A few weeks ago I wrote a post trying to sort out what looked like contradictory information about the amount of Prop 123 money TUSD devoted to teacher salary raises. An article in the Star made it look like TUSD devoted far less of the new funding to increasing teacher salaries—about a third of the money, which amounted to a $700 raise—than neighboring districts, which would mean TUSD was shortchanging its teachers. But the article also mentioned the possibility that the district had found other ways to increase salaries. Meanwhile, the TUSD website states that returning teachers will make $2,000 more in 2016-17 than they made in the previous year. I ended the post by scratching my head and admitting I didn’t know how to figure out the actual pay raises based on the information I had.
Since then, more has been written on the subject, and the pay raise situation is clearer. Here’s the short version: As the TUSD website states, returning teachers will get a $2,000 raise over the previous year, which is in the same ballpark as neighboring districts. That’s because, at the May 10 school board meeting a week before the Prop 123 vote, the board approved a $1,300 teacher raise. After Prop 123 passed, $700 was added to that amount, resulting in a $2,000 raise. Other Tucson-area districts created a variety of salary raise and retention incentive bonus packages, some of which are a bit more generous, and some a bit less generous, than TUSD’s.
Here’s the longer version, which I believe is accurate. If I’ve got my facts or numbers wrong, I’m sure people will let me know in the comments section.
At TUSD’s May 10, 2016, board meeting, a salary raise was approved. It increased the pay for each salary step by $800, and since returning teachers move up a step which adds another $500, the total increase for returning teachers was $1,300. Since Prop 123 hadn’t come up for a vote, the money for the raises was taken from maintenance and operations funds as well as Prop 301 funds. The $1,300 salary increase was guaranteed whether Prop 123 went up or down.
I spoke with Superintendent H.T. Sanchez, and he explained his reasoning behind the pre-Prop 123 raise. In the weeks before the election, the polling numbers on 123 were very close. It was pretty much even money whether it would pass or fail, and if it was defeated, there would be no additional funding to spend on salary hikes. TUSD created the May 10 increase as an assurance to returning TUSD teachers that they were guaranteed a $1,300 increase regardless of the vote outcome. I don’t know of any other district in the area that made a similar guarantee to its teachers before the Prop 123 vote.
Generally, a contract is a contract and employees have no reason to expect any more salary increases that year, but this contract indicated that if Prop 123 passed, it was likely the district would increase teacher salaries again. Here is the language in 29-5, Part E:
For the 2016-2017 year only, if additional revenues become available to the District through legislative appropriation, state sales tax revenues, payment of back revenue or inflation adjustment owed by the State of Arizona, decrease in anticipated cuts or decrease in revenue drop, or other legal enactment and if those revenues are appropriated, authorized, and/or permitted to be used for salaries during the 2015-2016 and/or the 2016-2017 contract year, the MBU may be given a raise in salary, if so approved by the Governing Board in its sole discretion.
That passage made it clear the district wasn’t planning to shortchange the teachers by giving them a raise before the Prop 123 vote. And when the proposition passed, the Board added $700 to the $1,300 in the contract, making it a $2,000 raise.
The Star article I discussed in my earlier post created the impression that TUSD reneged on its pledge to use the Prop 123 funds for salary hikes and instead spent two-thirds of the money on capital items. While that’s factually accurate, it’s only part of the story, and it’s very misleading. In fact, on May 10, TUSD took money out of its capital funds to give teachers a raise regardless of the fate of Prop 123. When the proposition passed, the district was able to give back the capital funds money it took away. The final result was the same $2,000 raise the district would have given the teachers after the Prop 123 vote if it waited instead of giving most of the raise earlier. The only difference was, TUSD guaranteed a teacher raise even if the proposition failed.
If the district waited like other districts and took the entire $2,000 out of its Prop 123 funds, it would have amounted to 75 percent of the total. When you add in the pay raises for classified staff and administrators, 86 percent of the new funds, about $8.3 million of the $9.7 million, went to salary hikes.
The $2,000 raise amounts to a 4 to 5 percent increase depending on where a teacher is on the salary schedule. I looked at the information at the end of the Star article and compared that to what other districts gave their teachers. Amphitheater district gave its employees a 3.6 percent raise, which is less than TUSD, but it also gave its returning teachers retention incentive that was 3 percent of their previous year’s salary. I’ll leave it to better mathematical minds than mine to figure out the advantages and disadvantages of receiving a one-time bonus combined with a smaller salary increase compared to receiving no bonus and a larger raise that continues at the higher rate year after year.
