Abilene ISD trustee discusses advancements, challenges & Hispanic community in the district

ABILENE, Texas ( KTAB/KRBC ) — In this week’s episode of Big Country Politics, Abilene ISD school board trustee Billy Enriquez discussed the advancements he has seen in the district, particularly in relation to the Hispanic community. He shared his perspective from attending Abilene schools in the 1950s and 1960s to serving six years on the board.

Enriquez has been on the school board since 2018. He says his vision for AISD has never changed in those six years.

“What I envisioned six years ago? I still have that same vision. It’s trying to educate all of our children, not just Hispanic children, but all of our children, providing them with the best education that we can afford to give them,” Enriquez shared.

He recently attended the Texas Association of School Boards conference (TASB) in San Antonio. While there is a lot to unpack from this event, one thing that stood out to Enriquez was the use of artificial intelligence in schools.

“One of the most interesting things was AI, artificial intelligence. It’s unbelievable if we use it right. For our teachers and certified staff, this is an excellent tool to help them with their daily operation of teaching children. I mean, it’s unbelievable,” Enriquez explained. “Of course, the negative side is how they can manipulate it. But as far as within our district, we can use it to our advantage. I went to three sessions on artificial intelligence, and it was just fascinating what can be done with it to help our students learn even more and to kind of make it easier for the teacher to make the day with it; there’s a lot of paperwork involved in teaching. Lots of paperwork.”

He mentioned that one of the significant challenges he has observed is dealing with disciplinary issues in the classroom.

“Our kids are dealing with so much. They come to school with luggage that you and I didn’t have to deal with. It’s a whole different world, and it’s hard on them. So that’s the biggest problem I see. You can’t learn unless you’re in the classroom,” Enriquez said.

Teacher pay is a frequently discussed topic, with many arguing that it is not sufficient in today’s economy. Enriquez mentioned that while the pay is nice in AISD and there are yearly raises, the wages are still not where he would like them to be.

“We have a starting salary of 51,000, which is not bad for a first-year teacher. We need to pay our senior teachers more, but the budget has constraints. You can only go so far, and we have given raises every year, but those raises are not enough to compensate for the cost of living and what needs to be added to it to survive. Everyone is looking for the same people to come to teach, and we’re all fighting monetarily to get them here. So all the wages have gone up, but not far enough,” Enriquez shared. “We gave a 2.5% raise this year for 25/26. That doesn’t cover the increase in the cost of living. So we’re trying to keep up with at least that part of it, and hopefully, someday, we’ll get to where we can pay more.”

Enriquez shared that the public view of education, specifically for those with Hispanic heritage, has changed tremendously since starting school in AISD in 1958.

“I think that we have become more diligent in trying to educate our children. I think that back when I started school in 1958 in Abilene, our parents were so busy trying to make a living that education was important, but it wasn’t the biggest priority. Survival was the biggest priority,” Enriquez explained. “Now I think that we have moved to the next stage where education is the priority for our children, so that’s the major thing that I’ve seen, and the courses that we have and just all around help and educating kids has changed. We’re more transparent today than we were back in 1958, and that’s a big deal because we’re talking about access to the school district and the parents because the parents are the ones that really encourage the children to get educated and stay on them, to make sure that they do everything that they can to gain a good education.”

With 48% of Abilene ISD’s population being Hispanic, and many of whom speak Spanish as their first language, the district offers accommodations that those students may need.

“I remember when I first started in the second grade, we had a lot of my friends who didn’t speak English, and we didn’t have anything in place at that time to accommodate those students, so they kind of had to fly by the seat of their pants to learn English, which they did. They emerged in the language, and they did well with it, but we had a lot of students that all they knew was Spanish,” Enriquez recalled. “Now, we have programs to help those students who come in where Spanish is their first language, and English is their second. Now, we’re bringing them in, and we have programs to help them advance in both languages so we can educate them. So it’s changed quite a bit.”

At Ortiz Elementary, more than 250 students from multiple countries are in the bilingual program.

“We have kids from Mexico. We have kids from Nicaragua; we have kids from El Salvador. We have kids from Central America, not so much South America, but Central America and Mexico. The school only has 400 students, and half of those students are in the bilingual program. So we’ve come, we’ve come a long way,” Enriquez shared. “When you walk into those classrooms, all you see are these little Hispanic kids. It’s a one-way program. We’re teaching kids to speak English. Prior to this, we had a two-way where we had English speakers come in to learn how to speak Spanish, and we’ve gotten away from that and just deal with the kids that need to learn English.”

Enriquez shared that one of the best things he and the school board have to offer is parental access to the school board, schools, and administration.

“In the past, we didn’t have that for whatever reason. But now, I think that we’re finally transparent enough where we’re trying to deal with these parents because, really, they’re the motivators for our students. If the parent is not pushing education and the child is not going to school or doing other things or not paying attention and not learning with access to the school, the parent feels like they’re part of it,” Enriquez said.

In recent years, AISD has placed great emphasis on hiring bilingual teachers. Enriquez stated that this is crucial for students and staff who can connect with them and serve as role models.

“In our school district, less than 10% of our certified staff is Hispanic. 3% is African American, and the rest of the population is Caucasian. So, we need more teachers who are not just Hispanic but can also relate to Hispanic students. That doesn’t mean a Caucasian can’t relate to a Hispanic student if they can, but we need them in the classroom,” Enriquez said. “That’s a big change. When I was growing up, I knew what I could do by looking at the role models. The role models that I had in school were people in maintenance. They weren’t certified teachers. The change I’ve seen is more role models, and role modeling is very, very critical, not just for Hispanics but for all of us. It’s critical.”

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