Two men I admire, Jim Nintzel, the editor here at the Weekly, and talk show host John C. Scott, have frustrated the hell out of me recently. Both men know more about Tucson and Arizona than I would if I lived another lifetime. Both are intelligent, perceptive analysts of the political scene. Neither accepts the “common wisdom” just because it’s what other people think.
Well, they don’t accept the common wisdom in most cases, anyway. When it comes to TUSD, though, Scott and Nintzel seem to go along with the prevailing notion that the school district is doing a terrible job and has brought its problems, specifically its loss of students, on itself.
Common wisdom always has a kernel of logic to it. If TUSD has lost an average of 900 students a year for the past 18 years, it’s only logical, it’s something they’ve done. Isn’t it? How can it not be the district’s fault?
The problem is, the common wisdom about TUSD is wrong.
This all came up because of one of my recent posts, A Multi-Factored Look At TUSD’s Enrollment Decline. My main point was that the district’s precipitous enrollment decline over the past 18 years has more to do with outside factors than with the district itself. Two of the factors were created by the state legislature when it green-lighted charter schools and open enrollment in 1994, creating two new forms of competition for students. The third factor is the city’s population, which essentially stopped growing around 2000, meaning TUSD hasn’t had an influx of new students to replace the ones who left.
When I talked about this on John C. Scott’s show, he came back with a litany of sins TUSD has committed which have led to parents pulling their children out of the district — problems with student discipline, poor administration, poor money management and so on.
Most of what Scott said about TUSD is true, but not his contention that the problems he listed are the primary reasons students have left the district.
Nintzel agreed with me about the mechanism for TUSD’s enrollment decline, but said I haven’t paid enough attention to parents’ dissatisfaction with the district which led them to send their children elsewhere.
Nintzel is right that dissatisfaction with TUSD leads many parents to seek other options for their children, but often, their dissatisfaction has more to do with the changing ethnic and economic makeup of Tucson than anything the district has done.
The arguments made by Scott and Nintzel aren’t wrong factually. They’re wrong in emphasis, putting too much blame on the district and too little on national demographic shifts and Arizona’s Republican politicians’ continuing efforts to dismantle our district-based, publicly run school system by encouraging school privatization. Compound those factors with Tuscon’s glacial population growth over the past few decades, and you have a recipe for plummeting enrollment.
Unfortunately, their views mirror the local “common wisdom” about TUSD. Attacking TUSD has turned into a blood sport, and that’s bad news for the district and the city. When people magnify TUSD’s problems, it encourages even more people to leave the district. And the notion that TUSD is responsible for the problems it faces gives the impression that the district should be able to turn this thing around if it can just get its act together. What the district actually needs is thoughtful, incremental improvements to help it better serve the needs of the community.
Let me lay out what I believe to be true about the changing nature of TUSD and many similar urban districts across the country. Admittedly, this is a subjective view, but it’s based on extensive study of urban education in the U.S.
TUSD is like a lot like urban school districts around the country which find themselves educating an increasing number of low income students, many of whom are African American and Latino. Over the past few decades, the districts’ test scores have declined, and their enrollment has dropped.
The first thing that happens to a school district when a city’s population becomes increasing low income is, student achievement falls. Student achievement correlates more strongly with family income than any other variable, whether in Tucson, in other areas of the U.S. or around the world. Anywhere you look, high income students do better on every academic measure than low income students. Schools matter, of course. Some schools are more successful at raising low income students’ achievement than others. But a scholarly ballpark estimate is that family income is three times more important to students’ academic achievement than the schooling they receive.
No one should be surprised by low test scores at TUSD schools when a majority of their students come from low income families where parents often have a high school education or less. By the same token, no one should be overly impressed with the high test scores in districts like Catalina Foothills and Vail when their students come from homes with comfortable incomes and parents with college educations.
But maybe I’m going too easy on TUSD. Even if it makes sense to expect low test scores from its current student population, should they be as low as they are? Maybe if TUSD had its educational act together, the scores would be higher.
Fine. That a reasonable assertion. Let’s test it out.
