Rather than deal with the systemic chaos that has plagued too many of the schools in the Tucson Unified school District, administrators opted to move Secrist Principal David Montaño to Pueblo Magnet High and Assistant Principal Lupe Duran to the District’s Science Center.
The knee-jerk decision came as a surprise to many who believed that Montaño had received no support from the administration and like most principals in the District, was hindered by the District’s failing discipline policy. As evidence that the administration has little understanding of the situation, Marcia Volpe, who has done little to support Montaño as an interim vice principal, will now serve as the principal at Secrist until a replacement is found.
Adults are offering conflicting versions of the situation, and Superintendent H.T. Sanchez is scrambling to appear to be in charge. Meanwhile, it is the students who seem to have the best handle of the situation.
While there have been complaints of racism and bullying, a racially diverse group of honor students spoke truth to power at a meeting at the school this week. The students pleaded with the adults to protect them and teachers (many who are substitutes) from the abusive environment created by a lack of discipline.
Retired teacher Rich Kronberg said the Secrist situation “is an extreme example of a systemic problem at TUSD. The racial insults and ethnic bullying are in direct response to TUSD’s district-wide focus on race and ethnicity. Why is anyone surprised when young teen-agers take TUSD’s focus on racial and ethnic identity and twist it into something negative? TUSD is constantly reminding students of their differences, and the kids are just taking it one step further. Once TUSD chose to focus on our differences instead of our commonalities this was a predictable response.”
“In addition, the P.U.S.P. makes it extraordinarily challenging for prinicpals to suspend ethnic and racial minority students from school,” continued Kronberg. “Anytime they do so their decision is put under a microscope to determine whether racial or ethnic bias was involved in the suspension. Prinicpals are not dumb. Some may be weak, but not dumb. The principals can read between the lines, and they don’t suspend students unless the students commit actual crimes…and even then it is not a certainty.”
“The problems at Secrist could easily have been anticipated. A special task force is not needed. Just employ real school discipline and stop tolerating misbehavior,” stated Kronberg. “This is one more way TUSD has let down the community. You can tell from the parents who were interviewed for this article exactly why TUSD has lost thousands of students to other districts and charter schools over the past decade. This article might as well be a promotional ad for the charter schools on the East Side that enforce real discipline and are not hampered by their own policies in suspending students, or even expelling students for serious or chronic misbehavior.”
Some have tried to cite funding as a source of the problems. However TUSD schools receive more per pupil than most other schools in the state. Kronberg advised that the “state allocates money to TUSD, but it neither imposes discipline policies on TUSD nor tells TUSD how to spend its resources. It is hard to understand how or why TUSD cannot discipline students at Secrist when fully 10% of its funding goes to pay for administrators. Maybe some of the overpaid and underworked central administration should head over to Secrist and help the building principal discipline students. If nothing else it would add a dose of reality to the central administration’s approach to school improvement.”
“More money would only help Secrist if the overall systems TUSD… not the state …has put into place were functional. Sadly, they are not. More money will not change TUSD’s discipline policies, nor will it change a focus on race and ethnic identity that emphasizes differences rather than commonalities among students. Nor will it helpTUSD hire enough fully qualified teachers to fill all its vacancies so that classes were not being taught by a parade of substitutes.”