Catalina Foothills gave teachers a 4.5 percent raise. Flowing Wells gave teachers a 3.3 percent retention incentive, then raised teachers salaries between $1,000 and $2,400 depending on their years of experience. Other districts have similar pay packages.
My conclusion is, the Star article was reasonably accurate factually but incomplete. Because it left out TUSD’s May 10 teacher raise, its conclusion that TUSD reneged on its pledge to its teachers is inaccurate. If the writer had looked at the comparison of pay raises at TUSD and other districts more carefully, there would have been no story to report, let alone a front page story critical of TUSD. The TUSD salary package is similar to what teachers are receiving in neighboring districts. Teachers come out better or worse in different districts depending on how much experience they have and how long they plan to continue working for the district. TUSD’s decision to put all its money into the salary schedule, rather than putting some of it into one time bonuses for returning teachers as most other districts did, could mean that new teachers will fare better at TUSD than elsewhere, which could be a benefit for TUSD when it comes to hiring.
A “$500-Question” Note: Let me include one point for the sake of completeness. I’m reasonably comfortable that my discussion of TUSD raises and how they compare with other districts is accurate, except for one point where I’m uncertain. The $2,000 figure for TUSD includes $500 for moving up a year in experience. If other districts also included their normal step raises in figuring the increase in teacher salaries, then my comparisons are valid. If, on the other hand, other districts give their teachers step raises but didn’t include them in their calculations, that would change things.
This article appears in Jul 14-20, 2016.
What’s the matter, David, if you don’t stop defending the indefensible, the Grijalvas will stop asking you over for dinner? If I were you at this point, I’d give up the dinner invitations. They are too expensive when they come at the cost of your reputation (or what remains of it after three solid years of unbelievably BASE propagandizing in support of TUSD’s never-ending parade of B.S. administrative and governance decisions.)
You write, ” Because it left out TUSD’s May 10 teacher raise, its conclusion that TUSD reneged on its pledge to its teachers is inaccurate.”
What you write is FALSE.
The fact that TUSD reneged on its pledge to the teachers is based on a comparison between WHAT THE DISTRICT TOLD THE TEACHERS AND VOTERS IT MOBILIZED IN SUPPORT OF 123 and WHAT THE DISTRICT ACTUALLY DID WITH THE FUNDS AFTER THE PROPOSITION PASSED.
The district did not say, “The May 10 raise of $1300 will be borrowed from M&O funds and paid back out of 123 funds if the propositions passes.” Anyone who was listening to their (as usual) misleading propaganda would have thought that the entirety of 123 funds would, if the proposition passed, be divided up and portioned out in the form of additional raises. Strangely, there are people who have not had sufficient opportunity to observe how TUSD always operates who expect things like FOLLOW-THROUGH and KEEPING YOUR WORD.
As for your assertion that, “TUSD’s decision to put all its money into the salary schedule, rather than putting some of it into one time bonuses for returning teachers as most other districts did, could mean that new teachers will fare better at TUSD than elsewhere, which could be a benefit for TUSD when it comes to hiring,” Teachers — including college of ed faculty, including new teachers — talk to one another, and TUSD’s reputation in the teaching community is mud. The district’s institutional culture and current teaching conditions are well known. This is why so many of the district’s classrooms are filled with a rotating cast of subs, but even the subs’ patience is wearing thin. Watch their comments in the Call to the Audience at the July 12 TUSD Board meeting. This district would need to fund raises 5 times as high as the raises they have funded to compensate teachers for the conditions they experience these days in TUSD classrooms, and the sad deterioration in classroom conditions is the direct result of the leadership decisions of the last three years.