If TUSD is doing a lousy job, if schools run by excellent administrators and staffed with competent teachers would get better results, local charter schools with student populations similar to those in TUSD should be kicking the district’s ass. After all, charters aren’t burdened by hide-bound administrations, musty old educational practices, unionized teachers and burdensome state regulations, all of which are said to bring down the quality of school district education. That’s why charters were created, right? To show school districts how it’s done.
Well, Arizona charters have had 25 years to prove they can succeed where school districts fail. But it hasn’t worked out that way. Students at some charters exceed expectations while others perform below the level you might expect. Which is exactly what you find at various schools in TUSD. Specialty schools like BASIS attract successful, motivated students and get stellar results, but the same goes for TUSD’s University High which attracts a similar type of student.
If you ignore the charter hype and look at the numbers, whether it’s in Tucson, across the state or around the country, charters and district schools that share similar student populations tend to group together in their high stakes test scores and other measures of academic success. There isn’t the night-and-day difference you would expect if the districts like TUSD were failures.
With all TUSD’s flaws and shortcomings — as with any educational institution I’ve ever known, it has plenty of flaws and shortcomings — district schools are doing the educational job you would expect them to do with their students, sometimes a little better, sometimes a little worse than local charter schools with similar populations.
Here is the conclusion I draw from the district/charter comparison: If local charter schools haven’t been able to put TUSD to shame, then the people of Tucson should stop shaming their district as well.
But that begs the question: If charters are no better than district schools, why do students continue to leave districts and head over to charters? Right now, 15 percent of the state’s school children are in charter schools, and the number keeps growing.
Charters have a few advantages over districts which have nothing to do with the quality of the education they provide. Their growth has been stimulated by the encouragement they have received from our state’s Republican politicians, including those who have run the department of education, since the first charters opened in 1995. And they have gotten additional help from the national school privatization industry which spends hundreds of millions of dollars a year pumping up charters’ reputation and infusing the schools with funding beyond what they receive from the state. Put those forces together, and Arizona has the highest percentage of students in charters of any state in the country.
Charters have been sold as the Next Big Educational Thing. And I use the word “sold” advisedly. A full-blown public relations campaign has made charters look like New! Improved! versions of the public schools which preceded them. Parents who are looking for something better for their children hear again and again, charters are the answer.
With charter school names including words like “College” and “Preparatory” and “Academy,” who wouldn’t think the schools will guarantee their children a shot at a college education? With charter cheerleaders chanting, “You say charter, we say BASIS! You say charter, we say BASIS,” who wouldn’t think their children will attend a charter school like BASIS, which claims, falsely, to turn ordinary students into academic superstars?
The rapid growth of charter schools is a matter of PR over performance.
But charters aren’t the only thing drawing students in the TUSD attendance area away from the district’s schools. Open enrollment, which began at the same time as charters, allows parents to enroll their children in any school with an empty desk, in any district they want. That means for the past 25 years, TUSD area parents have been able to load their children into their SUVs and drive them to schools in neighboring districts like Catalina Foothills and Vail.
As with charters, it’s possible to say, if TUSD-area parents take advantage of open enrollment and send their children to schools outside the district — I estimate there are between 3,000 and 6,000 children in that category — that proves TUSD is doing a poor job educating its students. Clearly, the district is driving parents away.
But there is another, more likely explanation which is as old as the push for school integration in the 1950s and 1960s: White Flight. Ever since white parents have seen their children’s schools filling with students from other ethnic groups, they have been fleeing to the suburbs where they built shiny new school buildings filled with students who look like their children and come from similar backgrounds. White flight feeds on itself. The more white parents leave the city, the more black and brown the city schools become, which encourages more white families to follow the earlier emigrants.
According to a population graph on the city of Tucson’s website, Tucson in 1960 was 80 percent Anglo and 18 percent Latino. Latinos became the city’s majority ethnic group in 2015. Currently, Tucson’s population is 37 percent Anglo, 50 percent Latino.
Prior to 1995, Anglos who wanted to send their children to schools in other districts to escape the ethnic diversity of TUSD schools had to pull up stakes and move. Now, with open enrollment, they can stay put and ferry their children across district lines.
I don’t blame TUSD for Whites fleeing the city any more than I blame the African American family which moves into an White neighborhood for the For Sale signs sprouting on their neighbors’ lawns. It is all part of our country’s shameful heritage of racial animus and discrimination.
