The Tucson Unified School District Governing Board voted to spend on a demographic study to be conducted by Applied Economics whose current clients include the City of Tucson and Tucson Regional Economic Opportunities Inc. (TREO).
Superintendent Sanchez said the firm, which will be paid $32,080, had “impressive clients” who gave impressive recommendations. Sanchez refused to consider using the District’s marketing funds for the study.
Sanchez told the Board that the District needed to go out and find where the “kids are.” He told the Board that the District had data, but needed better data. That data has been compiled for years by the District staff for the purposes of the desegregation order. However, Sanchez told the Board that he wants the firm to pull housing permits to try to ascertain where students might be moving to.
He made only passing mention of improving the schools in order to draw students. He claimed that the charter schools draw students “through some pretty slick advertising.” The vote was 4-1, Board member Michael Hicks voted against the expense.
Culture of Corruption
During his tenure, former superintendent John Pedicone continually paid lip service to the culture of corruption. Little was done to stop the corruption, and Board cronies continued to use the District and District resources for their own benefit. That culture is flourishing under Sanchez.
At last night’s meeting, Sanchez presented the Board with an opportunity to grab a $2.2 million grant for new technology. The Arizona Daily Star had reported that the money was for technology associated with PARCC testing, however Sanchez admitted that it was simply extra money because the State of Arizona has not yet determined the needs for PARCC testing.
The proposed purchase includes approximately 583 desktop computers, which will be used for a new dropout program, 1715 laptop computers with Computrace, 57 mobile computer carts, accompanying Microsoft Office Student Software, and 2300 headsets.
The vote was 5-0 to accept money for technology at the same time the District is under scrutiny for loss property statements, which allegedly show a loss of $1.2 million in missing equipment.
The District has refused to turn over the reports, and the Arizona Daily Independent is seeking the assistance of the Governor’s ombudsman to secure the documents.
Arizona law ignored
At the time the State of Arizona’s Department of Education found that TUSD had violated state law in 2011, one of the most egregious findings was that the District ignored the requirement that curriculum and supplemental materials were supposed to be reviewed and approved by the Governing Board.
At last night’s meeting, between numerous complaints about the State of Arizona, Sanchez insisted that the Governing Board ignore state law. Sanchez asked for Board approval of Culturally Relevant textbooks. Stegeman noted that the Board had only been given the list immediately prior to the meeting.
Stegeman objected to the proposal based on “process concerns.” Normally a school board would be given time to review the texts for a class and be available for public review. “We got this list a day ago, this time precludes effective review.”
It appeared as if Sanchez was familiar with the Board’s obligations under State law and was actively rejecting the need to follow it. He has expressed deep disdain for “how things are done in Arizona” throughout the meeting. The books were approved on a 3-2 vote, with Hicks and Stegeman voting no.
Several people at the meeting noticed Sanchez’s dislike of Arizona. However Sanchez showed the same disdain for the federal court’s desegregation order and the Special Master.
Data driven decision making
Sanchez claims to prefer data based decisions, but chose to ignore the existing data and attack the federal Court’s Special Master in his plea to save the failing magnet program.
Sanchez spoke passionately before the Governing Board in favor of ignoring the federal court and in favor of maintaining its failing magnet school program. Sanchez rambled about downtown Tucson serving as his inspiration for wanting to disregard the Court’s order. In all of his ramblings, Sanchez did not offer an explanation for the link between the two entities.
Over two years ago, a magnet study was conducted by an outside consultant that found that the District’s magnet program was a failure. Not only did it not attract students, the programs that were not traditional magnet programs, such as back to basics education did attract students from across the Tucson community.
This year, the Special Master overseeing the federal desegregation order, Willis Hawley, found that the magnets were in fact failing, and recommended closure. Hawley recommended a course of action, however that course will certainly interfere with the corrupt power structure of the District.
The District has objected to Hawley’s proposed requirement that magnet schools allow only 50% of their seats to be filled by students from the school’s attendance boundaries. The problem with that is that they cannot recruit students to the lagging magnet schools on the south and west sides, and must fill those schools with unsuspecting neighborhood children.
For years the District has used the desegregation monies to fund operating expenses, many believe that it is that funding which compels the District to keep traditionally under served kids in lagging schools.
The report found that Davis Bilingual failed students academically as well as desegregate students in the original study, and was recommended for closure by Hawley. One mother, who addressed the Governing Board during the call to the audience, said that “White Flight” was the cause for the deterioration of the District, but argued in her defense of the school that the District should compel white children to attend it. Here comments appeared to cause discomfort among the Board members.
The ADE grade for Davis and others have improved since the magnet report was conducted, however improvement is accounted for due to the fact they the grades are now weighed in favor of schools with traditionally under served populations.
Sanchez argued that the Governing Board should allow him one year to fix the lagging schools despite the fact that some of the schools have been failing students for years. He said that he did not believe that the integration was not as important as maintaining a quality education in his defense of Davis Bilingual which is a failing school. However, Sanchez is a strong advocate for bilingual education and does not appear to object to segregation.
He argued that the definition of integration “needs to be adjusted.” Sanchez said the District “does not have enough white students to put one in every classroom.”
Adelita Grijalva said that the District has not turned to “the people down town and asked them to send their kids to our schools.” She said that it is “important for people like me to maintain our language and we need to promote these schools;” referring to Davis Bilingual.