Safier composed this, no doubt, to combat Steller’s editorial piece in the Star:
http://tucson.com/news/local/columnists/steller/steller-tusd-broke-promises-with-prop-spending/article_db22aa44-bcf9-5845-bec7-89a189b53e18.html
There are many factors referenced in the statements TUSD representatives make to explain their decision about how to allocate 123 funds, and it is difficult indeed to patch them together into anything resembling a coherent story, but piecing together information available in the media and in the district’s statements and board meetings, this is the sequence of events that seems to have led to the current decision to only apply 30% of the 123 funds to teacher salaries:
1. Before 123 passed, TUSD granted raises by tapping the district’s Maintenance & Operations funds:
http://tucson.com/news/local/education/tusd-approves-million-for-teacher-staff-raises/article_c67bd50a-2e1e-5f76-a2c4-ea2f70435da0.html
http://tucson.com/news/local/education/board-approves-pay-raises-for-tusd-teachers-staff/article_9db6df94-1797-11e6-970a-b3764167a5f5.html
Of the December 2014 raises, Ms. Huicochea wrote, “The money will come mostly from $2.8 million in maintenance and operations funds….” Of the May 2016 raises, Ms. Huicochea wrote, “The majority of the expense [of the raise]— $2.1 million — will be paid for from the maintenance and operation fund…”
Do districts with conspicuously deteriorating facilities usually grant raises out of M&O funds? When they do so, does this set them up for a situation in which later, they will have to tap funds that could or should go to teacher raises to pay back depleted M&O budgets?
2. While it was campaigning for 123, the district gave the impression it was going to run a bond for capital improvements and that 123 funds would be used to further improve teacher salaries, which were still sadly insufficient even with the small raises given previously:
http://tucson.com/news/local/education/tusd-working-wish-list-for-potential-bond-election/article_f9e266b0-e77a-5865-a316-f09939f709c4.html
http://tucson.com/news/local/education/teacher-pay-top-priority-if-prop-is-ok-d/article_2940bcc4-3fcf-54c6-ba76-5a15c4fcd43e.html
3. Then, once 123 passed, TUSD allocated only 30% of the 123 funds it received for teacher salaries and told the public it would not be running a bond campaign this fall after all, supposedly because the Pima County bonds failed last fall and this spring 123 was unpopular in Southern Arizona.
http://tucson.com/news/local/education/tucson-unified-won-t-hold-bond-election-this-year/article_b19402e2-2275-5194-bb4c-78e6756575a5.html
It seems unlikely that the decision not to run a bond this fall was based only on Southern Arizona feelings about 123 and the Pima County Bond outcomes, and not also on the judgment that public confidence in TUSD’s governance and administration was so low that a bond would not pass. Ms. Grijalva seemed to allude to this lack of public confidence in her recent presentation on the ASBA conference, delivered at the 7/12/2016 TUSD Board meeting:
http://www.tusd1.org/contents/govboard/gbvideo071216.html
However, in attributing the problems with public confidence to dis-unity on the Board and the actions of minority board members, Ms. Grijalva promotes an interpretation of the current situation that will not seem plausible to most constituents who have been observing the district’s recent actions. These actions include a cost escalation in the form of a steep inflation of a relatively inexperienced Superintedent’s compensation package:
http://tucson.com/news/opinion/tucson-unified-superintendent-s-percent-raise/article_2f0dd6fc-85ff-5ead-93e1-1b6f5e69b64d.html
additional cost escalations in conflicts with the desegregation authority accompanied by commensurate escalations in the legal costs associated with the desegregation case:
http://tucson.com/news/local/columnists/steller/steller-tusd-should-take-judge-s-hint-stop-costly-fighting/article_058a6a68-b32f-5c10-b684-3c9f71cb0a1c.html
a cost reduction accomplished by outsourcing of substitute teachers, accompanied by reducing their pay and benefits:
http://tucson.com/news/local/education/tusd-moves-to-outsource-its-substitute-teachers/article_a6cf8196-558b-5d26-a5bc-0e45a54345cc.html
(see also the first two speakers in the Call to the Audience portion of the 7/12/16 TUSD Board Meeting: http://www.tusd1.org/contents/govboard/gbvideo071216.html )
and the voluntary reduction, by millions of dollars, of desegregation funding available to be applied in support of the integration goals outlined in the Unitary Status Plan:
http://tucson.com/news/local/education/sanchez-things-are-looking-up-at-tusd/article_d0af6813-b60f-584d-ab04-5169d8442416.html
In sum: we’d have to work pretty hard, in reviewing the above sequence of events, to avoid coming to the conclusion that TUSD has placed itself, through its own decisions and administrative actions, in a situation in which 123 funds, instead of going mainly to teacher salaries, which is clearly what was promised, will have to be used in part to cover things that would normally be covered by bonds. It seems the district must do this in part because of its previous decisions allocating funding, including its decisions to repeatedly tap M&O funds to give raises, and administrative decisions that have eroded the public confidence that would enable the passing of a bond initiative.
