The TUSD (Tucson Unified School District) held a public hearing last night only very few members knew about it until the last minute. As a result the crowd of exactly 57 was comprised of exactly 37 staff members and members of the media.
Board President Miguel Cuevas refused Board member Mark Stegeman’s request for interaction between the Board and the public. He insisted that the Board would listen to the few public comments and then take a recess to privately discuss their opinions with members of the public in private.
The hearing was held to discuss schools closures just in time to promote Proposition 204. The head of the Proposition 204 campaign, Ann Eve Pedersen, delivered prepared comments in support of the measure. She claimed that the Auditor General’s report on the district unfairly counted librarians and counselors as non-classroom costs, but failed to mention that all districts are judged by the Auditor general by the same criteria, and TUSD has the highest administrative costs of all large districts in the state.
Pederson said that the district’s looming deficit was evidence of the need for Prop 204. Prop 204 is a intended to replace the temporary 1 cent sales tax with a permanent sales tax.
Many in the district question whether the projected deficit is a reality or a ploy to generate support for the 1 cent sales tax revenues provided for in Prop 204.
The only TUSD Governing Board candidates in attendance other than the incumbent Board members were Betts Putnam Hidalgo and John Hunnicutt. Both spoke of the need to cut administrative costs.
Putnam Hidalgo called the hearing a “sham” which was generally supported by the few members of the public in attendance.
John Hunnicutt advised the Board that “TUSD spends 180 dollars more in administration per student than the average of the nine very large school districts in the State of Arizona. That is a little more than nine million dollars per year that TUSD spends on administration. There has got to be ways to make cuts in that nine million dollar excess. While watching this process from the beginning it appears to have been focused on closing schools. It appears that there has been no serious efforts made to find other ways to cut and generate the savings in areas of water, electricity, or administrative costs whatsoever. The easy way out is to close schools; that way we can save a lot of money. We haven’t heard anything about what the district plans to do with the closed schools. Are you going to make the hard decisions about selling or leasing the closed schools or are you just going to sit on them?”
To date, the district has done nothing with a majority of the schools closed in the past. They continue to pay for utilities and upkeep. As a result, they did not gain the savings they had promised at the time of the closures.
At the point when Cuevas finally allowed his fellow Board members to ask questions, Mark Stegeman stated his view that any newly elected Board members need to be involved in the decisions about school closures even if they cannot vote until officially taking office.
The meeting ended after Board member Michael Hicks, who has been unhappy with the administration’s insistence on closing schools, reminded the administration and the public that the district cannot do anything without Board approval. Hicks objects to the district’s apparent plan to close east side schools while building big box schools on the south side. The big box model, according to the transcripts of previous TUSD Master Planning sessions, is designed to facilitate community organizing.