“We now have the criteria, we know that the community wants these schools, I can’t speak to any mismanagement before, and it would be great if Dr. Hawley would come out to these schools and our work is to come together and not throw stones at each other,” said Sanchez.
Grijalva said “We need to tell the public about the schools that we have kept to ourselves on this side of town,” in an effort to recruit white students to them.
Not once did any staff member discuss the concerns of the African American plaintiffs or what might have caused the “white flight” which they claimed the the source of the District’s problems.
In over thirty three years, the Tucson Unified School District’s magnet program, which is described as the “cornerstone of the District’s integration plan” had never undergone a review. Among the actions required by the Post Unitary Status Plan was a review of the magnet programs. While the district has failed to fulfill many of the requirements or agreements outlined in the PUSP, it did order an audit.
That audit performed by Education Consulting Services arrived at disappointing, but not surprising conclusions. It revealed too many failing schools without direction and support that have not succeeded in integrating the district. Instead, it appears that students remain racially isolated.
One example of the racial isolation of students auditors cited was Davis Elementary School. The auditors found that the school is not the dual language/bilingual school it claims to be. Instead, “the review team was told that everyone really understands it is an immersion program rather than a dual language/bilingual program, the program should be correctly identified and marketed as a “Spanish Immersion.” There are important differences immersion and dual language/bilingual programs that parents should understand.”
“Students in K-1 are taught totally in Spanish. In grade 2, English literature is introduced and by the second semester teaching is 85% Spanish with 15% English.” Many students, not all, are able “to communicate (speak, read, and write) in both languages” but unlike true bilingual programs which offer two languages 50% percent of the time, Davis employs Spanish 70% and English 30% of the time.
When asked how the school could offer curriculum contrary to their stated Board approved focus, staff said that it was the way they had always done it. One district official said “with a 70%/30% split, it is hard to imagine that they will attract many English speaking students.”
The audit’s team of six experts included educational professionals with experiences in a number of areas including, human resources, evaluation and accountability, educational law, equity assistance, school desegregation and student integration, magnet program development, curricular expertise and professional development. Each member of the team was a credentialed teacher with experience teaching in public schools.”
Not surprisingly, the auditors found that the back to basics “magnet at Dodge deserves note. As with Bonillas, the team that visited this magnet believes that all middle schools should be offering a strong, basic core curriculum. Dodge has no magnet curriculum or curricular enhancements. It is the strict level of application of the traditional, back-to-basics approach that makes Dodge different from other district middle school offerings. As a magnet program, this school is successful.”
The audit report validated what many had thought, but would never dare to say; University High School is essentially a publically funded private school.
The audit was supposed to determine if each school’s program(s) support student integration and positively affect student achievement. The theory behind the use of magnet schools is to “create a school so distinctive and appealing – so magnetic – that it will draw a diverse range of families from throughout the community eager to enroll their children, even if it means having them bused to a different, and perhaps, distant neighborhood.
“As a result of visiting each magnet school, the visiting consultants noticed a number of emerging themes and issues across the majority of TUSD’s magnet schools/programs.” The auditors found that subjects interviewed believe that “there is a lack of district-level understanding regarding magnet schools and their programs. This belief is rooted in the fact that some decisions made at central office negatively impact a magnet school and its desegregation efforts.”
Audit findings included:
• The schools are unaware of enrollment/diversity goals and diversity is not reflected in many school enrollments.
• There is no policy or process for creating new magnet schools or significantly revising an existing magnet program.
• There is a lack of understanding that magnet schools benefit, and should be attractive to, both neighborhood and non-neighborhood students and their parents.
• Magnet funding allocations vary significantly and in many cases were difficult to determine; desegregation funds were used by schools in a variety of ways.
The findings indicated that district created the magnet program without any real commitment to it. It appears that it was developed to create a feel good, grant driven jobs program rather than meeting the basic needs of all students which will most surely lead to success.
They were not created on Tucson’s east side which would have brought kids of color into white neighborhood schools. Instead they were created to keep kids where they were. Programs such as the one at Davis have guaranteed that remains the case and that appears to be Sanchez and Grijalva’s intent.
Early on in the desegregation process, the Fisher plaintiffs fought for one thing and one thing only; closing the achievement gap by providing a quality education for every TUSD student.
Graduation as easy as dropping out
Sanchez informed the Board that it was his administration’s intent to “make graduation as easy as dropping out.” The Board was then told of a new program called Gradlinks by Abel Morado. The administration proposes to re-enroll up to 22 year old students in the District. The plan would increase the number of students, but according to Sanchez, “We don’t want 22 year olds running around on our campuses.” As a result, the District would engage in distance learning but require some “seat time” in one of the designated host schools.
“Let’s recover our dropouts now, lets get them a laptop now,” said Sanchez. “We want to offer what these online charter schools offer, we want to offer a lap top. I’ve seen the ads for these online charter schools with kids smiling. We want to compete with that.”
Sanchez also asked the Governing Board to consider spending more money in the future on a new “Master Plan.” Rather than looking at past actions and using current District assets, Sanchez is forging ahead with Grijalva and Texas cronies, set on the same failed course that resulted in a dramatic decrease in enrollment over the years.