The TUSD Superintendent’s job is still at risk, although discussion of it was absent from Tuesday night’s board meeting.
The crowd of more than a hundred people cheered at the beginning of Tucson Unified School District’s regular board meeting when the controversial item was removed from the agenda. For an hour and a half, one after the other, community members stood at the podium to thank Superintendent H.T. Sánchez and commend the work he’s doing with the district.
Nonetheless, a special meeting has been called for Tuesday, Feb. 21, where the question of Sánchez’s job will be back on the agenda, according to Rachael Sedgwick, the board’s newest member.
At the Feb. 14 meeting, 20 people spoke in support of the superintendent and three in opposition.
Community member Brian Flagg said Sánchez is present at school events and people like him.
“He brings his family, he hangs out, and he talks to people until the last person leaves—and he does it in Spanish,” he said. “I think the guy’s got real popular support.”
On Tuesday, the board received more than 75 emails in support of the superintendent and two in opposition, according to Board members Adelita Grijalva and Kristel Foster. Supporters of Sánchez include Michael Varney, President of the Tucson Metro Chamber, and Mayor Jonathan Rothschild.
Sedgwick, who put the item on the agenda, would like to see Sánchez make some changes but says it’s apparent he’s not open to working with her.
“It’s really not about firing H.T.,” she said. “It’s really is about exploring the different opportunities and giving him a choice.”
She would like to see the board create a performance plan to assess progress the superintendent makes with the district. In particular, Sedgwick is concerned with enrollment numbers, standardized testing scores, AP scores, graduation rates and drop-out rates.
Sedgwick also thinks Sánchez spends too much time at the Arizona Legislature.
“The superintendent’s job is really not to be lobbying the legislators in Phoenix,” she said. “I believe the superintendent does not visit the schools very often and that it means that we, as a district, have sort of lost sight about the reasons that TUSD exists.”
Sánchez could not be reached for a response.
Sedgwick says she has the backing of Board member Mark Stegeman and that Board President Michael Hicks is open to discussion.
Other board members think bringing the superintendent’s job into question right now distracts the board from more important things and opens them up to possible legal problems.
“What we’re doing here is a side-show circus,” Grijalva said. “If I’m a parent of a kindergartner or someone who’s coming from a charter school and looking for a middle or high school for my child, why would I pick TUSD? Because all I see in the headlines is this drama.”
Foster says terminating the superintendent with no backup plan is a dangerous decision, and putting that option suddenly on the agenda is not the way to solve a problem.
“We’re, right now, in the middle of a legislative session, trying to advocate on behalf of public education,” Foster said. “This shows absolutely no understanding of what we do as public officials that represent a school district.”
This article appears in Feb 9-15, 2017.
What were doing here is a side-show circus, Grijalva said. If Im a parent of a kindergartner or someone whos coming from a charter school and looking for a middle or high school for my child, why would I pick TUSD? Because all I see in the headlines is this drama.
They also see you conferencing with a known domestic terrorist, on the taxpayer dime.
No drama in you organizing your chain-in of students at a previous board meeting?
The quotes from Grijalva and Foster are revealing of what their agenda and attitude has been for the past four sad years of their misguided leadership: it doesn’t matter what is actually happening in the district, what matters are what reports appear in the media. The district is going down in flames under the shockingly incompetent leadership of the sadly under-qualified administrator these women and their former sidekick Cam Juarez brought into town three and a half years ago through an improper, untransparent process (using the same search firm that had recently tried to sell Isquierdo to a Texas district AFTER Isquierdo went down in flames in Sunnyside: http://tucson.com/news/local/education/precollegiate/search-firm-that-botched-texas-schools-chief-hiring-now-looking/article_b1c0a248-fd05-5dea-ab92-643522a18a9c.html
But instead of facing the truth and directly addressing the problem they have created, the disastrous PR “strategy” the district’s failed leadership has tried to employ is this: “If we tell the public the truth, then charter schools and private schools may win in this war we are fighting with them.”
Heads up: the job of the district’s “leaders” is to tell the public THE TRUTH. It is not to create misleading images of the district in news stories and to BLOCK every channel through which real information about this FAILING institution can reach the constituents who might make the disastrous decision of enrolling their children in under-performing schools. When the course of lies and misleading propaganda is chosen, the district’s leadership themselves become the worst enemies of the public district system because in lying to the public about it, they turn it into something that is corrupt and indefensible.
Grijalva and Foster lost the battle to maintain their Board majority. They will lose the battle to keep their overpaid and disastrously underperforming Superintendent in place. Kristel Foster can alert her Facebook friends and get all the local sycophants to speak in a TUSD Board Meeting Call to the Audience, but fortunately for Tucson, the people who showed up on February 14 to deliver Valentines to the district’s mismanager-in-chief are not the people now constituting the majority on this Board.
Wow! It’s so refreshing to have yet another piece of education coverage from the Weekly that tells the Grijalva/Foster story (NOT). What the h has happened to this newspaper? I get it–bought by outsiders, decreasing budget, etc. etc. etc. but the education coverage on TUSD is all only from one direction–does anyone else notice? Stephanie Boe got you on speed dial or what?
“…he talks to people until the last person leavesand he does it in Spanish,…”
Well, there are probably some positions available in Sonora.
This shows absolutely no understanding of what we do as public officials that represent a school district.
I’m sorry Foster/Grijalva machine. we pretty much know exactly what you do. And many of us want you to stop it.
First, the reporter counted wrong. There were more than 3 people who spoke in opposition to Sanchez. Furthermore at least 3 senior TUSD administrators broadcast emails trying to get people to come out in support of Sanchez. The TUSD email system was used! Ms. Foster also put an effort into getting people to turn out to support Sanchez. If after all that effort only 20 people showed up to support Sanchez, that’s not much of an endorsement for keeping him.
