Open letter to Dr. Linda Arzourmanian, Pima County Superintendent of Schools
November 8, 2011
Dear Dr. Arzoumanian,
We write to express concerns about the process for filling the vacant seat on the Tucson Unified School District (TUSD) governing board. Ideally the new board member would be chosen by the public at the voting booth, but we appreciate your decision not to hold a special election, given the large cost to TUSD and the proximity of the next regular election.
For context, we note the statute concerning board vacancies:
A.R.S. 15-302: “The county school superintendent shall … 3. Appoint governing board members of school districts to fill all vacancies, but the term of the appointment shall be until the next regular election for governing board members, at which time a successor shall be elected to serve the unexpired portion of the term. Within thirty days after notification of a vacancy, the school district governing board may submit up to three names to the county school superintendent for consideration of an appointment to fill the vacancy. The county school superintendent is not required to appoint a governing board member from the list of names submitted by the governing board. The county school superintendent, if he deems it in the best interest of the community, may call a special election to fill the vacancies…”
We respect your long experience with the local process, by which the county superintendent appoints a community advisory committee and receives advice from it rather than from the district’s governing board, concerning whom to appoint to the vacant seat. When faced with a potentially controversial decision, a process which is established and successful is an important asset.
In your November 4 letter to the district superintendent, which he forwarded yesterday to the governing board, you in essence ask him to appoint every member of that advisory committee:
“The process that I have in place is to have a Community Advisory Committee, consisting of five (5) members who are all residents or stakeholders of the District. Their primary responsibility will be to interview the eligible candidates and forward their recommendation to me. Upon review of all the information I will make the appointment. My request to you is to please provide my office with names, addresses, and telephone numbers, and email addresses of five (5) stakeholders. The stakeholders should represent: a parent, a teacher, an administrator, a business leader, and a community leader. Current or past governing board members may not serve on the Committee.
Please provide the names of the individuals and contact information to my office no later than Friday, November 18, 2011.”
The district superintendent has informally indicated that the governing board will have an opportunity to provide input on those appointments. The process and nature of this input is unclear. Tonight’s board meeting is the last one scheduled before the November 18 deadline.
We respectfully offer two related concerns.
First, we are concerned about the decision to ask one person, the district superintendent, to appoint all five members of the committee. Models for school district governance vary, but none of them recommends that administrators wield that much influence over appointments to the board which evaluates them.
Second, the rules concerning the composition of the committee reinforce this influence. At the time of our board member’s tragic and unexpected death, your office’s website stipulated a standard process under which the “Community Advisory Committee will consist of the following: a parent, a teacher, a business leader, a community leader, and an additional resident of the district.” This language disappeared from the website last week, and your letter (as quoted above) adds the new requirement that the committee include an administrator. The new composition thus requires that at least 2/5 of the members of the advisory committee be employees of the district, who obviously report to the district superintendent.
Someone connected to your office has explained reserving a spot on the community advisory committee for an administrator by stating that this rule has already been applied to several recent vacancies, notably the vacancy on the Sunnyside board. Sunnyside and TUSD are different districts, however, with different cultures of governance; adjustments which fit Sunnyside’s culture may not be the best model for TUSD.
We are concerned about the longstanding perception that TUSD is controlled by a clique of insiders. We fear that the current procedure for selecting the community advisory committee will, despite everyone’s best intentions, only reinforce this perception.
TUSD governance needs more community input, not less, and especially broad-based input which extends beyond various narrow interest groups. The impracticality of a special election only underscores the need for a process which deliberately constructs as much role for the “outside” community – those who would cast most of the votes in an election – as is practical. The public should be driving public education, and it is important to show that we understand that.
A broader and more inclusive process surrounding the community advisory committee would, we believe, be healthier for TUSD and for the board itself.
Thank you for your public service during this difficult period.
Respectfully,
Michael Hicks, TUSD Governing Board Mark Stegeman, TUSD Governing Board