School gym doubles as juvenile courtroom

School gym doubles as juvenile courtroom

Daniel Perry
June 13, 2007 - 10:35PM
EDINBURG — The bleachers at Edinburg North High School’s gymnasium were crowded Wednesday afternoon as families waited their turn to appear before Justice of the Peace Mary Alice Palacios and her staff.

It was the second consecutive week she had her weekly afternoon court session at the school to deal with Edinburg school district-related cases.

During the recently completed school year, Palacios had court at her North 12th Avenue offices near the Museum of South Texas History, the Hidalgo County Courthouse and the district’s transportation building. Court has been moved from all these places because there was not enough room.

Palacios’ case load for the district begins at about 80 cases at the start of the academic year and rises into the hundreds as the months wear on. Because of this, she is looking to the Edinburg district instead of the county for help in the form of a case manager, two clerks and a larger court space.

She has 16 county and school district-assigned workers in her office and is projected to pay them about $230,000 this year, according to county budget information. Employee budgets for other county justice of the peace offices range from $109,000 to $150,000. The average number of staff in other justice of the peace offices was not immediately available late Wednesday afternoon.

Palacios said the Edinburg district has an obligation to provide additional work space.

“It’s their cases in my courtroom,” she said about the district. “We are handling 500 cases a day.”

Mario Salinas, Edinburg’s assistant superintendent of administration, said finding space is not a problem during the summer, because classes are not in session. He said the challenge is during the school year, when campuses are being used from dawn to dusk for classes and activities and there is just no room available to accommodate large groups for court.

The county is responsible for renting, buying or constructing buildings and providing employees for its nine justices of the peace, county public information officer Cari Lambrecht said. Palacios could seek more space for all of her work if she requests it through the county’s budget process, which is going on now, Lambrecht said.

Court started at Edinburg North about noon Wednesday and was not expected to end until about 8 p.m. People walked through a metal detector at one side of the gymnasium, checked their names on the docket with court staff and took their places in the bleachers to wait for their names to be called. The cases ranged from first-time offenders to repeat offenders, with violations ranging from truancy and fighting to using abusive language and other offenses.

Palacios also takes on school district-related cases from Donna, Edcouch-Elsa, La Villa, Monte Alto, the South Texas Business, Education & Technology Academy in Edinburg, Mid-Valley Charter School in Weslaco and the county’s Juvenile Justice Alternative Education Program.

She said Donna, Edinburg and Edcouch-Elsa provide clerks, while the other schools and districts provide office supplies. And Donna and other districts provide more than ample space at campuses to have court.

Edinburg school district staff are scheduled to meet Monday about her situation, she said.
“We are trying to help,” said Salinas, the assistant superintendent of administration. “I know as of recently we added two staff members to her staff. But we want to help and we recognize that what she does is valuable. She’s part of our team. We don’t pay her salary, but she does a lot for us.”

———

Daniel Perry covers education and general assignments for The Monitor. You can reach him at (956) 683-4454. For this and other stories, visit www.themonitor.com.

http://www.themonitor.com/news/school_3037___article.html/county_district.html