In an email sent and forwarded to hundreds of recipients, Arizona Representative Bruce Wheeler told Tucson Unified School District Governing Board member Mark Stegeman to keep the district’s dirty laundry hidden because it was hurting his chances to win an increase in public school funding. Wheeler was referring to news reports that the District’s superintendent has engaged in questionable procurement practices.
Stegeman and his fellow Board member Michael Hicks had honestly answered a reporter’s questions about Superintendent H. T. Sanchez’s decision to award a $92,000 consultant contract without Board approval to one of his friends. Later, the Odessa American reported that shortly after being hired, Sanchez advised his friend, who had provided a recommendation to the TUSD position, that he would be looking to hire her services.
Hicks has called for the Arizona Attorney General to investigate the matter and has also asked for a re-vote on the Board policy that allows the superintendent to spend up to $100,000 without Board approval.
Wheeler wrote Stegeman in response to Stegeman’s latest constituent newsletter in which he discusses, among other things, the procurement scandal. Stegeman wrote in part:
“I have several half-drafted letters that I’ve been trying to finish and send to you, but after the Arizona Daily Star headlines of Sunday and Monday (and today), this warrants immediate comment. The current controversy concerns a consulting contract that TUSD signed with the Center for the Reform of School Systems (CRSS), of Houston, Texas. The competence of CRSS is not the issue, or at least not the main issue. It is a well-established and credible organization, though there are varying opinions about its philosophical orientation.
“The issues surround the process for entering the contract and the appearance of conflict of interest. These are serious issues for TUSD, especially given its history of procurement problems.”
Wheeler responded to all addressees of the email, “Why couldn’t you have resolved this matter internally? I don’t believe you and Mr. Hicks are doing TUSD nor our community any good by your confrontational tactics,” wrote Wheeler. “Why not let Mr. Sanchez do his job to help bring TUSD back to the high standards we in our community demand? Some of us in the legislature are trying to bring badly needed funding back to our public school system. We would appreciate your help in that effort, instead of making it more difficult.”
Contrary to Wheeler’s admonition, Hicks and Stegeman have been anything but confrontational. As a matter of fact, Stegeman writes in his newsletter, “Most of the persons who get this letter know that I have been generally supportive of the new superintendent, though I originally voted against his appointment. Dr. Sanchez has made many good decisions, especially concerning personnel, but also in other areas. The recent revelations raise serious questions, however. Persons who simply want to throw a blanket over the situation and wait for it to go away are not serving the district’s long run interests.”
Wheeler is not the only one who wants details of the questionable contract to be out of view. In his newsletter Stegeman writes, “My requests for information from the district, dating back to Saturday before the story broke, have been ignored, though after pushing the issue last night, I finally received at least an acknowledgment that my requests were being considered and the excuse that staff illness has prevented a response. I finally had to write to the Star yesterday to get a copy of the controversial contract. The failure to inform the board has been profound.”
Stegeman and Hicks’s concern stems in part to the fact that TUSD was put on notice and has been under supervision by the state for its questionable procurement practices. While Stegeman might be correct about the quality of Sanchez’s hires, his hiring practices have been called into question and an investigation is under way due to the fact that many of his recent hires, which include friends from Texas, have not gone through the traditional hiring procedures.
Over the years, members of both sides of the aisle in the legislature have fought the public’s efforts to enhance transparency, but Wheeler’s very public demand for secrecy is unusual.
A former member of the Catalina Foothills District hit “reply all” to Wheeler’s response:
Mr. Wheeler,
None of us who support TUSD like to see yet another example of questionable administrative actions that call into question TUSD administrative competence. But it’s really not an issue of Mark or Mr. Hicks airing dirty laundry in public. The AZ Star broke the story and, from Mark’s account, the Board was not fully informed of the circumstances surrounding the issuing of the contract. In my mind, Mr. Sanchez and his administration were guilty of at least manipulating the contract. With a history of shady District management, the current Administration and Board should do everything possible to avoid even the appearance of impropriety.
Your response was a shock! I have met you though I do not know you well. But I have been impressed by your past and current service as one of our legislative representatives. And I can appreciate that having a hint of yet more problems at TUSD doesn’t make your job any easier. But don’t blame the wrong person. If I were on the TUSD Board I would be asking even more pointed questions of the Administration and trying to convince my colleagues to put in place more protections to avoid just the situation TUSD now faces. Looking the other way simply encourages similar behavior.
Finally, Mark has shared with me and I know others that, in general, Mr. Sanchez has his support. As he said in his constituent letter, there’s much to like in what Sanchez has accomplished thus far.
Dale Keyes, past Board Member of Catalina Foothills School District Governing Board
While Sanchez recently doubled down on his controversial claim that white people will not fund schools occupied by children that “do not look like them, it has been TUSD’s legendary legacy of graft and corruption that has made many legislators and members of the public skeptical about funding increases. While TUSD receives more per pupil from taxpayers that many other districts in the state, it only spends 50.6 percent of every dollar in the classroom. Administration personnel overhead and operating expenses consume the rest.
Hicks said he would have liked to have prevented the matter altogether and handled the matter internally; however, the district made it difficult. “Dr. Stegeman and I have fought for an internal auditor and transparency and accountability, but the TUSD administration and majority of the Board will not support it and has resisted our requests each and every time. Even the best run districts which use the best practices sometimes have an auditor. TUSD is far from those, and if we are really interested in raising standards for kids, we need standards raised for Board members, and administrators too.”
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