It’s no coincidence that when TUSD’s enrollment declined by 16,500 from 2000 to 2019, its Anglo enrollment dropped by 16,400 students.
Regardless of the reasons for TUSD’s declining enrollment, the drop in student population leaves the district in a precarious situation. And we can expect enrollment to continue its decline unless the city’s population takes an upward turn or charter schools become less popular. Either is possible, but neither can be counted on.
Regardless of the reasons for TUSD’s declining enrollment, the district has to marshal whatever powers it has to slow or stop the downward trajectory. One hope is, from knowledge, the district and the city can draw strength. If we understand the underlying causes of the district’s enrollment decline and support the efforts to improve the quality of its education incrementally rather than condemning TUSD out of hand, we have a reasonable chance of creating a stronger, more successful school district.
This article appears in Jun 27 – Jul 3, 2019.
Good to hear that John C. Scott and Jim Nintzel understand the local educational scene better than you do, David. Does it ever occur to you that perhaps the many, many people on both sides of the political fence who disagree with your interpretation of TUSD actually know more about the district than you do?
The question of why you, who know little about local schools, never having taught in this state or sent children to schools in this state, continue to put lipstick on the proverbial TUSD pig over and over and over again until your readership can barely discern the pig lips under the thick coats of paint you apply, is an interesting one. Here we should perhaps refer to the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. The reality-denial penchant and the mania for repeating yourself, in blog after sad blog, year after year, as though saying it is so will MAKE IT SO suggest that that the DSM is perhaps the only book that could explain to us why you do it.
If you are not actually ill — if your serial misrepresentation of local educational realities is just part of some pandering-to-the-local-TUSD-involved-political-network scheme of yours — then it is utterly inexcusable. You slander concerned parents who have endured corrupt administrative actions and mismanagement of their children’s educations and who, at considerable time and trouble and expense, have sought more responsible educational settings for their children when you accuse them, en masse, of being motivated by racial discrimination.
This political propaganda “move” or “strategy” of yours is beneath contempt.
Answer this: have you, personally, used exclusively public district schools for the education of your own child/ren? If not, why not? If your child was in a private or alternative setting rather than a public district one at any point during his/her education, are we safe to assume that your motive for that move was racial discrimination? Should we assume it without talking to you, without knowing the characteristics of your child or the actual quality of education delivered in the setting from which you removed him/ her?
No? We should not assume that? Then don’t assume it about TUSD transfers out. Many of us who know literally SCORES of them — teachers who left; families who pulled kids out, some of them mid-year can testify that there wasn’t a single one that we knew of that had anything to do with racial motives. The transfers were about the sad REALITY of the way the district functions: the documentably poor quality of administrative and governance actions and behaviors, not about the color of students’ skin.
Get informed about the reality of TUSD by doing in depth observation in local schools and / or at local board meetings and / or at site council meetings. If you can’t do that, why don’t you STOP blogging on the topic? The quality of our local conversations about education are degraded by the kind of shoddy and slanderous merchandise you retail above.
Not sure how the above angry and anonymous commentator can deny your hard numbers, but alas, those who wish to negatively spin will.
That anonymous writer might find my story to be contrary evidence to their claims but here it goes…
I hate to admit that few years ago I too believed that negative spin about TUSD and sent my son to a private school for his first few months in kinder. Thankfully, I can also say that I quickly saw the light and the truth, that TUSD is a good district! I came to this truth as an education professional, observing my sons private school class (not great) and comparing it to my observations at 3 different TUSD kinder classrooms. The TUSD classrooms were head and shoulders above the private and charter classes I had observed.
The TUSD teachers were true professionals, engaging their students in meaningful and deep learning, with masterful classroom management skills and educational artistry! The principals were the kind of warm & welcoming community builders that every parent dreams of.
As I said on the John C. Scott Show and will continue to say to anyone else who cares to listen, TUSD is a good district! We do have some challenges (as all districts, schools and educational institutions do) but it is fine and appropriate to be proud of our TUSD!
What hard numbers has Safier given? The numbers that say the population leaving was not much larger than the decline in white enrollment, which Safier uses as justification for IMPUTING filthy motives to thousands of people, with no evidence, no data to back it up?
