At last night’s TUSD Governing Board meeting the failure to provide enough instructional minutes to Pueblo High School students was addressed. The “Zero Hour” employed in Pueblo’s schedule has created a shortage in the number of instructional hours available to students.
The “creative” schedule is yet one more controversy at the beleaguered school under the leadership of principal Vivi Watt and assistant superintendent Abel Morado.
Since the beginning of the school year parents and teachers have expressed concern about the “Zero Hour” in which students are on campus from 7:30 to 9:00 a.m., but few classes and few teachers are available to students.
Pueblo High teacher Travis Klein addressed the Board about the issue during the call to the audience. He advised the Board that “more time with the students leads to better outcomes.”
Klein pointed out a “glaring error in the spreadsheet” that the Board members were given by the administration. He said that the spreadsheet does not reflect reality. He pointed out that the true minute were 292 minutes, not 387 as reflected in the spreadsheet. The district’s financial officer, Josef Awad admitted that the spreadsheet reflected a total of what all students receive and not what minutes are actually available to students.
Klein, an AP teacher at Pueblo, who is frustrated with his student’s lack of access to instruction, finished his comments reminding the Board that “Many teachers believe that more time with the students will lead to better test scores.”
Dr. Stegeman then addressed the concerns brought up by teachers; instructing staff to follow up on the concerns expressed.
After the call to the audience Dr, Pedicone told the Board, “We have problems with principals and staff trying to be creative with schedules. We want the board to learn why we are on the edge with minutes.” The Board and staff referred to a school in the district and refrained from referring to Pueblo by name. Pedicone admitted that the district had failed to provide enough instructional hours as required by law.
“You can see how a traditional schedule fits but if you try to do anything else it doesn’t fit the requirements,” said Pedicone. Despite this three of the six high schools who have grades of “C’ or worse offer block schedules. At Pueblo this has created fear for parents, frustration for teachers, and confusion for students and the public, and embarrassment for the administration, “We don’t meet the minimum requirement,” concluded Pedicone.
Awad proceeded to present a long dissertation on how funding was calculated that had little to do with the legal requirements by the state or best practices for optimum learning for students.
Board president Miguel Cuevas, who referred to himself at the last TUSD candidate debate as the “Chief Policy Maker” thanked the Awad for the presentation. Cuevas stated “it shows that we are not just ignorant and can’t manage minutes. It is complicated.”
Cuevas then asked, “Where we got in trouble, was we were billing for a full time, but now we are not giving the students the time but we are not billing for them?” Awad responded that Cuevas was correct in his assessment of the situation.
Pedicone concluded that assistant superintendents need to monitor instructional time so that the district is not fined as they were last year when they were audited and found to have shortchanged the state by not providing the required number of instructional hours to many of the district’s junior high students.
The students at Pueblo are receiving the lowest number of instructional minutes in the district, and are some of the students most in need of those precious minutes.
According to a recent study, the students at Pueblo High School can receive a total of 230 minutes per week of instructional time per class as opposed to the 290 available minutes at Sabino High School, 264 at Rincon, 243 at Tucson, and 237 minutes at Cholla. Other districts offer more instructional time; Amphi offers 300 instructional minutes and Flowing Wells offers 275 to their high school students.
Last year the district was ordered to pay approximately $1.9 million back to the state for failing to offer enough instructional minutes. This year they celebrated the fact that they negotiated the fine down to $1 million. Only Stegeman addressed the fact that kids had been cheated of the time.
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