For institutions like the Tucson Unified School District where the truth is almost always ugly; optics are everything. Those carefully crafted optics are then transmitted online and over the airwaves not to inform, but to confuse and divide.
The old guard in the Tucson Unified School District has benefited over the years from profiteers and political operatives, who are ready to pounce at any given moment to create distractions and sound bites. Wrapped in the cloak of equity and justice, the operatives say and do nearly everything to distract us from the inequities and injustice found in classrooms across the vast District.
The situation involving Tucson Unified School District (TUSD) Board member Rachel Sedgwick and grad student Jamie Utt is a text book example of creating a crisis in order to avoid facing the crises in our classrooms.
“White supremacy rules”
When Jamie Utt, a close friend of TUSD Board member Kristel Foster, claimed on February 10, in a Facebook post that Sedgwick stated “yeah, right, white supremacy rules,” the old guard’s pro-segregation forces went into action.
In no time flat, Adam Ragan, who also attended Foster’s swearing in with Utt, called out Sedgwick for the “white supremacy rules” comment during the Call to the Audience portion of a Governing Board meeting. To those who have attended TUSD meetings for years, Ragan was a new face.
One day later, Ragan’s face was featured along with Utt’s on the nightly news. Almost as if on cue, an intrepid reporter from KVOA, which was awarded a renewal of its $750,000 contract in April with TUSD for advertising, was interviewing Utt and Ragan about the supposedly self-proclaimed “white supremacist” Rachael Sedgwick.
The white male reporter interviewed the two white males about the comments made by a white woman. Yet, the optics were such that the woman targeted by these men became the symbol of oppression. That – in and of itself – is remarkable. Masterful really.
The intrepid reporter failed to reveal that the two white male accusers were good friends of Foster. The intrepid reporter failed to reveal that Sedgwick was sworn into office by her best friend, a “math teacher and Black Lives Matter activist and all around bad ass, Lucy LiBosha,” as noted in an article by education activist David Morales.
Instead the intrepid reporter focused solely on Utt and Ragan and a hapless Sedgwick, who appeared to be begging the audience and the reporter to understand the context in which she said those words.
According to Sedgwick, her comment was facetious and came about after a frustrating conversation with Utt in which he repeatedly accused Sedgwick of aligning herself with “white supremacists.” He was referring to TUSD Board members Michael Hicks and Mark Stegeman, who with the election of Sedgwick, are now part of a tenuous majority “ruling” the Board. And while the two men have benefitted, like Utt, from white privilege and live in a world where whites have generally been treated as the supreme race, they have not previously “ruled” the Board.
Sedgwick did not know Utt was recording the conversation until he slammed shut his computer a split-second after she uttered the words – after being goaded for over an hour. He had prepared an agenda. She had prepared to have coffee with another constituent and had not bothered to research Utt. She learned her lesson.
Had either she or the intrepid reporter looked into Utt’s background, they would have found a man of privilege, who graduated from a mostly white, mostly upper-middle class high school in Colorado and graduated from an expensive private liberal arts college. The reporter would have found a man; the epitome of privilege, who made his way to Arizona to get his Ph.D in Education from the University of Arizona.
Had the intrepid reporter done any work, he would have discovered that Utt’s website features a prominently displayed tab urging viewers to “Book Jamie today!” You see, Utt makes his living teaching people about bullying. The irony is rich.
If the intrepid reporter had spent ten minutes researching Jamie Utt he would have found that the man professes to have expertise, not only in bullying prevention, but also in feminism, diversity and inclusion, positive sexuality and sexual violence prevention, student leadership and motivation, and many more areas. Being a legitimate expert consultant in any one of these areas is something of an accomplishment; however, touting expertise in everything may only leave you with being an expert at telling people you are an expert.
In his book, The Good Men Project, Utt “explains that while the person behind dressing homeless people in Abercrombie & Fitch was probably trying to do good, using people as pawns is dehumanizing.” This from a man, who used a woman’s words spoken in frustration, to drag her through the mud and dehumanize her? Only in America.
Is it possible to credibly serve as a self-proclaimed expert in the prevention of bullying while publically bullying and attempting to humiliate someone?
Had Utt had any historical understanding of the District and the issues with which educators and officials deal with every day, he would have used the encounter with Sedgwick as a teachable moment. Had Utt not relied on Foster, yet another white privileged and self-proclaimed expert, and simply looked to those who could have presented historical and current TUSD facts and data to reveal the real situation at TUSD, perhaps he could have saved himself his own disgrace from having attempted to unjustly disgrace someone else.
However that would require a willingness to expose and then discuss the decades-long discrimination by educators and officials of African-American and Latino students. He would have had to question Foster’s dogged determination to defend the District’s attacks on the desegregation plaintiffs’ representatives and the federal court’s desegregation order itself. He would have had to ask Foster and fellow Board member Adelita Grijalva as well as Superintendent H.T. Sanchez why they continue to marginalize underserved communities. Utt would not have used his conversation with Sedgwick to abuse a woman, but as an opportunity to begin the difficult conversation the District continually avoids.
From the day he had his disturbing conversation with Sedgwick to this day; Utt has not reached out to – or ever spoken to – key desegregation plaintiffs’ representatives. He has instead spoken only to those who represent the defendant or guilty party in the case of TUSD.
As a result of his choices one can only surmise that Utt had no intention of understanding or bringing attention to the racial conflicts that continue to plague the District. One only needs to look at his Facebook post to determine that he was simply using the words of a political neophyte in order to stop her attempts to represent the interest of parents like Ms. Bennetta Morgan.
