Before we jump in, let’s give some praise to Valerie Cavazos at KGUN Channel 9 for her series on the Rose Hamway retaliation case and the Tucson Unified School District special education issues she’s unearthed in the process. So far, Cavazos at KGUN and Weekly World Central are the only Tucson media outlets to dig a little deeper.

If you haven’t had a chance, take a look at Cavazos’ work on the KGUN website under Education Watch. And you can get to our work here. A third Weekly story with a parent interview runs this week, followed by an additional parent story and a story on the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights’ process.

So let’s get to the matter at hand with a question: With this body of work out there on the Hamway story, what is the point of a recent KOLD piece on TUSD’s “Exceptional Education” department that not once mentions the issues raised by the school psychologist in her complaint?

While it’s true, not every special ed student or parent in TUSD has had the same experiences as the 14 parents Hamway helped during her short time in the district, this story only takes a small look at a program, a couple of parents, and makes the district’s program seem like a sought-after gem it must keep hidden.

The truth on special education, its successes and its difficulties is somewhere in between both stories. Nonetheless, Hamway’s issues should be alarming, because there are other schools and many other kids who didn’t have a Hamway intervene on their behalf or help parents’ file much-needed OCR complaints.

Point is, Hamway isn’t an anomaly.

This article appears in Sep 27 – Oct 3, 2012.

4 replies on “KOLD Is Apparently Reporting On An Alternate-Dimension Version Of TUSD”

  1. Mari, You and Valerie are doing a terrific job covering a story that should trouble us all very much. KOLD’s sunshine piece, which doesn’t even acknowledge the harm caused to the students and to Dr. Hamway, is an embarrassment to the station. I see Mark Stegeman linked to the KOLD piece in his constituent news letter. That should embarrass him, too.

  2. Hats off to two intrepid reporters who speak the truth to power! It’s more expensive to provide special ed services to students, and many school districts find countless ways to deny or delay those services to students who need them. Obviously, TUSD wanted to get some positive information out. First, to counter the incredibly bad publicity from Rose Hamway’s story that TUSD can’t deflect. Second, there’s a contentious race for seats on the school board, and some good publicity might help the candidates the TUSD administration favors. Notice that no one in power at TUSD seems to be talking about the irreparable harm that has been done in their names, certainly to the 14 students whose families contacted OCR, at a minimum. They should be deeply ashamed.
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  3. I wrote much more in that newsletter about Hamway than about the KOLD piece. I think it is good to let people see what is out there and they can draw their own conclusions. As Mari says, there is both good and bad in Exceptional Ed. just as in other programs.

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