Which private school? Which TUSD kindergarten classrooms, in which school/s? Do tell. Sam Hughes, perhaps? Fruchthendler? Or was it Warren or McCorkle? Quite a difference there. You can infer NOTHING about the quality of the DISTRICT from what you see in its enclave schools.
(FYI the deployment of TUSDs minions to pump out their Pollyanna POSITIVITY in comment streams, selected Calls to the Audience, and Party-controlled blogs is recognizable a mile away. Achieves nothing to mask the actual overall quality of the districts decision making, especially when it comes to deploying resources in support of underserved populations.)
Leila:
Just ignore Stretch. She’s got this disorder that a lot of other internet trolls have.
It’s called douchebaggery. She has the form of it that makes her ramble on and on and on…without really saying much of anything. Let alone anything that actually makes sense.
Pray for her. Someone needs to.
Besides the financial incentives to send kids to charter schools or homeschool (no accountability on what you actually used the money for), I think that the deferred maintenance of many of the schools is deterring people from sending kids to their local public schools. Studies have shown that well-cared for, neat and clean classrooms make a difference. So many are looking at the teachers and I think that is true in that great teachers should be paid a decent salary, so they will come. https://www.edutopia.org/blog/the-physical-environment-of-classrooms-mark-phillips
This discussion seems much akin to debating whether or not the Titanic sank.
It’s gone, let’s get over it.
As long as Safier continues churning out this junk, people who have real experience of the district will continue providing “reality check” footnotes to it. (And the Party’s operatives will continue their lame attempts to counter the reality of what the district is with Pollyanna positivity (“Leila”) and / or sad attempts at gut punches (“I Pity the Stretch”).
One might just look away in disgust if it weren’t for the fact that the district still mis-uses public funds to under-serve tens of thousands of the very same disadvantaged children whose household incomes Safier and his ilk use to justify the poor results of the low quality education delivered to them by their local schools.
Did you see any long term subs who didn’t have teaching certificates covering Kindergarten classrooms when you observed in TUSD, “Leila”? If not, your observations have not been broad enough.
Poor Stretch. Suffering douchebaggery of the long-winded variety must be a real bitch.
Nope, I pulled my kid from a well-regarded and highly-rated private school (will not say names) and put him in a D-rated elementary school, with a new principal and new dual-language program. I could tell from my professional experience in rating educational quality, it was an excellent school, regardless of their state letter grade.
But real educators dont need to rely on superficial measurements to know a good school when they see one. So yes, it was a D school I put my son into (they are now a B) and I did so happily!
P.S. McCorkle, Warren and many other TUSD schools are also doing good things. Id suggest walking away from the keyboard and doing something helpful IN THE SCHOOLS to broaden your perspective.
“Leila”: Why not use your last name as well, like Kristel Foster does when she weighs in here?
If you are the TUSD Board member, Leila Counts, as one of your previous comments…
(on this piece: https://m.tucsonweekly.com/TheRange/archives/2019/06/20/a-multi-factored-look-at-tusds-enrollment-decline)
…seems to indicate, wouldn’t it be best to post under your full name and make your role as an elected member of the district’s governing board clear when you engage in conversations about the district. (“Transparency.”)
If you are up to date on the quality of the district’s programs, please provide current stats on how many full time teaching positions in the district do not have contracted, fully credentialed professionals covering them. A list of the schools where there are one or more positions filled by subs rather than salaried, certified teachers would help us interpret what that might mean. Then you might also want to provide a comparison between, say, the percent of classrooms covered by long-term subs in Fruchthendler with the percent of classrooms covered by long term subs in the school in the district that has the most unfilled positions.
Perhaps you will be back to report “There is not a single classroom in TUSD that does not have a fully qualified teacher contracted to cover it!!!” If so, I will be delighted to hear it.
P.S. There are a lot of former TUSD parents who did plenty of “helpful” things “IN THE SCHOOLS!!!” when their children were enrolled in the district, and it was WHAT THEY SAW THERE — in the classrooms, in the P.A. Board meetings, in the Site Council meetings, and ON THE GOVERNING BOARD — that motivated their transfers out.
This blog and comments section has become nothing more than a cheering section to try to keep TUSD afloat when thinking people know it’s all over but the funeral.
