The Tucson Unified School District, under the leadership of new Superintendent H.T. Sanchez, is clamping down access, information, and building a new narrative according to district documents and insiders.
Sanchez recently advised Governing Board members that he would only be available to meet with them every two weeks for approximately 45 minutes. His spokesperson, Cara Rene, advised the Arizona Daily Independent that Sanchez would not answer any questions and information would only be made available through formal Requests for Information. Emails released through one of those formal Requests for Information show that the District has been “building a narrative” in its effort to mislead the public and dismiss the concerns of the Arizona Department of Education with the district’s new Culturally Relevant courses.
Contrary to an agreement reached between the district’s former superintendent, John Pedicone, and the Arizona Department of Education, the district is now building a case that it did not seek ADE approval, nor does it need that approval, according to the district Desegregation Director Sam Brown.
The ADE had expressed concern that the curriculum did not meet either state standards, and the content was likely to run afoul of Arizona law which prohibits the promotion of resentment based on ethnicity or race.
In response, the district’s new Desegregation Director, Sam Brown, instructed the district’s new superintendent, H.T. Sanchez, and the developer of the classes, Auggie Romero, “Please write a narrative describing that we never went to ADE for “approval,” we were keeping them apprised of our efforts, and soliciting their input. Attached the ADE feedback and please reply back all.”
The district’s Mexican American Studies classes, created by Romero, were previously found by the ADE to violate state law. The district appealed the ruling and lost after an administrative law judge reviewed over 7,000 pieces of evidence including lesson plans, testimony and student work product. Evidence in the appeal showed that students were developing resentment towards others based on their lack of pigmentation.
The narrative created by the district is taking root. Just this weekend, AEA union member, Chris Ackerly, in a discussion with Arizona’s Superintendent John Huppenthal, implied that the desegregation order called for the controversial classes and suggested that the State was wrong to intervene. However, not only did the district agree to the State’s review as part of its settlement agreement with the ADE, Federal Judge David Bury ordered, in the district’s desegregation case, that the courses must meet state standards and comply with state law. Neither Bury, nor the court’s Special Master, require courses based on Critical Race Theory or any other academic or ideological framework.
Still, proponents of radical pedagogy and Critical Race Theory, upon which the classes are based, are ignoring agreements and court orders.
After a careful and detailed review by the ADE, which made very specific recommendations, one of Romero’s curriculum developers, Andrew Walanski, wrote, “Attached is the most recent iteration of the government MA perspective curriculum document. We mades(sic) some minor alterations based on feedback.” Another developer wrote, “I looked over the State’s Review again. They are just some ideas to consider…… Introduce the concept (EU #1 and Essential Questions) during the first week of school to “hook” students into the course. Learning about how our government system works will give students the power to become active citizens in order to bring about positive change in their society. This is how you can introduce the Social Justice project. Have them think of a problem or issue in their community and then tell them that as they progress through the Enduring Understandings they will begin to develop strategies to gain support and implement positive change. The concept of Critical Praxis can be introduced in the first lessons on Declaration of Independence…”
In his new book, Raza Studies: The Public Option for Educational Revolution (University of Arizona Press), Romero “offers the first comprehensive account of this progressive—indeed revolutionary—program by those who created it. Inspired by Paulo Friere’s vision for critical pedagogy and Chicano activists of the 1960s, Romero says he developed the classes to “help students become “transformative intellectuals” who successfully worked to improve their academic achievement as well as creating social change in their schools and communities.”
According to his publicist, Romero offers a “passionate defense of the program” and recounts how one program dared to venture to a world of possibility, hope, and struggle, and offers compelling evidence of success for social justice education programs. “Without a doubt, reporting on the work of the MAS program in the Tucson Unified School District stands to make a major contribution to the field of urban education,” writes Jeff Duncan-Andrade, author of The Art of Critical Pedagogy and Romero’s good friend. Duncan-Andrade says he admires Romero for addressing “community resistance.”
Currently, few TUSD students are enrolled in Romero’s revolutionary classes. Although slightly restructured as part of the desegregation plan, the classes remain highly segregated. According to officials with Pueblo High School, 100 percent of the students enrolled in the Culturally Relevant classes are Hispanic while approximately 98 percent of the students taking the classes at Tucson High are Hispanic.
This week, Sanchez spoke to a district approved reporter, who helped spin the news that there has been a huge drop in enrollment. TUSD has lost approximately 2400 students, which is close to a 5% drop in enrollment. Area education experts say the drop comes as a result parents’ concerns that the district is more concerned with promoting racial and ethnic divisions in the community than in providing its students with a quality education. According to statistics, those parents have not opted out of public education; the vast majority of students who left TUSD went to other public schools.
The massive decline in enrollment will result in a multi-million dollar loss in revenue. This loss is expected to make the hiring of the nearly two dozen additional administrators called for in Judge Bury’s order very difficult, if not impossible. As a result, the district may find itself in contempt of court not only for the Culturally Relevant classes’ failure to meet state standards, but its failure to comply with hiring demands.
Under Sanchez, board President Adelita Grijalva has gained even more power in district hiring. This month, long time Grijalva acolyte and good friend of Romero, Steve Holmes, formerly of TUSD and the Sunnyside School District, was named as the new Assistant Superintendent of Curriculum and Instruction. Holmes will now fill the role once held by an outside professional development vendor that specialized in curriculum and leadership.