There seems to be a last-minute attempt to take money from Tucson Unified School District’s desegregation funds.
This morning, state Sen. Steve Farley announced that the House Appropriations Committee is taking on an amendment to SB 1120 tomorrow, which would require Tucson and Phoenix school districts to pay for a “forensic audit” of their desegregation spending by the auditor general. The committee would hold the desegregation funds until it reviews the audit.
“That would in effect chop $64 million annually from TUSD and $87 million from PUSD—meaning school closures, teacher firings, and class sizes pushing 50,” Farley said on his Facebook. “Bear in mind that both districts are already required by federal judges and court-appointed Special Masters to undergo similar audits on a regular basis.”
The amendment is specific to any school districts that get $15 million or more in deseg funding:
A. Notwithstanding section 15‑910, Arizona Revised Statutes, a school district that budgets more than $15,000,000 for desegregation expenses in fiscal year 2016‑2017 may not spend any monies for desegregation expenses in fiscal year 2016‑2017 until the auditor general conducts a forensic audit pursuant to subsection B of this section and until the house of representatives appropriations committee reviews those audit findings pursuant to subsection C of this section.
B. The auditor general shall conduct a forensic audit of any school district that budgets more than $15,000,000 in fiscal year 2016‑2017 for desegregation expenses pursuant to section 15‑910, Arizona Revised Statutes. The audit shall examine the desegregation expenses of that school district for at least the most recent fiscal year, but not more than the three most recent fiscal years, at the discretion of the auditor general. The costs of conducting an audit pursuant to this subsection shall be deducted from the monies that the school district receives for desegregation expenses.
C. The auditor general shall submit the findings of the audit conducted pursuant to this section to the members of the house of representatives appropriations committee. After receipt of the audit findings, the house of representatives appropriations committee may take either or both of the following actions:
1. Refer any evidence of misfeasance, malfeasance, misappropriation of monies or criminal conduct that is demonstrated in the audit findings to the attorney general.
2. Recommend proposed legislation to adjust desegregation funding for that school district or other school districts, or both, as a result of the audit findings.”
Amend title to conform.
Farley pointed out that the amendment is the handy-work of the Arizona Tax Research Association, which he alleges are trying to kill public education. He also brought that up at a TUSD board meeting he attended in February to discuss another bill seeking to defund desegregation programs, SB 1371.
TUSD Superintendent H.T. Sanchez testified against that bill in early February and plans to travel to the House committee’s hearing tomorrow and testify against this new proposal.
(Added after publication):
He has said the district does not oppose an audit. What’s concerning is the threat of freezing those funds while a review of such audit takes place.
“TUSD’s spending is already scrutinized by a court-ordered special master, the Fisher plaintiffs, the Mendoza plaintiffs, an appointed school budget operations expert and a federal judge,” he said in a statement. “We have no concerns about another audit. We just ask that a reasonable timeline be set so that we are not forced to try to meet court-ordered desegregation requirements without the funding we need to fulfill them.”
Sanchez will also discuss a House amendment to SB 1076, which would change the way the state funds schools over the cap on property tax.
“The amendment could mean that districts wouldn’t learn about their state funding levels until the school year is halfway over. For TUSD, a loss of $8 to $18 million would have to be absorbed in a matter of months, resulting in drastic cuts to programs, jobs and services,” a press release from TUSD said.
This article appears in Mar 19-25, 2015.
Imagine how short legislative sessions would be if the Legislature didn’t spend all of their time trying to take money from everyone else and give it to themselves via legislation of questionable, at best, legality and spent that time trying to address actual problems in this state.
Sounds to me like TUSD is about to get its hand caught in the cookie jar. These funds have been abused for years , the public has lost faith in TUSD, and nothing will change until all leadership is removed
What a boondoggle. At this point, I don’t believe either side. There just seems to be no middle ground whatsoever.
Close Tusd.