TUSD serves tens of thousands of local children and improving the services it offers should be seen as a priority. But, contra the non-stop propaganda parade, the first step in making it better is TELLING THE TRUTH ABOUT IT, not churning out lies about what its actual condition is or what the causes for declining enrollment are. Safire’s lumping declining enrollment in a conspicuously malfunctioning institution together with “our countrys shameful heritage of racial animus and discrimination” is an infamous LIE, a politicized excuse for mismanagement, and an enabler of further dysfunction. Same with the tired assertion that poverty causes low test scores. Poverty, as has been pointed out in these streams repeatedly, is a variable ASSOCIATED with low test scores. The jury is out on what all the causative factors for that correlation may be. Poor services in schools serving poor communities would certainly be one of them. People who constantly revert to “poverty causes low test scores” need to think long and hard about the extent to which that kind of discourse becomes an excuse for not being rigorous enough in assessing the quality of services offered to low-SES populations and taking responsibility for RAISING the quality of those services. If you look at a school in a poor neighborhood and say “poverty causes low test scores,” are you letting yourself off the hook for noticing things like “the math teacher is not certified, there are discipline problems because deseg funds that were supposed to be applied to provide classroom management training to teachers were never applied, and the kids don’t have textbooks they are allowed to take home to do their homework.”
As for the question I raised above about the extent to which some TUSD classrooms may still be covered by long term subs rather than fully certified teachers, here is a quote from the “Vision for TUSD” on Board member Leila Counts’ campaign website. She ran with a promise to:
“Fix our teacher shortage internally, by ‘growing our own’ TUSD teachers, starting with high school J-TED and CTE students. Helping these future TUSD teachers obtain their teaching certificates by collaborating with local colleges.”
This would seem to indicate that as of the run-up to the most recent board election, 2018, there was still a problem. Seems unlikely that Ms. Counts’ long-range vision for solving that problem, recruiting TUSD J-TED and CTE students and cooperating with local colleges to get them teacher certifications, has borne fruit yet, less than one full year after she was elected as one member of a five-member board.
In this context, Ms. Counts’ story about observing Kindergarten classrooms is puzzling. What is this story’s relationship to the reality of a district that is staffing many of its classrooms with people that don’t have teaching certification?
Bottom line for David Safier: If you’re looking for the reasons for declining enrollment, David, a district’s inability to fill all its classrooms with fully qualified teachers would be one thing to look at. Might want to take factors like that into consideration before implying that the thousands of people exiting a district experiencing these kinds of problems should be seen as “racists.”
Excellent opinion piece. Right on the mark, (speaking as a retired TUSD educator). Republican privatization efforts have destroyed public education. Republican greed and white flight are ultimately to blame.
I always wonder when I see a problem: how can I blame it on racist white people?
Simple bslap, join the party of failure and hatred, become a democrat. TUSD destroyed itself. At least students were lucky enough to have a way out. Charters succeed because SOME public schools are just that bad.
I have to wonder if David Safier has talked to any parents who pulled their kids out of TUSD. Thirty years ago a friend’s mother did because forced busing prevented her daughter from going to the school in sight of her back door. All the other siblings had attended that neighborhood school. Twenty years ago (among parents I know) it was ALWAYS because the horrible education made TUSD a waste of time. By age 15 a reasonably intelligent kid could test into Pima College & at least earn some credits. Counselors didn’t suggest this option. It took a lot of research, phone calls, & footwork to find out the benefits of skipping a few wasteful years in TUSD to start earning college credits.
Homes neighborhoods and business blight. 50 yr old homes building and standards changed so does investment in diminishing property values. Retirements employment possibilities are all public employees in Tucson. Who wants to move to a city thats blighting that is trying desperately to maintain a face of 40 years ago. Rigging the election ward process to winning wards not popular vote was a vote in itself for despair
It’s just mathematical David. Not complex at all. Over 30% of TUSD parents rate their child’s school excellent, well above the national average but not nearly good enough in Arizona’s brutally competitive education marketplace.
Suppose they are at 40% excellent rating? That still leaves 60% times 46,000 current students looking for something better. That’s over 27,000 students poised to walk out the door.