It’s true that the Arizona legislature has behaved irresponsibly with education funding in our state, but within the funding context they establish, individual districts make better and worse decisions about how to allocate the limited funds available, how to manage their relationships with voters and constituents, and how to successfully take the case for funding supplements to the electorate. It is sad but true — and an understatement — that TUSD does not get a gold star for its performance during the last year in these departments.
Mr. Safier’s claim that “86 percent of the new funds, about $8.3 million of the $9.7 million, went to salary hikes” is wrong. In CFO Soto’s presentations to the TUSD governing Board, she put the total going to employee raises at $3.7 million. That is about 39& going to employees versus 61% going to whatever.
The claim that districts who gave one time bonuses this year were shorting their employees doesn’t make sense. Districts got 123 money this year and had plenty left to give substantial salary increases next year.
Talking about Catalina Foothill’s 4% pay raises is disingenuous. Their starting pay this year was already higher than TUSD’s starting pay next year. Next year, Catalina Foothills starting pay will be $38,500 versus TUSD’s starting pay of $35,700. And, Catalina Foothills gets much less money per student than TUSD. Catalina Foothills has the next to the lowest money/student of all the Tucson districts.
However, the correct comparison for TUSD should be to the other 9 large Arizona school Districts. Large districts have economies of scale not available to smaller districts. TUSD is the second largest of all Arizona school districts and has more money per student than all but one of the other large districts.
Last year, 6 of the other 9 districts were already paying starting teachers more than TUSD will pay next year. Mesa’s is one example. Mesa is increasing the salary for new teachers by $2,000/year from $37,500 to $38,500 next year versus TUSD’s $35,700 next year. Mesa’s current teachers will all get raises of $2,500/year plus a one time payment of 3.5% this year. Mesa’s hourly employees are all getting 5% raises, except for bus drivers who will get 5% plus an additional 33 cents/hour. TUSD’s bus drivers will get a 1% raise or 11 to 12 cents per hour. And, Mesa has less money per student than TUSD.
TUSD needs a through audit of where its money is going. It is in desperate need of an internal auditor with a CPA or a CIA, who reports to the Board, not to Superintendent Sanchez.
Here’s the problem folks.
Want a decent education system…………..stop giving control of it to stupid conservatives. If they knew how to design an effective education system, DON’T YOU THINK THEY WOULD HAVE DONE IT BY NOW????
THEY’VE BEEN IN ALMOST TOTAL CONTROL OF ARIZONA FOR DECADES.
Sorry, Bob Regan, but there are other problems in Arizona education besides the Republicans. They are most certainly a problem, but, as “Supporting Public Ed Means Supporting LOCAL Reform” wrote above, within the larger dysfunctional context created by AZ legislative decisions, TUSD is failing utterly in its ability to manage its operations and maintain public confidence. When the top administrator in a district engages in a systematic program of attempting to manage a troubled institution by concealing the truth of what is actually going on — lying about whether bonuses have been granted to the cabinet, lying about whether he has been introduced to the President of the Board’s mother-in-law, lying about whether Strategic Plan goals have been 100% fulfilled, lying about what he is going to do with 123 money, etc. (the list is very long and many more items could be added) — the Board needs to put a stop to that instead of excusing it. They are there to hold top administration accountable, and they are NOT doing it — none of them, neither the majority nor the minority.
Safier, in defending these people, seems to have been led so far astray that he has lost track of the very concept of what “THE TRUTH” means. It means the right kind of correspondence between what is said and what the reality is. When you get people to vote for 123 by saying you will apply the money, if you receive it, to teacher salaries, you need to do that or you will be failing to fulfill a promise, failing to honor your word. When people see you TIME AFTER TIME AFTER TIME making promises that you do not keep, you lose the ability to build healthy relationship and to LEAD, which is what someone in a Superintendent’s position MUST be able to do.
For government institutions to be functional and healthy, we need to get governing board members in office who will not excuse malfeasance or look the other way and fail to bring lies to the public’s attention. All of us who live in Southern Arizona need to care about this school district, which serves almost 50,000 students. If these students do not get sound educations in well managed educational institutions, this breeds problems that undermine the health and stability of our entire community. It is vitally important that effective reform take place.
