On April 22, the US Department of Justice lodged their objections to the Special Master’s proposed Implementation Committee in the TUSD desegregation case. The DOJ expressed concern that the purpose of the committee was unclear and the associated costs could be a hardship for the financially strapped District.
The Special Master in the case, Willis Hawley, proposed a panel of three of his associates to serve as his advisors on the in the implementation of court-ordered desegregation plan.
In its filing, under the direction of Thomas Perez, Assistant Attorney General in the Civil Rights Division, the DOJ requested more information from Special Master Willis Hawley because he had not “provided adequate specificity regarding the tasks that these experts will undertake, and explicitly acknowledges that he does not intend to have the Committee engage in the one and only express function of the Committee, namely “monitoring and overseeing implementation” of the USP. Indeed, in his April 16 Memo, the Special Master stated that he “would not . . . want three nationally prominent experts monitoring the specific actions needed to implement the USP.”
The DOJ “requested that the Special Master indicate the provisions of the USP of which the Committee (either its members or as a whole) will oversee and monitor implementation. In response to this request, the Special Master indicated that the kinds of specific assistance the United States is concerned about can be provided by additional experts that the District will hire,” according to the filing. “The USP does not provide – nor can such a complex, and time- and cost-extensive process withstand – a number of additional experts to assist in implementation, while the Committee provides perspectives to the Special Master that are not provided for in the USP.”
The DOJ advised the Court, “Instead, the Committee should focus on the task it was given – helping the Special Master to monitor and oversee implementation of the provisions of the USP – and every expert brought into this process should have, at a minimum, a project and goal explicitly tied to implementation of the USP.”
For years, the Mexican American Studies department at TUSD was used as a conduit through which monies were funneled to activists and scholars from the University of Arizona and other institutions of higher learning and their Ethnic Studies employees. It appears to many in TUSD that Hawley is employing that same practice through his Implementation Committee.
District records show that over the years, desegregation and Title 1monies that were intended for the classroom were used to promote the “scholarly” writings of Peter MacLaren, Jeffrey Duncan Andrade, Roberto “Dr. Cintli” Rodriguez, and other less radical writers.
Hawley’s questionable spending is challenged by the DOJ, “the Special Master has proposed paying the experts a considerable sum, again without any clarity or specificity as to how they will assist with monitoring and overseeing implementation of the Decree.”
“Specifically, the Special Master has proposed compensating these experts at $1,600 per day, and capping their collective assistance at 30 days (i.e., at $48,000) annually,” the DOJ filing noted. “This amount is in addition to the $1,397,000 that the District has budgeted for the 2013-2014 school year for the Special Master’s fees, private plaintiffs’ fees, and counsel’s fees.”
The DOJ echoed the concerns of some of the African American plaintiff representatives. “Given longstanding concerns regarding the use of desegregation (i.e., designated A.R.S. § 15-910.G) funds for expenses which do not directly serve to eliminate the vestiges of segregation in Tucson schools and/or are not related to provisions of the USP, the District’s current efforts to close a $17 million budget shortfall, and that the USP requires the District to hire a number of other consultants and experts, the United States believes it is imperative that the Committee focus directly on the task at hand – implementation of the existing provisions of the USP.”
The DOJ concluded with a request that the “Court instruct the Special Master that, consistent with the operating provision in the USP, the Committee be specifically constituted and directed to aid in monitoring and overseeing implementation of the Order, and the Special Master provide the Parties with additional information regarding the task(s) and project(s) included within the USP that the Committee, either individually or collectively, will undertake.”
The Unitary Status Plan (USP), which is the plan which is supposed to guide the District through the desegregation process, contains a multitude of requirements for appropriate implementation according to the DOJ.
Hawley built in multiple layers of administrators that have little to do with the classroom. As TUSD directs fewer dollars into the classroom than most other districts in the state, the proposed plan has raised many concerns on both sides of the political spectrum about the quality of education available to TUSD students.
The District has employed social promotion over the years rather than placing highly qualified teachers in the classrooms, while spending over $1billion desegregation dollars. Much of that money was spent on racially divisive classes, and experimental curriculum that has shown no measureable value to the District’s students.