The agenda for Tuesday night’s TUSD Board meeting includes this “Action Item” requested by new board member Rachael Sedgwick:
Discussion/Consideration/Action re Employment, Assignment, Appointment, Promotion, Demotion, Dismissal, Salaries, Disciplining or Resignation of a Public Officer:
– Superintendent
– General Counsel
The Superintendent is H.T. Sanchez. The General Counsel is Todd Jaeger.
Consider this post a heads up, not a discussion, because there too many questions and moving parts here for me to address them at this point. There could be far more to talk about Wednesday. If you recall, one of the major questions raised during the 2016 board election campaign was whether or not H.T. Sanchez was doing a competent job running the district, and if not, whether he should be fired. Sedgwick’s action item addresses the question head on.
The public part of the meeting will begin around 5:30pm in the Multipurpose Room, Duffy Community Center, 5145 E. 5th Street, though Sedgwick’s action item may be taken up considerably later in the meeting. You can watch a livestream of the meeting here.
This article appears in Feb 9-15, 2017.
Thanks for the heads up, David, though most who follow the district knew about this already.
The interesting question, though, is “Why is David Safier publicizing the event?”
Is it because Safier’s friends have already struck some sort of deal that they believe will stack the way the meeting plays out to make Sedgwick look bad?
After following your commentary on TUSD for three years, that’s the only reason I can think for you to recommend that people watch this Board meeting.
The Call to the Audience tonight should be interesting. It would be reasonable to conclude that many of those who’ve been on the receiving end of damage related to the constant lies and shocking incompetence of the last three years will be using the opportunity to tell their stories and express their opinions about which way the vote should go.
Personally, I’ll be watching for Stegeman’s vote on the issue. He and some of his University High School (UHS) separate site buddies may have made some progress in bringing Sanchez — who is no friend to either desegregation or increased opportunities for low-SES students like those enrolled at Rincon — around to their way of thinking on that particular issue. If he votes “no” on Superintendent termination, that will probably be the reason why.
(Though “UHS separate site” may seem like a small issue, to anyone who has been near UHS during the last decade, it is clear that for the hard core “separate-siters,” many of whom are well connected and one of whom is a former head of the local teachers’ union, this issue is the BE ALL, END ALL of their existence. They will mow down anything in their path to get it accomplished, including an opportunity to rid the district of disastrously bad leadership.)
There’s still time for Adelita to organize a ‘chain-in’ of children of illegal aliens to take over the meeting.
How fitting they should hold the meeting at the vacated Duffy location. That was one of the first TUSD schools to be destroyed. Metaphorically speaking that is.
Way too much politics.
Perhaps the Machine has taken enough hits from Sanchez’s incompetence and they’re now ready to dump him, just as they dumped Cam Juarez and made him the fall guy for a contractor donation scandal of which Kristel Foster was equally guilty.
No telling which way it will go. The only people who ever know what’s going on in this district are those who are made privy to the behind-the-scenes conversations that determine what the Machine’s next damage-control, self-protective move will be.
The sad thing is that no matter who the latest Board member or administrator victim is of the wrecking ball this network swings erratically now one way and now another, it’s always the students in this district that seem to end up getting damaged the most.
“No telling which way it will go.”
I respectfully disagree, No telling which way it will go.
It will go the way Raul and Adelita Grijalva say it will go.
But which way will that be? They’ve found some way to frame what happens in the meeting so it looks bad for Sedgwick, or they’re now ready to dump Sanchez? Building suspense in the audience about to tune in for the next episode of The Chronicles of Malfeasance…the only thing we can be certain of is that if Safier is publicizing it, there’ s some reason the Machine thinks it will be beneficial to them to have the herd of PCDP sheep that follow Safier watching it.
A third possibility materializes: the item will be pulled from the agenda.
Ah, The Chronicles of Malfeasance.
Tune in for the next episode of how to mismanage a massive public institution. And if you get bored in between meetings, there’s always Safier’s sad little blog and Kristel Foster’s ignorant and self-serving Facebook posts to keep you entertained.
And it was door #3…pulled from the agenda. Were there threats made?
If Rachael Sedgwick won’t pay $12 for a six ounce beer what makes you think she’s for paying H.T. Sanchez his $270,000 yearly salary plus an annual $25,000 entertainment stipend plus two $25,000 bonuses for completing the two years remaining in his contract and an additional $16,200 for meeting “performance” goals?
Go Rachel. get to the bottom of this mess. Tucson deserves better.
The representative for the African-American plaintiffs in the desegregation case spoke in the call to the audience last night and contradicted what the head of the teachers’ union had said about the district being within a year of achieving unitary status and resolving the desegregation case. She said — and there are other sources who track implementation closely who have said the same thing — that implementation of the Unitary Status Plan has been so poor during the last three years, there is no way the goals can be achieved and the case resolved within that time frame. She spoke directly to Rachael Sedgwick and said something to this effect: “you’ve had a setback tonight, but hang in there and keep fighting to improve services to our students.”
It’s a struggle that will be ongoing, and the politics in the district make it very difficult for constituents or parents with children enrolled in the schools to stay well-informed enough to understand what’s happening or to move any particular advocacy issue forward. The “players” in this game — firms with multi-million dollar contracts with the district (including testing companies), unions, heads of Chambers of Commerce — determine what happens and their priorities have little to do with delivering sound education or ensuring that the application of funds secures student benefit.
Reformers have been right to ask if the district structures through which public education has largely been delivered in the US are capable of reform. They are right to suggest that in many of our poor urban districts, it’s the structure itself that needs to be broken up or modified before any real alignment between the goals and behaviors of school administrators and student benefit can be achieved.
There is nothing to be gained by reporting on a system that is incapable of reform, where every kind of student-benefit advocacy is doomed to failure by virtue of the way the system works and by virtue of whose interests (not the students’) it is geared to protect.
Time to close the book on The Chronicles of Malfeasance. Those who’ve understood the moral of the story will invest their time, effort, and energy — and enroll their children — in small, well managed school districts that don’t have TUSD’s dysfunctions or in alternative charter and private schools where the administration’s goals align with their values and priorities.
Amen!