A request by the Tucson Unified School District to be released in part from court supervision of its desegregation plan is premature and should be rejected, attorneys for Latino students argued in an opposition brief submitted to a federal court today.
In a motion filed in March, Tucson Unified argued to the U.S. District Court for the District of Arizona that it has sufficiently eliminated segregation in transportation, extracurricular activities, family and community engagement, facilities, technology and accountability systems to be released from court supervision of those areas.
In the opposition brief, the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund (MALDEF) and the law firm Proskauer Rose LLP told the court that the school district cannot separate out those areas because they are inexorably intertwined with other provisions of the desegregation decree that remain under court supervision. Those provisions require Tucson Unified to address racial and ethnic disparities in discipline, quality of education, and how and where students are assigned to schools.