Peoria Unified School District had to halt the Science curriculum adoption process earlier this month after an astute mother of five, Heather Rooks, exposed that the public school officials had left the public out of the adoption process, in apparent violation of Arizona statutes.
On January 21st, the Peoria Unified School District (PUSD) public relations team was forced to issue a statement announcing the suspension of the process. However, in the carefully crafted statement, District staff appear to misrepresent the facts when they claim the process was halted in spite of it being conducted in compliance with A.R.S. 15-721, 15-722 and District policy IJJ and IJJ-R. It appears the process was halted specifically because rules had not been followed.
In fact, a provision in A.R.S. 15-721, “require that all meetings of committees authorized for the purposes of textbook review and selection be open to the public as prescribed in title 38, chapter 3, article 3.1.
The curriculum election committee did not operate in the open. As a result, stakeholders are considering filing an Open Meeting violation complaint with the Arizona Attorney General’s Office.
The matter first came under scrutiny after the Science Committee had winnowed the choices of textbooks during closed meetings.
As previously reported by the Arizona Daily Independent:
According to Marla Woolsey, a Peoria Unified administrator, the proposed material was reviewed twice by the Science Committee. In the initial meeting, the committee determined which proposed curriculum met state standards. Representatives of the companies that survived the initial review were then allowed to conduct their sales pitches to the committee.
Only after that process were parents given the opportunity to review the materials. Initially the materials were only available for parental review in the District’s administrative offices, however, parental pressure forced the District to begin making the materials available at school sites.
Despite the fact that the texts contain blatant political bias, McGraw Hill, Discovery Education, and Houghton Mifflin made the semi-final cut for elementary classrooms and McGraw Hill, Houghton Mifflin and Savvas made the semi-final cut for high school classrooms.
The failure of the District may have resulted from the policy governing the process — apparently crafted by the Arizona School Board Association. The PUSD district policy IJJ (adopted October 25, 2018) includes legal references to ARS 15-721 and ARS 15-722 but the statutory requirement that meetings of such committees be open to the public is not in the policy. Because PUSD’s IJJ policy does not include the ASBA copyright mark, it is unclear if this was one of the few policies not written by the ASBA.
Interestingly, a check of major valley unified school districts shows that Deer Valley, Chandler, Scottsdale, Fountain Hills, and West-MEC C-TED all adopted policy IJJ with virtually identical language to PUSD’s during Sept/Oct 2021 with the ASBA copyright mark. So it is likely that the ASBA created the policy’s conflict with state statute.
The matter certainly does raise questions about ASBA policy writing service. One of ASBA’s major selling points for membership in its policy writing service is so that governing boards can be assured their policies will be aligned to state statues. Policy IJJ undercuts that sales pitch.
Critics point out that districts across Arizona pay tens-of-thousands of precious education dollars for this service, and they should be able to rely on it.
“I find it shameful that the current administration of PUSD, the governing board on which I was honored to serve, is now willing to deceive the community it is supposed to serve,” former Arizona Superintendent of Public Instruction Diane Douglas told the Arizona Daily independent. “No Superintendent Reynolds, according to your employee, Carter Davidson, PUSD did NOT “follow the requirements” of ARS 15-721 & 722 to conduct public meetings; that is a lie. And governing boards paying ABSA’s policy service need to be asking questions, not just accepting whatever language ASBA hands to them for adoption.”
“Peoria Unified School District once again has not been transparent with the parents and the community,” said Rooks. “I hope the Peoria School Board addresses this matter and holds someone accountable. The District needs to fully vet curriculum that goes into the classrooms.