TYC wants Pyote facility open four more months

The Texas Youth Commission board has decided not to close the West Texas State School in Pyote before the controversial juvenile detention facility is legislatively required to shutter its doors this August.

TYC officials, reacting to state leaders’ request that all agencies draft plans to cut their budgets by 5 percent, had been mulling an April 2 closure of the facility, which they said could translate into savings of up to $3.5 million.

Ward County officials opposed an abrupt closing of the detention center, saying it would cause hardship and undercut efforts to transition the facility into another state agency.

“They are trying to find something else for this facility so that those jobs will stay here,” said Monahans Mayor David Cutbirth, who noted that the detention center has received several million dollars worth of upgrades in recent years and is one of the nicest TYC facilities in the state. “We’re all working very hard to find some kind of seamless transition to put some other state agency in there.”

TYC spokesman Jim Hurley said the board considered the adverse effects an early closing could have on the surrounding area.

“In any action that we take, there are going to be consequences,” he said. “They did not want to impose any hardships on the community.”

Hurley added that the Legislative Budget Board could still order the facility to close sooner than August.

The detention center, a 26-acre campus located along Interstate-20 about 17 miles west of Odessa, came under fire in recent years after two administrators were accused of sexually assaulting young men in 2004. Former assistant school superintendent Ray Brookins and former principal John Paul Hernandez are awaiting trial on multiple felony counts.