First, the PEA does not respresent all of the educators in PISD and sadly does not represent the students of PISD. Secondly, the PEA leadership did not poll all of its members to decide who they would support. You attended the [forum] and if all the members were present, their membership would only consist of ten or less.Thirdly, there was some inconsistancy on who could attend the [forum].

Quote: “We make too much of the budget issue,” Acosta said. “Spend it all and spend it wisely.”

Clarification: Each campus has a site-base decision-making team called the Campus Academic Advisory Council. This team, by law is composed of teachers, parents, community members, business members and campus and district administration. The largest [percentage] of members is the teacher group. The CAAC is responsible for developing a Campus Improvement Plan and the budget that will support that plan. The plan should have a primary instructional focus for the year based on data analysis that determines the instructional needs of each campus. If this system is used, the CIP drives the budget. I believe what I said at the PEA forum was “When I was the principal at PLE we used this system and it worked well for us. We used all our (budgeted) money.”

On recruitment of teachers/support of EAs:

PEA asked what the top three problems we considered were for PISD and what support would we give our EAs. My reply was that our first challenge was to attract and keep highly qualified teachers in science, math and BE/ESL. Highly qualified is a federal requirement for school districts and refers to the certification of teachers. My suggestion is to partner with Region 13 or other alternative certification agencies to attract persons that seek to teach in these content areas. What I have experienced with alternative certified teachers is the lack of a student teaching experience. PISD could provide this experience for an agreed number of days and then discuss the possibilities of retention. In regards to the EAs, my suggestion is to provide them support to continue their education.

Quote (from article): Acosta said pay must be merit-based, but that merit pay cannot be as simple a formula as it sounds since all campuses are not directly comparable.

I believe what I said was “The idea of merit pay has been around for awhile. I would consider a plan that works. However, this would be a difficult incentive because of budget considerations. You would have to budget a certain amount of funds and then decide how to award them.

– PISD school board candidate Mario Acosta