On Tuesday, the Tucson Unified School District Governing Board approved small pay increases for first year teachers based on monies saved by experienced teachers fleeing the district. Contrary to the claim that teachers would be making nearly $40,000 a year, the Board only approved a raise in the base salary for first-year teachers from $34,200 to $35,000.
The Governing Board also approved a $500 step increase for all teachers, who remain in the district plus an $800 salary increase from 301 money.
The increases are possible in the short term due to attrition. While District officials have asserted that the funding is available due to retirements, numbers indicate that the loss of teachers is due to resignations.
With deteriorating classroom discipline due to administrative policies enacted by a majority of the Board at the request of Superintendent H.T. Sanchez, and morale at a record low, teachers are seeking opportunities elsewhere and finding them. Arizona’s teacher shortage has created a premium on experienced teachers in districts that focus resources on the classroom rather than administration.
While the Arizona Daily Star, otherwise known as TUSD’s propaganda provider, reported that “First-year teachers in TUSD will now have the opportunity to make nearly $40,000 after the Governing Board approved pay increases for teachers and other district employees,” the truth is that teachers might be able to make $38,000, if the Board approves the $3,000 is performance pay and their school and its teachers achieve the objectives in TUSD’s Performance Plan. Not all schools and not all teachers will qualify for the additional performance money.
However, because Board president Adelita Grijalva refuses to place “action items” on special meeting agendas, in order to avoid the need to hear from the public, a vote on performance pay is not expected until June. According to Arizona statute, “action items” are those agenda items upon which boards can legally take action. Special meetings, by practice do not have to include a “call to the audience” agenda item, if there are no action items. Therefore, by placing only “study items” on special meeting agendas, the TUSD Board can avoid input from the public.
Public input is the last thing the current Board wants. Instead, with the help of the vast public relations team, Grijalva, and fellow Board members Cam Juarez and Kristel Foster can conduct one-way conversations with the public. They can communicate to the public through the Arizona Daily Star and the massive public relations advertising budget, and the public cannot easily respond.
Board member Michael Hicks stated on Thursday, “I sincerely hope that the administration has thought this through carefully. Based on the information we received from the administration, I voted for the increases. I have concerns that we might find later that the administration is doing this during an election year, and with the passage of time, we will find that we cannot sustain this. We have cut our schools to the bone, and increased administration. We need to ensure that this increase is not at the expense of experienced personnel or our students.”
Long-time educator and teacher union leader Rich Kronberg stated, “The very small compensation increase for teachers is unlikely to decrease the number of vacancies for the next school year. Despite what Ms. Grijalva and Superintendent Sanchez believe, compensation is only one of the major factors that help teachers determine whether they will stay where they are, move to other districts or leave teaching altogether. The other major factors are the level of support teachers get from administrators and parents and the ability to make the professional decisions about how they will do their jobs. By any rational measure TUSD has performed abysmally on all three of these variables.”
“We all know the compensation is low,” continued Kronberg. “It is that way because TUSD puts such a small percentage of its budget into its classrooms, and that is the portion of the budget where teacher compensation is located. We are all becoming aware that discipline problems in TUSD classes and schools have grown exponentially this past year due to lack of support for principals and teachers when they require students to meet discipline standards. The result has been chaos in far too many TUSD schools. The response from Sanchez has been to toss a few principals under the bus, but that has not improved discipline at all. Finally, anyone who reads the frequent letters from the anonymous group of concerned principals and teachers about the internal problems in TUSD know that Sanchez is all about micromanaging building level staff…particularly principals, but that desire to micromanage others instead of doing his job has…like excrement…flowed downhill. As one school board member in another state once confessed to me, ‘Micromanaging is the fun part of being on a school board.’ It is what incompetents do when they are unable to do their own jobs because of their incompetence.”
“Make no mistake, when it comes to guiding TUSD in the best interests of the students who attend there, Sanchez, Grijalva, Foster and Juarez are totally incompetent.” Kronberg concluded, “The prognosis for TUSD…despite this small pay increase…is likely to be a continuation of students transferring to other districts or charter schools and a continuation of too many classes being taught by a parade of substitutes because qualified teachers cannot be found to teach them.”