Hicks Questions Sanchez On Skipping Desegregation Meetings

On Friday, Tucson Unified School District Superintendent Dr. H.T. Sanchez was questioned by Governing Board member Michael Hicks about his absence during the recent meetings of the court appointed special master, Department of Justice officials, and plaintiffs in the District’s desegregation case.

Initially, Sanchez claimed that he would be skipping the meetings due to the need for his presence at the Arizona Legislature. He claimed that he needed to lobby against bills that were coming to a vote. However, once it was revealed that there were no bills scheduled for votes due to the ongoing budget negotiation process and the demand by the governor that no bills be sent to him until the budget issues were resolved, Sanchez then claimed that he would be unavailable due to unspecified school issues.

In response, Board member Hicks sent an email:

From: MICHAEL.HICKS@tusd1.org
To: Heliodoro.Sanchez@tusd1.org
Subject: Desegregation meeting
Date: Fri, 22 Apr 2016

Dr. Sanchez,

For over 40 years or so the district has been under a desegregation order.  Over the years, the courts have determined that district officials have not taken the necessary steps to correct the issues the order is meant to cure.  Most recently, the courts have determined that the district has not acted in good faith.  That is why your failure to participate in the meetings this week with the plaintiffs and the special master is so mystifying to me and others.  How is the district ever to demonstrate to the court that we are committed to working with the plaintiffs and curing the raised issues if we cannot even show them that we are committed to the process?

Sanchez has done little to hide his contempt for the Court and the plaintiff representatives. As a result, his absence was not unexpected. Yet, due to the presence of the Special Master Willis Hawley, and officials from the Department of Justice as well as the plaintiff representatives, Sanchez absence was considered by Hicks and others to be a show of bad faith.

In 2011, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals placed the District back under the 30 year old desegregation order, citing the district’s bad faith. Since then, under the leadership of board member Adelita Grijalva, the District has continued to fight efforts to integrate the District and remedy the “Green issues” identified by the court over 30 years ago that allowed it to claim oversight of the District.

Rich Kronberg, a long-time educator stated, “During a time when charter schools and neighboring school districts have benefited from the flight of thousands of middle-class families from TUSD in search of safer, more orderly classes and better educational opportunities for their children, it is imperative that TUSD do exponentially more to change from a district driven by the agendas of its administration and the majority of the TUSD Governing Board to a district driven by the educational needs of students. Foremost among these right now is the need to do much more to create safe and secure classroom environments. Since so many of the problems TUSD faces stem from the way de facto discipline standards are different for different students depending on ethnicity and race it would seem imperative for TUSD leaders to be working with the court, the Special Master, and the plaintiffs to address the consequences of such discipline policies. I only taught for 39 years, but it seems to me that all students need to be held to the same discipline standards, even if teachers approach each student as an individual in helping them comport themselves appropriately in class. My guess is that all parents want their children in safe and secure learning environments. The real questions that should be addressed by all parties are how to achieve that in TUSD’s classrooms. If the superintendent, perhaps the most important individual in that process, absents himself from those meetings it is far less likely that any realistic solutions will emerge and TUSD’s death spiral will continue, and that is unconscionable.”

“The students of TUSD deserve an administration that makes a good faith effort to integrate their schools and make sure that all students get a high quality education. They deserve a Board that actually oversees the Superintendent’s actions on this issue. When the Court decides that it has to actually send documents to the President of the Board in order to be sure that the Board is fully informed, trust in the Administration has already been broken. These latest actions only confirm what history has told us about this case: the guilty party is not interested in resolving it, and successive Boards have agreed with successive Superintendents that it is not the highest priority. Our students deserve better,” stated Governing Board candidate Betts Putnam Hidalgo.

One plaintiff representative stated, “Dr. Sanchez continues to not take the order seriously. This time he showed up for 45 minutes – last time he didn’t show up at all. He doesn’t seem to take it seriously unless it is an opportunity to pilfer funds in the name of education. While he is out buying new computers, buses, and paying for administrators, African American and Latino students are still not showing any improvement in the academic arena. Minority students are still being punished at a higher rate, and are being herded into programs that have no positive results. He is simply preserving the status quo. Shame on a community that continues to be duped and allows the continual misuse of desegregation funds.”