This week the Ninth Circuit reversed a lower court’s ruling in the decades old TUSD desegregation case. The court reversed the Federal Court’s decision to end of its oversight of the Tucson Unified School District. It found that the district had acted in bad faith by failing to be transparent and accountable to the community.
The lower court’s decision had granted what is called “unitary” status to the district a little over two years ago. In 2007, the court was anxious to return local control of the district to Tucsonans. The Ninth Circuit found that Judge Bury admitted that he was “hard pressed without spending hours upon hours of rutting through the record to piece together the facts it needed to support a finding of full compliance,” however, he announced his intention, “to close this case and return the district schools to the state because oversight and control will be more effective placed in the hands of the public with the political system at its disposal to address any future issues.”
Unitary status freed the district from court oversight, and the district was only required to follow the “Post Unitary Status Plan” (PUSP). At the time of the agreement, the Fisher and Mendoza plaintiffs expressed their reservations about the PUSP.
The Ninth Circuit found that, “Decades of Supreme Court precedent dictate that, where good faith lacks and the effects of de jure segregation linger, public monitoring and political accountability do not suffice,” wrote Judge Sidney Thomas. Writing for the unanimous three-judge panel he concluded, “We reverse the court below and order it to maintain jurisdiction until it is satisfied that the school district has met its burden by demonstrating – not merely promising – its ‘good-faith compliance…” The district failed to perform the most basic compliance requirements. They failed to hire auditors to track the tens of millions of dollars that are provided each year to show the public how that money has been spent and whether or not it has been effective in reducing achievement gaps.
There are members of the plaintiff’s party that would like to see an end to the desegregation funding. Their position is that the district took over $1 billion for many years and did not act to level the playing field for students who had not traditionally be served, so clearly money was not the issue. They believe that the district suffers from an institutionalized disregard for the education of students that money will not cure, but an engaged community will. Because of the district’s cavalier attitude, the playing field has not been leveled and the inequities have reached all children in the district. If under this new ruling the community is not going to force the district to become transparent and accountable they believe the desegregation dollars will continue to be misused.
Some plaintiffs hold that the desegregation order will continue to be a cash cow, providing opportunities for administration only. They cite the fact that desegregation monies were received by Sabino High School and other schools that have not suffered from the achievement gap, while the district closed neighborhood schools and refuse to recruit and hire experienced and effective teachers. They also point out that kids’ success is not a result of more money, and offer Tucson High as an example. THS has received a tremendous amount of money and with it, built practice gyms and other niceties but still has not worked to close the achievement gap. Several of the Fisher plaintiffs have continually stated that desegregation funds are a clear example of taxation without representation. They share their fellow taxpayer’s outrage over the district’s waste of monies on unproven programs and “bells and whistles.”
Since all other Arizona districts have had their state funding cut to provide this extra money it has become a statewide issue. TU4SD, a local public school advocacy group advised the district on multiple occasions to begin to engage in the transparent educational practices required by the PUSP. TU4SD did anticipate that the district would lose unitary status, and issued a statement that any oversight, whether it be local, state, or federal would be better than the district’s current unchecked performance.
Despite the agreement in Judge Bury’s earlier finding and the Ninth Circuit’s ruling, that the district did not act on good faith, TUSD board member Judy Burns is mystified. She was certain that offering segregating Mexican American Studies classes to less than three percent of the student population was the only thing the district needed to do.
Some on the School Board understand the issues involved. Mark Stegeman, in his careful but honest newsletter addressed the district’s failing of underserved kids when he wrote, “It is common to say that some schools cannot achieve high marks, because of their challenging student populations, but this argument too often relies on the invidious assumption that many students’ socioeconomic background condemns them to lower performance. This bias is unfair and destructive to many students. One of our most important tasks is to narrow the wide achievement gap that exists between different groups.”