating 300 jobs.” The teacher said about the reaction to the news that it was “absolute shock, absolute betrayal, absolute fear.”
“At a previous meeting when Jim Vasquez came to speak to us personally at our campus, he told us that there would be no eliminations, that they would do everything they could to make sure that students were not hurt, that we did nothing to hurt their education,” the teacher said. “And I fail to see how taking away fine arts is a part of that because it is just as important a part of their education as anything else. So this was a complete reversal of what we had been told before.”
Another teacher said that the decision to cut fine arts by the students will hurt students. The teacher stated, “Many things have happened over the years to where we’re finally having students from El Paso make it to all-state and students from El Paso make it to the state mariachi contest. We just have the band from Socorro marching in the Rose Bowl parade. We are seeing the benefits of starting elementary-level music and fine arts education bubble up through the high schools, and its good for El Paso.”
The third teacher from Friday’s meeting with the SISD administrator who spoke to El Paso Matters said good teachers will lose their jobs, but the biggest impact will be on students. The teacher said, “Look, we can get new jobs; we can look for other opportunities, but our children are looking to us for their education and for their well-being and a well-rounded education.”