You’ll have to understand Bob. Last week he got a flat tire and spent 2 hours blaming it on Bush. He’s not overly bright.
He’s no Reagan. Thanks for facts Lillian. Audit TUSD.
Lillian, a few responses to your comments. First, my statement that 86 percent of the Prop 123 funds was a continuation of the earlier part of the paragraph, “If the district waited like other districts and took the entire $2,000 out of its Prop 123 funds, it would have amounted to 75 percent of the total.” I was talking about the total salary increases, both from the May 10 board meeting and the Prop 123 funds. If I didn’t make that clear, that’s my fault for not phrasing it better. That goes for your statement about CFO Soto’s presentation as well. She was referring to the amount of salary that was added after Prop 123 passed, while my point was to look at the total raise received by TUSD teachers and other employees. The employees don’t really care if their 2016-17 raises were given in two parts or they received them all after Prop 123 passed. All that matters is the amount in their paychecks.
You say I accused other districts of shorting their employees by giving them bonuses. I said no such thing. Here’s my point. The bonuses added to the raises put more money in teachers’ pockets right now, which is good. But if the actual raise is lower, after a few years, teachers will find that they’re getting less year by year than if they received bigger raises, and there will come a point where their total pay over the years will be less than teachers who got a larger raise at the beginning but no bonus. So it’s a toss-up which is better for teachers, to get more money in the short run with the bonuses or more in the long run with the larger salary raise.
I’m pretty sure you’re correct about other large districts paying higher salaries than TUSD. I believe the Tucson area districts in general pay less than districts in most other areas of Arizona. But that wasn’t the subject of my post. I was writing to refute the Star articles which left the impression that TUSD raises were lower than what other Tucson area districts gave their teachers. That assertion is incorrect.
David, when it takes this many words and such convoluted argument to try to explain what happened, it becomes even more clear that people (voters) were deliberately misled by the board and to what would be done. If Kristel and Adelita and Cam knew that the 123 money would be spent with 2/3 going to other categories and still told the public that the 123 money would all be spent on teacher salaries, then they lied to the public and pulled a “bait and switch.” If they didn’t know this at the time of the articles, interviews, etc. then they are not in charge of the finances of the district, and that is their job. If they blindly agreed to the Pied Piper’s plan and didn’t speak up about it when it was presented for a vote, they have failed in their duty as board members again. I and many other people are angry, and used-car salesman techniques and savings/loan banker techniques to explain the financial situation is not working.
Thank you, Georgia Cole Brousseau. That is exactly right.
David: you are so untrustworthy, and you have NO regard for the truth. Do you think you are writing for an audience of idiots? It’s insulting, what you expect us to swallow — you even write things in the comment stream on your own blog that contradict what you wrote in the blog.
In your comment response to Lillian, you write “I was writing to refute the Star articles which left the impression that TUSD raises were lower than what other Tucson area districts gave their teachers. That assertion is incorrect.”
But in the blog you wrote, “Because it left out TUSD’s May 10 teacher raise, [the Star’s] “CONCLUSION THAT TUSD RENEGED ON ITS PLEDGE TO ITS TEACHERS IS INACCURATE.” It DID renege on its pledge to the teachers, which was that the 123 MONEY would be used for teacher raises. This shell game in which you seem to assert that the raise granted on May 10 should be considered a loan from the M&O fund to be paid back from 123 if the proposition passed is pure BS. That was not an explicit agreement made in advance of the vote on 123 with the people who were deployed to promote the Proposition and vote for it. Ask the teachers what Sanchez said, what Kristel Foster said. They lied AGAIN — it has been their habit for three years now and they’ve been getting away with it, but THANK GOD the public is finally catching on.
Perhaps you should find another hobby in your retirement. People who experience the on-the-ground reality in these institutions do not appreciate the way you occupy your time by playing disingenuous word games in defense of your political buddies and their administrative and governance actions. The mismanagement we’ve seen for three solid years now is harming real people, degrading the quality of education available to tens of thousands of students. STOP lying about it and collaborating with those who lie about it.
