The Tucson Unified School District is reeling after a scathing expose this week revealed that the District’s administration may be actively downplaying the severity of the discipline issues in multiple schools. In response to the KGUN9 report, Board member Michael Hicks has called for a full report from Superintendent H.T. Sanchez, while others have reportedly contacted the Attorney General’s office.
According to KGUN9”s report: “Insiders say the district’s push to reduce suspensions and expulsions to meet a federal anti-discrimination court order is causing district wide disorder.”
Contrary to that claim, the District, under the leadership of Board majority members, Adelita Grijalva, Cam Juarez, and Kristel Foster, has adopted a far more lenient unratified discipline policy than the Court recommended. As a result, chaos has descended on the District in recent years.
Currently, an outside consultant has been hired to rewrite the Guidelines to Student Rights and Responsibilities.
KGUN9 reports former Booth-Fickett Principal Chuck Bermudez, “insiders, and education experts tell KGUN9 student violations at many TUSD schools are being downplayed and under-reported in the name of incident reduction.”
Bermudez claims in the report that District administrators are under-reporting incidents. “It’s very deliberate by the directors who are guiding these principals by cabinet leaders. They want those numbers to look low,” Bermudez told KGUN9 reporter Valerie Cavasos.
“The latest issue with discipline at our TUSD schools is a nightmare that should never have occurred. Sadly, it is only further indication of a clear pattern of mismanagement that we have seen over the last two years with the current Administration. There must be immediate action from our TUSD Board. Our kids deserve better,” said TUSD parent, education activist and TUSD School board candidate Betts Putnam Hidalgo said in a statement issued Friday.
KGUN9 received “just over 600 pages — of violations at several schools that insiders and parents tell KGUN9 have serious discipline issues.”
Putnam Hidalgo says that while TUSD principals “are told to minimize their discipline reports to cover up serious disciplinary issues in the schools.” Putnam Hidalgo continued, citing the work of TUSD activist and retired teacher Lillian Fox, “Meanwhile, a review of 2014-15 teacher satisfaction surveys indicates severe dissatisfaction with disciplinary problems in some sites that have come to recent media attention. Is anyone acting on the information? It’s not clear.”
“Our hands are tied” rings from school sites struggling with serious discipline issues,” said Putnam Hidalgo. “It’s just not true. The TUSD “Guidelines for Student Rights and Responsibilities” clearly lays out how school staff, teachers and principals can handle disciplinary issues, but who reads Board policy when central administration is handing down the rules?”
As board member Michael Hicks knows too well; the administration ignores the court and the majority of the residents he represents. Hicks has repeatedly called on the administration to ignore their political interests and heed the court. Those demands have been ignored by the politically ambitious Grijalva and her sycophants Juarez and Foster.
For his part, school board member Dr. Mark Stegeman, who is running for re-election and joins Hicks in the minority on the board, decried the chaos in the district in a recent op-ed. He wrote, “When facing difficult issues, the board majority typically ducks accountability and pivots into blaming low state funding, the desegregation case or troublemakers. Attacking individuals instead of problems is a longstanding flaw in TUSD’s culture.”
The current culture is landing kids in emergency rooms according to the KGUN9 report:
“Erickson Elementary — an eastside school with 465 students and a history of discipline problems, including this school year. Documents KGUN9 obtained show a disturbing incident that educators say was downplayed. In November, a student “was lured into the bathroom and two students punched him in the head and stomach repeatedly.” The victim was sent to ER. Bermudez said, “Anytime a student is taken to an emergency room or if a student is injured, you must call the police.” But there’s no report of police being called.”
If teachers trusted the board majority, their telephones would have been ringing off the hook about the increasing problems with discipline, says Fox. If Sanchez and the board majority had been interested, they would have paid attention to the teacher surveys, listened to school principals, sent help to the troubled schools, and scrapped the current discipline policies. Instead, two decent principals, their hands tied by district policies, have lost their jobs, notes Fox referring to the forced resignation/retirement of Bermudez, and the reassignment of the Secrist principal last year.
According to recent correspondence, Grijalva is furious that Sanchez’s large public relations team has not been able to silence Hicks and Stegeman or spin the discipline crisis.
“The discipline problem is driving teachers out at an unsustainable rate. One TUSD middle school has lost at least 15 teachers since school opened last fall, and some other schools are experiencing similar losses. It is critical to reverse course and allow the schools to protect their own staff and students from extreme behavior,” concluded Stegeman.
Rich Kronberg a retired teacher and public school advocate stated, “On psychologist Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of needs (Maslow’s hierarchy)…feeling safe and secure is among the most essential needs we all have. When students do not feel safe and secure they literally cannot learn up to their potential. For TUSD administrators and the majority of the TUSD Governing Board to direct teachers and principals to enable the dangerous behaviors that were noted in the KGUN report is an attack on all students, even the students not being assaulted or threatened are negatively impacted. “
“Not a single one of the awards that TUSD leaders use as evidence of their success is worth a thing if student safety is being compromised. None of the doctored statistics cited by Sanchez, Grijalva, Foster or Juarez can be believed, no matter how many times they are cited. All that matters is whether students feel safe and secure in their classrooms so that all of them can learn up to their potential.” Kronberg concluded, “If there are entire schools in TUSD where the majority of students do not feel safe and secure then it is clearly time for voters to toss out the Board majority and for replacing Sanchez with a new superintendent, one who will deal honestly with TUSD’s issues.”