There was no effort at all to get people to speak in opposition to Sanchez.
The November TUSD Board election was a strong vote to bring serious change to the district. Continuity lost; positive change won. And that is what Ms. Sedgwick is doing. She has exhibited courage in the face of multiple despicable attempts to smear her and damage her reputation. To understand what is going on in TUSD, my advice is to watch a few Board meetings and skip reading the Tucson Weekly for a while
“…he talks to people until the last person leavesand he does it in Spanish,…”
Raul Grijalva –
Former member of MECha, which seeks to facilitate Mexico’s reconquest of the Southwestern U.S.
Former leader of the Raza Unida Party
http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/individualProfile.asp?indid=1316
Make Tucson Mexico Again!
Make What, Again respectful and not a racist again!
Wait a second, he was never respectful and not racist.
He has said he is a Christian, but you can tell he’s using that as a veil for his racism.
True Christians cringe at everything he decides to post.
More about El Jefe Raul and his plans for your children in TUSD.
His young adulthood coincided with the peak of El Movimiento, the Chicano civil-rights movement that imbued him with what he later described as anger over how his public-school education had made [me] feel I wanted to be an Anglo.
During this period, Grijalva wrote for the Movimiento newspaper Coraje!a Spanish word meaning both Courage and Angerwhose front page bore the image of a clenched-fisted Chicano saying My race first and the motto Better to die on your feet than live on your knees. In 1969 Grijalva contributed to this publication a poem condemning white racism’s clammy hand of hate.
My thanks to George S for the link!
My case is proven, by none other than the defendant!
Thank you Your Honor.
The plaintiff rests.
All this disruption and drama isn’t positive for the district. Ms Sedgwick’s comments about the Superintendent’s visits to schools is instructive, but insufficient. This needs to be handled behind closed doors, there needs to be an expectation that the Superintendent will spend one day in five out in schools and in classrooms and in the school parking lot greeting parents. These personal touches are critical for creating the sense of community that is needed for improvement.
Ms Sedgwick should go out with the Superintendent on a day tour starting with a school parking lot in the morning – in the most extreme poverty neighborhood. A sense of community starts at the School Board.
All this disruption and drama isn’t positive for the district. Ms Sedgwick’s comments about the Superintendent’s visits to schools is instructive, but insufficient. This needs to be handled behind closed doors, there needs to be an expectation that the Superintendent will spend one day in five out in schools and in classrooms and in the school parking lot greeting parents. These personal touches are critical for creating the sense of community that is needed for improvement.
Ms Sedgwick should go out with the Superintendent on a day tour starting with a school parking lot in the morning – in the most extreme poverty neighborhood. A sense of community starts at the School Board.
That is so weak jhuppent@hotmail.com. Putting lipstick on the pig that is TUSD is not going to help it. It will only further camouflage that rot that has been baked in the last 20 years.
Disruption and drama is the only way change will come.
Disruption is very seldom a source of positive change. Having a vision for the future and creating a cohesive atmosphere where everyone feels respected and energized towards that future so that they work a solid 8 hours is all it takes is what really achieves progress.
This is what their vision and mission should be: To provide every student an unbelievably great education.
TUSD believe it or not, has slightly above average academic gains and a slightly better than average measured relationship with parents. They have a foundation to build on towards creating great schools.
Nothing will be achieved by the disruption of replacing superintendents, nothing at all, except for the loss of a couple of years of progress as you regroup and develop a new group of aggrieved parties.
Look at what is really happening. TUSD has an annual budget of over $300 million dollars. So every special interest group that feels victimized that they didn’t get their fair share of the loot wants someone else in charge so that they get another bite at the apple. They are quite explicit about this, its just about the loot – one very particularly vociferous commentator made a list that I haven’t seen funded in even the most gold plated districts in the nation.
A few express grievances about policy but anybody who has been around policy in large organizations knows that everyone can end up feeling powerless at the slow rate of change. Expressing power by firing a superintendent won’t change that and likely won’t change policy.
So, quit whining, go listen to some other parents and try to help them instead of trying to help yourself.
Why are you being so naive? The Grijalva’s have owned the district for the last twenty years. There is no room for a cohesive atmosphere. H.T. is simply the tool of the Grijalva’s to run the system and that 300 million dollars exactly as they tell him to. H.T. is a documented bigot and serial liar.
By all measures TUSD is a total failure. Thousands and thousands of students have spoken with their feet. Wake up to the corruption, or are you part of it?
Good job, What Again, you figured it out. Sanchez is the Grijalva’s quid pro quo gift to the privatizing powers-that-be in Phoenix. Ducey should pick up the phone and give Huppenthal a call to tell him he’s showing their hand. The Grijalvas want the gravy train to continue and the privatizing state level government wants someone to mismanage the second largest public school district in the state in precisely the way Sanchez is mismanaging it, picking fights with the desegregation authority, applying Title 1 funds in ways that benefit the affluent rather than the poor, outsourcing substitute teacher labor, collaborating with Lisa Graham Keegan on a plan to destroy credentialing requirements for public school teachers, etc., ad nauseam.
Heads up, Huppenthal. It’s not just disgruntled contractors that want new leadership. It’s every WELL-INFORMED parent in the district, most teachers who have seen the inside of these mismanaged schools during the last 3 and 1/2 years, and every policy analyst / education advocate independent of the local political machine who has been tracking the district’s sad affairs. Better leadership is possible, and it’s what the voters in this democratically controlled district have asked for. Let’s hope it’s what they will get.