“meaning school closures, teacher firings, and class sizes pushing 50”
Wait, I thought these moneys were for desegregation, not day to day operations. Will TUSD shut down when the deseg order is lifted? Oh, wait, it will never be lifted, that’s the point.
bslap…. All students that this would affect need materials, teachers, buses, etc. THere are 2 bills and one is about just cutting money some more money . So between the 2, it would be devastating. This is all about closing public schools… especially TUSD and PUSD because they are larger and it would bring big bucks to privatization. This is not based on any wrongdoing on TUSD or PUSH ‘s part. The people supporting this bill are Koch financed plus other groups that want no government . Those of you who still believe that is is about any real need for an audit, know the Special Masters who are not in any way connected to TUSD perform regular audits. Those that say TUSD is hiding something really are believing the propaganda or are trolls for this group. If you doubt me, write AZvoices. org. I have written them only because I want the people who are overlooking these funds to know right now what is going on. I also wrote DOJ because what is happening is extremely discriminatory in so many ways. Our governor and Republican legislators are the ones in the cookie jar. Research this if you really care about public education and try and find where TUSD has done wrong. You will not find it. It is greed … pure and simple on the part of the groups backing these bills who also helped elected some of these officials. Also, write all the legislators… it matters a lot.
So, we have democratically elected local school boards so that State legislators can tell them what and how to do their job? I thought Republicans believed in local control.
Robin, I agree with you that our Arizona public schools need more funding, and that there are people at the state level who are not friendly to mainline district public schools (as opposed to privates and charters). It’s possible that the clause discussed above has been added to the Deseg bill to persecute TUSD, but it also seems possible that it has been added as an additional support to desegregation funds being applied for the benefit of the populations they are intended to help. I would need more information than is provided here before I could decide one way or the other.
There is something that puzzles me about the assertions you make every time the subject of auditing comes up (here and in discussions of the proposed internal auditor). You repeatedly assert or imply, from your position as a part time reading interventionist in TUSD, that you are certain TUSD is not guilty of any financial malfeasance. That may or may not be true — I certainly don’t know all the details of how the district is applying funds — but the question that keeps coming to mind as I read your commentary is: how can YOU know this, from the position you occupy? If you have accounting credentials, you have never mentioned it, and as a reading interventionist you don’t (I would assume) have access to comprehensive records relating to the district’s finances.
Unfortunately, “believing someone who told you so” is not a valid method for establishing facts relating to the proper application of funds in public institutions. It would be nice if it were — that would save everyone time and expense. It would also be nice if what we had here was a simple “good guy:TUSD / bad guy:State & Koch brothers” scenario, but the reality is much more complicated than that. With the district’s history being what it is, it is unwise to challenge people to “try and find where TUSD has done wrong.” Whether or not there are problems currently — again, I do not know — there have been problems in the past, and information relating to them is not hard to find.
As you continue to comment in these streams, it would be helpful to those reading your commentary to understand whether you speak for the district, or just for yourself. Are you providing some kind of official opinion, based on information you have received from people who occupy official positions in relevant departments within the district, or strictly a personal opinion? Do you have access to information relating to other areas of the district’s business besides reading intervention? Please explain.
I learned that there are already auditors taking care of this. I do not know them. Nor am I speaking for the district. I do not understand why some want so many audits when they are already being audited… quite periodically by the very people who are in charge of the deseg money. I never claimed to be an auditor although I am fully aware of what they do. So any implications you are making only tell me more that no one seems to have a reason for needing more independent auditors but rather try and make it appear that I am wrong for questioning this behavior on the part of the legislature and the governor with his budget. I understand the SPecial Masters are in charge of the auditing ( I am also not implying they are doing the audits but are in charge of it) and are very thorough . I want people to know why the state government here would want to harm a district by freezing money when there are already audits taking place. I am a taxpayer. They are very expensive. I deserve to know and no one that I communicate with says ever they have found wrong-doing. I hear mud-slinging. I hear threatening the district. That is why I contacted the DOJ. If there is wrong-doing anywhere, hopefully they will find it. I also thought the Special Masters needed to know what is happening. That is my right as a taxpayer and a U.S. citizen. I also communicate with my legislators and they are all getting a copy of what I sent to the DOJ and the Special Masters. THis is not about me. I am just pointing out the obvious to many. Outside agencies always need to be brought in when the possibility is there that discrimination could be happening or the money that is for the children could be used inappropriately such as unnecessary audits or money being frozen that is for them. Let’s find out.
What would you do with more funding?
If you need money modify the golden parachute pension plans they have offered up.
