As the fight for a seat on El Paso’s County Commissioners court continues, current Canutillo School Board President Sergio Coronado is under fire for allegedly using school resources to attack his political opponent.
Blanca Trout is the republican candidate for PCT 4, while Coronado is the democrat candidate. Both are also members of the Canutillo Independent School District School Board.
The Republican party Chairman, Ray Baca, addressed members of the school board at Tuesday night’s board meeting asking them to stop ‘wasting’ time with an agenda item that aimed to censure board trustee Trout for appearing in the homecoming parade,
“I’m here to express some concern about item 4c. For the benefit of those who don’t know what that is,” he continued ‘It is an attempt to possibly censure one of your board members brought by one one of your other board members.”
Baca expressed his concern saying that the item is not worthy of the board members’ time and that their time should be dedicated to more valuable issues.
“No law was broken [by Trout riding in the parade.] There is no reason for that. My question is how will your response make things better for the students? No students’ lives will be made better by your sanctioning. There is only one beneficiary that will come from this matter and that is the other board member that happens to be running against her in a political race in seven weeks.”
Baca added that the school board, like every other, should be focused on its students and not whether or not a trustee drove their car in the homecoming parade.
Baca then asked the board to take the item off the agenda,
“So I ask the board to consider whether this is a good use of their time and I ask to actually take it off the agenda and move on to more positive use of your time; time that will benefit this school. Use your time wisely so you can say what we did, we did for the benefit of the school and the students, not for the benefit of an individual candidate versus another candidate.”
In opposition to Baca’s plea, CISD passed a motion to censure Trout.
Coronado was listed as the presenter of the item.
According to the district’s legal counsel, the censure is not a legal proceeding but rather a symbolic gesture.
Trout’s vehicle is accused of having campaign signage on it, although photos show that there was no campaign signage on her vehicle.