Just look at how tough the marketplace is. Chandler Unified has a 72% excellent rating. That could be the best in the nation for a large school district. Their academic gains were rated second highest in the nation among the large school districts. Yet, they have, if I remember the numbers correctly, 18% of their students not in their schools.
They also have a big chunk of other people’s students in their schools.
It’s a dog eat dog world in education. TUSD has enormous advantages from economies of scale but, they are not using them.
Back in the 50s, three scientists revolutionized the U.S. by first revolutionizing Japan: Deming, Juran and Drucker.
Deming’s mantra was continuous improvement. Really simple concept: measure, think, change, improve, measure again.
But, this hasn’t worked in education because of the complexity of test scores.
You have to measure the drivers of test scores, not the test scores themselves.
What drives test scores? Supported teachers (not money, classroom support), engaged parents and inspired students.
TUSD could easily pull a sample of parents, teachers and students every three months.
But, that would be a different cultural reality.
The second scientist was Juran. His whole concept was breakthrough. His classic story was the horse harness. When they harnessed horses with the ox harness, it was choking the horse. How long did it take to redesign the harness and triple pulling power? 750 years.
At the fifth grade, 10 percent of students read for less than 2 minutes per day. What kind of breakthrough would guarantee that every student reads at least 30 minutes per day?
The typical student does less than 10 math problems per day. What kind of breakthrough would be required to ensure that every student does at least 100 math problems per day?
In Gallup’s annual poll, less than 40% of students say that they laughed or smiled a lot yesterday. What kinds of breakthroughs are necessary to ensure that over 90% of students can say that?
There is a school system out there. It is improving every year. In a decade, it is going to be able to say yes to all these questions. That school system will almost certainly arise in Arizona. It will be the Amazon of education.
Death of a school district-Ray Atterbury
Parents who want to know if their children are being taught by long-term subs have a right to receive information about the teachers credentials by asking in the school office. One way to get a clue about the number of long-term subs who may be in your school is to watch on the TUSD job site how many teaching positions your school is still trying to fill. https://jobs.tusd1.org/teacher-jobs?page_s…
A few days ago I counted 97 classroom teaching and ExEd teaching jobs posted, about 11 days out before the start of school. (I wasnt counting the ExEd aids, the curriculum service providers, or some of the other stray positions listed with teachers.) The number will shrink as we get closer to Aug. 1, we hope. Last year, I believe, the school district announced that it had 80 vacancies on opening day. Principals will fill some of them within the first month or first quarter, but sadly, as soon as they fill some there are always other contracted teachers realizing they are in over their heads who quit, leaving more openings.
If your child has a long-term sub, it doesnt necessarily mean the teacher is unqualified or less-qualified than a contract teacher. To get a regular (non-emergency) certificate to be a sub, you must have a 4-year-college degree in any major, but many in TUSDs sub pool are certified teachers with traditional teaching certification (a teaching degree and a student teaching internship). Admin tell us that 25 percent of the sub pool are retired teachers. Retired teachers most likely have the traditional degree, highly qualified status, AND many years of experience. In contrast, some contracted teachers have alternative pathways certification (which used to be called intern certification.). An Alternative Pathways certified teacher must have a 4-year degree, pass a subject knowledge test, be accepted and enroll in college coursework toward traditional certification (ie take classes in educational theory, child development, teaching methods). Thus, an alternative pathways certified teacher on contract may have less experience than some long-term subs. Keep in mind teaching a full load of classes is time consuming and challenging, and when you add the requirement to take college classes on top of that, its darn difficult for most. I dont know if TUSD has ever analyzed or reported on how many Alternative Pathways/Intern teachers break their contract before the end of the year, but Ive known some. Ive also known Alternative Pathways/Intern teachers who simply didnt take the college classes as required, and no one from TUSD seemed to be overseeing if they were progressing in coursework. Their certification eventually gets pulled by the college and state, so they get pulled from the classroom.