The audits overseen by the Special Master are to ensure funds are being applied in compliance with the USP, and they affect whether or not the district attains unitary status and gets out from under the deseg order. The Special Master’s role is to ensure the plaintiffs and courts are satisfied.
The forensic audit proposed by the amendment to SB1120 would make the district’s right to continue to collect deseg funds from taxpayers contingent on the district passing an audit to guarantee the funds already collected have been properly applied. The legislature’s role is to ensure taxpayer funds are not being applied to purposes different from those for which they have been collected.
Relevant questions: are the state’s criteria necessarily the same as the Special Master’s’? Are the taxpayers to be conflated with the plaintiffs and courts? Different purpose, different constituents, different overseeing authority: different process, different audit. Expensive, yes, but I’m not fully persuaded by anything written here that two separate processes are not necessary.
Dr. Sanchez’s concern about the timeline is a valid one, and if the state does pass this amendment, for the sake of the students in TUSD and PUSD, the state should ensure that the audit is finished and any concerns addressed promptly so that the funds can be disbursed before the beginning of the school year, not mid-year as the district fears they might be.
Gee, the repukes in the Leg not only want to bring back back-alley abortions but they hate our Public School kids too…
Who knew?
I still want the Dept. of Justice and the Special Masters here ASAP. These Republican legislators and the governor are too intent on harming TUSD and PUSD. Many others feel the same way as I do. The other question I have is why does the state have a right to freeze that money? I not only am a teacher here but I am a parent and a grandparent of students who were in and who are in TUSD. I do not like this scene at all.
who thinks that a state that illegally sweeps a billion dollars out of education, then gets told that it has to return 300 million, then ignores that court order and offers 70 million is acting legally now? Where are the courts to put some teeth into the 300 million or the billion, for that matter? Where is the legality in the current proposals? I empathize with you Robin, but I think the question is naive. Arizona doesn’t need things to be legal to go ahead and do them anyway! In the same way that our ledge would rather pay for their buddies who own private prisons to profit than pay for our kids to have a decent and educated future, our ledge would rather do this now and litigate its constitutionality later. This has been the name of the game for years. Who counters it and can I see by a show of hands how many of you out there think that TUSD would ever, I mean EVER, get the money back after the state finished its monitoring? All I can say about an independent auditor is that it would have been one more reason why calling for another audit would have looked redundant and stupid…..and I don’t think that makes me a troll for any group for saying that.
At any rate, its a moot point now. The loonies are in the ledge, and we down here, with no real power to make big changes (at least right now, since that all depends on elections, and they are at least a little rigged in a broad sense of the word) are bickering amongst ourselves about who the good guys are, or if there ARE any to be found! I’m tired of bickering Robin, as I mentioned in an earlier post, if you are right, prove those of us who disagree wrong by pulling off a budget override, something that TUSD needs desperately!
It appears the striker on 1120 is gone… yay Dr. Sanchez. For those who believe the Special Master is does not audit how TUSD spends the deseg money, I read a list of his duties and you are wrong. It is a PDF file and long and anyone can see it if they google Special Master TUSD 2015. That is his primary job. He watches where all the money goes. Also this is what Dr. Sanchez said yesterday in the TUSD dispatch:
“TUSD’s spending is already scrutinized by a court-ordered special master, the Fisher plaintiffs, the Mendoza plaintiffs, an appointed school budget operations expert and a federal judge,” he said. “We have no concerns about another audit. We just ask that a reasonable timeline be set so that we are not forced to try to meet court-ordered desegregation requirements without the funding we need to fulfill them.”
The only confusion on whether the deseg money is being abused is created by the very people who want to see the demise of public education.
I am so impressed with Dr. Sanchez in so many ways.
Robin, I’m not sure whom you are addressing when you write “For those who believe the Special Master is does [sic] not audit how TUSD spends the deseg money, I read a list of his duties and you are wrong.” No one posting in this comment stream has said that the Special Master doesn’t audit how TUSD spends the deseg money. Read the post entitled “Too Many Audits?” above and you will see that the commenter understands that the Special Master oversees audits to ensure funds are being applied in compliance with the USP.
Your statement that “the only confusion on whether the deseg money is being abused is created by the very people who want to see the demise of public education” is an overgeneralization. It may make you feel good to make sweeping, incautious statements like that, but you are being unfair to some supporters of public education when you do so.