Prop 123 was a fraud essentially forced on the plaintiffs and the voters by a Biggs/Il Duce led legislature to make sure not one dime more of taxes anywhere goes to public schools. But we have dimes for private school subsidies, and prisons, prisons, and more prisons, and funding a parallel school system (privately operated charters) who do no better but waste more money and have less accountability. Now you all are pouncing on the local board for trying to balance teacher salaries, lack of books and technical equipment, and roof, rest room, and air conditioning repairs. The Biggs/Il Duce coalition violates the State Constitution with impunity and all you do is bitch about the TUSD board. Direct some energy for pro-public school candidates (regardless of party). Where is step two there Ducey?
gcb1, I disagree with your analysis. If you think I was too convoluted and took too many words to explain what happened, let me try and make it simpler.
TUSD said to its teachers, “We’re going to give you a $1,300 raise, guaranteed, even if Prop 123 fails. If it passes, we’ll add another $700, bringing the total to $2,000.”
Other Tucson-area districts said to their teachers, “We’re not guaranteeing any salary raises. We’ll wait to see if Prop 123 passes before we commit to anything.”
That’s what happened in a nutshell. What surprises me is that TUSD did such a lousy job of communicating what happened and allowed it to look like it cheated its teachers, when in fact, it was looking out for its teachers, no matter what happened in the Prop 123 election.
Frances Perkins: What makes you think that those complaining about current TUSD governance have not also worked against Ducey, against 123, against anti-public education candidates and in support of our public schools?
The fact is, Frances, that the existence of Ducey and his ALEC buddies in Phoenix is NOT an excuse for every malfeasant action of every public administrator in our underfunded Southern Arizona institutions. There are effective and ineffective ways to deal with the difficult situation public administrators are in right now in this state. The “strategies” (if they can be called that) being pursued by the current TUSD Board majority and their employee the Superintendent are extremely problematic, and that argument can be defended with a string of facts, as “Supporting Public Ed” did in one of the comments above.
Consider this: in a situation where funding flowing from the state is gravely insufficient, the capability of public administrators to build sufficient trust with the public so that bonds and overrides can be moved forward successfully is crucial. When administrative and governance actions over the course of an extended period systematically and repeatedly destroy the public’s trust rather than building it, that’s a serious problem and one the public would be well advised to take into consideration when they make decisions about how to vote in leadership elections:
http://tucson.com/news/local/education/tucson-unified-won-t-hold-bond-election-this-year/article_b19402e2-2275-5194-bb4c-78e6756575a5.html
David Safier:
You write: “TUSD said to its teachers, ‘We’re going to give you a $1,300 raise, guaranteed, even if Prop 123 fails. If it passes, we’ll add another $700, bringing the total to $2,000.’
Is this what the district SAID to its teachers BEFORE 123 passed? Did those who chose to campaign in support of the proposition and vote for it have that understanding explicitly, that if 123 passed only an additional $700 would be coming to them and 2/3 of the 123 funds would be going to other purposes? I talked with a TUSD teacher just this morning, and that was NOT what I heard. What I heard was that teachers were EXPLICITLY given the impression that all or the great majority of what came from 123 would be devoted to further improving teachers’ salaries, over and above what had been done previously. Hence the outrage from teachers and others commenting here and elsewhere.
Please note that it is not valid to revise the story after the fact. Whether or not the district’s representatives LIED is based on the difference between what TUSD reps said BEFORE 123 PASSED and what they did AFTER IT PASSED. This ex post facto story-doctoring you are doing entirely fails to cloak the fact that there is no correspondence between what supporters were told by district reps while they were being recruited to campaign for 123 and what happened afterwards.
What NO ONE has yet addressed here is David Safier’s lack of journalistic objectivity. He has gotten behind Sanchez and excused every mis-step the man has taken, along with his go-along Board majority. Safier’s ties with Jen Darland (the candidate who ran and lost the last time around), Kristal Foster, and HT Sanchez (and his very close ties- Cam Juarez and Adelita Grijalva) has been apparent since HT Sanchez began inviting Safier in to his inner-sanctum. Safier thinks himself to be more knowledgeable about TUSD because, after all, he believes everything he is told by HT and members of the Board majority. He investigates little, if any at all, and regurgitates much of what he is told. It is sloppy journalism; especially for the Tucson Weekly, which was, not long ago, notorious for its coverage on TUSD.