I write this all to say the difficulty in keeping classrooms staffedand staffed with teachers who know what they are doing– is definitely a factor in why families leave. TUSD is now tracking the vacancies, but it isnt tracking how often classes become revolving door classrooms unable to keep even a sub. A misguided report last fall claimed the district had a 100 percent fill rate for long-term subs, but the administrator who claimed this clearly did not understand the data. I know of specific jobs where the principal couldnt get a long-term sub that the class was just canceled and students were told to take the core class in summer school; or when contract teachers were forced to take 6/5 duties when neither a contract teacher or long-term sub appeared after a month-long vacancy. The long-term fill rate was not 100 percent. Ive seen no reports analyzing how often Alternative Pathways/Intern teachers quit vs other teachers. There doesnt appear to be any program to nurture long-term subs to help them earn credentials (which would be one way to grow your own).
If the district has to open the year with teacher vacancies, TUSD could do more to fill vacancies with subs who are qualified and experienced teachers, adding more stability to the district. Long-term subs earn $125 or $145 per day, which works out to the equivalent of $23,375-$27,115 for a 187-day year (and almost zero benefits). If a principal is lucky he or she can talk a highly-qualified retired teacher into coming back until a contract teacher is found, but why would our retired teachers take on the stress for the wages of a sub? They know they are worth much more. TUSD isnt required to pay retired teacher long-term subs such a pittance, the leaders chose to do so. (If the position is vacant, obviously there is money available to pay more.) If leaders chose, they could put our highly-qualified retired teachers a series of short-term contracts that run from grading period to grading period (4-5 weeks), and pay them, say, at least a daily rate equal to a first-year teacher, until the principal can find the person who wants the contract for the rest of the year.
If the district leaders wished, they could get serious about growing your own by reaching out to the Alternative Pathways/Intern teachers and long-term subs with or without traditional teaching credentials to make sure they are getting the support they need.
There are some good schools, good programs and GREAT programs in TUSD. But given the crisis in teacher vacancies, all the success becomes precarious. I, for one, dont think the district has jumped the shark yet. But the danger is there.
Thank you, Dolores.
Funny how all the (mostly Republican) self-appointed “experts” here are so eager to destroy TUSD and all other school districts. They prefer charter schools like BASIS who use all their state allotted taxpayer dollars to enrich their owners to the tune of millions of dollars in assets (the owners are multimillionaires) while their students are exposed to never ending mindless, worthless testing and parroting test prep ed materials all designed to make someone rich, either the owners or test makers….and to hell with the best interests of the kids are. Say what you might about public school educators but they certainly never got rich by exploiting innocent children for their own greed.
@ Carlos Encinas: No, actually some have left TUSD precisely because they did not like the Basis model and TUSD was changing testing policies at some of its schools in a direction that made TUSD schools more like Basis. Some of those withdrawals went from some of TUSD’s least racially diverse schools to Catholic schools which were significantly MORE racially diverse, specifically BECAUSE the diocese of Tucson’s testing policies were appropriately flexible and not exploitive like TUSD’s.
These are the kinds of REALITIES you and other “Supporters of Public Schools” miss when you overgeneralize and, in effect, LIE about people leaving the district.
As for your “mostly Republican” assumption: I have no idea what political affiliation other commenters may be and I would not make assumptions about them. For my part, I used to vote for, walk for, and donate to Democratic candidates.
SPECIFICALLY because of what I saw in TUSD while one of my children was enrolled in the district — and SPECIFICALLY because of the LYING I saw — I stopped supporting the Democratic party. I changed my party registration to Independent and I now vote largely R, though I disagree with much of the Republican Party’s economic agenda. I vote R in Arizona SPECIFICALLY in support of the voucher policies that allow parents of modest means to get out of a school system where I have personally seen the administration and governance lying, implementing exploitive and damaging testing policies, and behaving in a way that does not warrant the trust that parents need to place in the people who are educating their children.
In sum, from my point of view it looks like Supporters of Public Schools need to have a lot more curiosity about what people are ACTUALLY experiencing in the district and a lot more respect for the TRUTH than they currently seem to have. While Supporters of Public Schools continuing the inaccurate, propagandistic speech about what is going on in the district and about the circumstances in which people leave and their motivations for leaving, they are actually doing more damage to their own cause than any Republican, any voucher proponent, or any charter operator could ever do.
Not mention is Tucson has higher poverty since the job market is not as good as Phoneix. Tucson has a 23 percent poverty rate and Pima County 13 percent. There is also white poverty as well as Latino poverty. Now, the job market is hard to changed since outside of Rayetheon lots of jobs are either call centers, or resturant and hotels.