Parents and kids are waiting
Ms. Morgan’s kids attend Utterback. Utterback is one of so many TUSD schools in which kids and teachers do a lot with very little. Children are denied textbooks and teachers are denied dignity.
Had Utt been paying attention before his services were needed from Foster in her effort to save the job of Sanchez, he would’ve seen Ms. Morgan and other African-American parents come before the Board asking for equity. He would have seen them being treated as supplicants by the likes of Foster and Grijalva as they pleaded for safe schools with adequate supplies.
Perhaps Mr. Utt was too busy teaching diversity to see those parents come before the Board time and time again begging on behalf of their children. Perhaps Mr. Utt doesn’t recognize the injustice of denying children text books while paying Sanchez nearly a half a million dollars a year.
It is hard to believe that Utt has ever asked why Foster and Grijalva have approved a $1 million/year contract with an outside law firm to oppose the court orders in the desegregation case. The amount TUSD is spending for outside attorneys on that case has skyrocketed under Sanchez. That money may have bought Sanchez some love from Tucson and Phoenix attorneys and their friends, but has done nothing to enhance equity.
Perhaps Mr. Utt doesn’t recognize that Sedgwick has only been on the Board less than two months while Foster has sat on the Board for four years. During those four years, life didn’t get any better for the kids who struggle every day in classrooms with well-meaning long-term subs.
But that’s how it works in TUSD; “experts” come and go. They drop their pearls of wisdom – or garbage depending on your taste – and use their limited experience to cash in or earn equity cred.
To be clear – the desegregation plaintiffs’ representatives and others, who have been involved in equity issues in the District for years; have never heard of Utt before. They’ve never met with the “expert” on equity. They had no idea who Utt was until he showed up on the news attacking Sedgwick. Now they know who he is; he is only an optical illusion. Nothing more.
The optician
Stephanie Boe was hired by Sanchez as TUSD’s communications director in 2014. Prior to taking the job at TUSD, Boe became an executive director at KVOA after the station’s notorious coverage of a fake suicide. The crack KVOA staff fell victim to a hoax by “Genesee Pineda” who told them that her son, Roman, killed himself in grief when his friend was killed when he was struck by a Pima County Sheriff’s deputy racing to a call.
Authorities said they had no evidence of the suicide, or the child; yet KVOA did not take down their story immediately. Things haven’t gotten much better at the station since.
When she started, Boe was paid a reasonable sum of approximately $$44,385.19. She first came to the attention of TUSD stakeholders for her role in planting a story about now-Board president Michael Hicks during his re-election bid that same year. The story about Hicks, much like the one about Sedgwick, caused momentary consternation, but due to its transparently petty nature had no effect on voters. Hicks was re-elected, and Sanchez, Boe, Foster, and Grijalva went about building the Sanchez brand.
In the 2015-2016 school year, Boe’s salary was raised to $77,647.79. Through a number of amended contracts, Boe’s 2016-2017 salary is now $96,715.70.
While the $750,000 awarded to KVOA was supposed to sell the District’s schools – primarily the magnet schools, it was used to sell the Sanchez brand instead.
Six of the magnet schools were stripped of their magnet status this year, but Sanchez – thanks to Boe’s branding not only survived but became a rock star. How could he not become one given the money used to that end?
Boe used every resource at her disposal to maintain the Grijalva-Sanchez machine. Refusing to adhere to FERPA requirements, Boe and Sanchez used the images of kids to create meaningless but feel good photo ops for Sanchez, Foster, Grijalva and other Tucson elites like Mayor Jonathan Rothschild.
Boe also attacked non-compliant reporters like KGUN‘s Valerie Cavasos. Cavasos had the nerve to report accurately on the District’s dangerous classrooms. Cavasos exposed the apparent practice of the Sanchez administration to withhold discipline in order to claim that order had been restored in classrooms because of Sanchez.
For her honesty, Boe and Sanchez viciously attacked Cavasos. It didn’t stop her, and her reporting was likely partly responsible for Board member Cam Juarez’s loss and Sedgwick’s victory in the 2016 election.
From tweeting misleading messages during Board meetings, to planting vapid but sexy stories with friendly outlets, Boe has been masterful.
The District is losing kids and credibility
If Boe and Sanchez had spent as much time working with the magnet schools to make them “magnetic” the District might not have lost nearly 400 students in the past two years.
Yes, contrary to Foster’s claims during her 2016 re-election bid, the District continues to experience a decline in enrollment.
At the same time, Sanchez was building support by building strategic staff positions. As an example, according to the latest TUSD Whistleblowers’ missive:
“DaMond Holt, a black minister who is politically aligned with Grijalva, Foster and Sanchez. Holt is a magistrate with Teen Court. Adelita Grijalva is the Teen Court Director. The dots are self-connecting.
Sanchez quietly handed Holt a job as the District’s “ombudsman” even though Holt is not an educator. The position was created out of Sanchez’ thin-air vault, from which he pulls out a lot of his tricks, especially, when he is prompted to hire someone’s mother-in-law or magistrate. Holt, with Grijalva and Foster in the background, have all orchestrated an anti-Sedgwick campaign attempting to paint her as a bigot.” [Read the full letter here]
If the current situation is allowed to continue, the District will continue to lose students and the support of taxpayers. While the staff will probably increase, the chances of ever being able to pass a bond to make much needed repairs to the aging schools, or increase teachers’ salaries will decrease.
On Tuesday, the Board or Sanchez may take action. It is possible that the Board will finally fire Sanchez, or he will wisely resign before too much more about his administration, like the declining enrollment, is made public. Because his tenure has been all about the optics, Tuesday’s meeting will be interesting to watch.