I recall the stunt Safier pulled in “exposing” Michael Hicks’ bankruptcy, an idea fed to him by Kristal Foster and a show of lacking empathy. The aim was to weaken Hicks in his bid for re-election and to strengthen their candidate- Jen Darland. It did not work. Hicks beat Darland. Many did not vote for her simply because of her association with the current Board majority and they were likely right to do so. She and all of the above-named characters were very loud proponents for Prop 123. At least 4 of them knew they were lying to the public. In the case of TUSD 123 has proven to be a sham. The political incest that has taken hold of TUSD has pushed it back to the days of good-ol’-boy insider favoritism. It is poisoning it to the core. Safier fuels it through the Tucson Weekly. It needs to be stopped!
Vote Foster and Juarez the hell out of their seats.
GCB- So glad to see you take on the TUSD block! Keep doing it.
David,
You are a poor excuse for a journalist. How dare you defend these cronies. Your argument does not make any sense. You are missing the point. Yes teachers received a raise prior to prop 123. It was also explicitly said by HT if it passes teachers would get even more. Stop getting lost in words your just as bad as Sanchez, who I pray will move back to Texas. Excuse my French but fuck you! Straight up fuck you David.
And what about the children?
Sorry Public Ed. If the State would fund schools properly you would not need the debate about overrides and bonds. We spend $20,000 per inmate in prisons a year and can’t spend $5000 per student. The State government run by Republicans for 30 years, systematically defund education from Pre-K to universities every year, they have lost every lawsuit in inadequate funding, facilities, O&M, etc., and your never ending whining about TUSD is unproductive. You are arguing about whether the crew or the passengers broke the dishes in the dining room on the Titanic. And, yes I am a property tax payer in TUSD. I hope to sign your petition to run for the TUSD board soon. At least you can find out Sanchez’s salary, try that with BASIS ceo and administrators.
There’s really no point in responding to you, Frances, because you make the same tired (and in my view, invalid) arguments over and over again, no matter what any commenter writes.
Yes, public education should be better funded. No, most of us who write here don’t agree with the legislative and funding priorities of our state level government. Yes, it’s true that the court cases the legislature has lost — like the one over the 301 funding that is owed — should be enforced.
The fact remains that within the context our state level government establishes, local governing boards do better and worse jobs building the public confidence they need to deliver adequate services in a situation in which it cannot be argued that bonds and overrides are not desperately needed. TUSD’s track record for the past three years has been poor in this department. I have served as a volunteer in several of the district’s schools, I have been a parent with a child enrolled in one of the district’s schools in recent years, I read just about everything published about the district in the local media, I watch many of the Board meetings, and I talk regularly with people who have known the district well for a long time, some of whom have been or are administrators, governing board members, and teachers in the district. I take seriously the need to be well informed and to weigh and consider the various arguments that are being made about the district’s governance and administrative decisions, and I haven’t seen any valid arguments made in defense of the list of governance decisions given in the comment in this stream entitled, “Supporting Public Ed Means Supporting Local Reform.” Your argument seems to be, “they’re underfunded, so they must be excused for every lie, every piece of malfeasance.” Sorry, I don’t buy that, and I don’t think relating to local governing boards this way produces good results for the children enrolled in the schools these boards are supposed to oversee.
If you don’t think that citizens who don’t file petitions to run for the governing board have a right to comment in public discussions about the district, all I can say is, that’s a ridiculous claim. You’re not, to my knowledge, running for the TUSD board and you evidently feel it’s valid for you to express your opinion — repeatedly. So be civil and grant other citizens that right as well, even when you disagree with them.
Everyone who wants to know about a TRULY important and telling story in TUSD needs to click on this link:
http://www.kgun9.com/news/tpd-officer-feared-for-his-life-at-tusd-hs
Please note that one part of the story refers to a letter sent to HT Sanchez by Tucson’s chief of police. In any other town, this sort of correspondence between the superintendent of the city’s largest school district and its key law enforcement official would be front page news. The Weekly has ignored it so far, as has the Star. Why?
Virtually every story in this blog about TUSD reads like it could have been ghosted by their PR flacks. Here’s a real story for Safier and anyone else at The Weekly to get into and surface some more facts. It has implications for the operation of TUSD, the upcoming Board election and, most crucial of all, the safety of students and staff in every school, not just the school featured in the story.
When will the journalists at The Weekly and the other media outlets in this town start to do some real work and report on stories that TRULY matter?