Sorry but as long as TUSD fights to teach racist curriculum and it is run with such incompetence, I would never call it a public education and is the primary example why I support charter schools.
Sunny side is just as bad as TUSD.
I really really think TUDS is way to big, it should be divided up.
Paul there is no reason to do that. No racist curriculum.. It is monitored very often. Interesting that the last one who really said that was been found to have racist blogs. Another way to discredit TUSD.
For those who seriously question whether there was ever any real reason to think TUSD did anything wrong. THe outcome of the bill Is it failed! Yay! Because Senator Finchem accused TUSD of remodeling for a new boardroom as an example as well as a building of a 3 M dollar gym. Now really wouldn’t you think if this wasn’t a witch hunt that Senator Finchem would have researched his questions first? Here is the outcome of those questions:
nd a federal judge approves a final budget,” Sanchez said.
The superintendent did not dispute the cost of the new board room. But he told lawmakers there’s more to the story than what Finchem said.
He said while the district was implementing its Mexican American studies program there were people who wanted to go to board meetings but could not get in to the hearing room. And that site also did not provide translation services.
“So these folks filed a complaint with the (federal) Office of Civil Rights,” Sanchez explained. He said that agency told the district they can build a larger board room voluntarily.
“Or you could fight us on it and if we win you have to pay those legal costs and you still have to build a bigger governing board room,” Sanchez quoted OCR officials as saying. The superintendent said that information was relayed to the federal judge overseeing the desegregation case who gave the district permission to use the funds “to keep us out of more legal trouble with the federal government.”
Asked after the meeting about Finchem’s claim of $3 million for a practice gym, Sanchez said, “I don’t know what he’s talking about.”
There is no 3 million dollar gym. The plaintiffs for the lawsuit that created the deseg money(there are more than 1) was going to sue for it because so many could not get into board meetings . Money had to be approved before it was done. I am so sick of the money wasted on these accusations by people that could easily find the answers without all of this . But of course then it doesn’t plant in the public’s mind that TUSD is doing something wrong. I am still questioning why my tax dollars could be used for another audit when there are 4 at least already? Nobody seems to know the answer to that other than those here that say I don’t really understand audits. I do believe it or not.
Robin Beelen writes: “For those who seriously question whether there was ever any real reason to think TUSD did anything wrong. [Sic] THe [sic] outcome of the bill Is [sic] it failed! Yay!”
Punctuation and capitalization errors aside, there are pervasive problems with the logic used to draw conclusions in Ms. Beelen’s above post and with the evidence presented, which is highly selective.
Unfortunately for the district, some who believe they “support public education” don’t understand what kinds of changes will need to be made — both to the quality of public commentary provided by the district’s professional educators and to the quality of TUSD-internal financial oversight — before we have any hope of improving the district’s public image enough to pass desperately needed bonds and overrides.
Solve, I understand your need to make this issue about ‘the quality of public commentary’. However, it was not about that and you know it. It was about accusations made about TUSD regarding the misuse of deseg funds. The accusations were not only wrong but they were made without any serious inquiry into why those funds were spent for the boardroom which could have easily been discovered without attempting to put a freeze on 64 million deseg dollars if an audit was not done. There never was a 3 million dollar pool which could have been easily discovered also. The fact that you would defend such behavior says a lot about you. I hope DOJ looks carefully at what the state is doing.
Robin,
“Solve” didn’t defend the behavior of our state legislators or the specific arguments they made. He or she said that the logic used to draw conclusions in your post was faulty and that the evidence you provided was selective.
Point 1: The logic was faulty.
That might mean that statements like the one “Solve” quoted, “For those who question whether TUSD did anything wrong, the bill failed” involve logical fallacies. It may be pretty safe to assume that the evidence presented by the legislator/s who backed the amendment was not persuasive, though if we’re being thorough, we have to allow for the possibility that there may have been other reason/s why the amendment didn’t pass. In any case, it is not correct to assume that the fact that the bill failed proves that TUSD did not do anything wrong. You will not find many people who understand logic and entailments who will disagree with that.
Point 2: The evidence presented was “highly selective.”
That might mean your post included discussion of some issues and questions relating to how funds have been applied, but it didn’t include all of the issues that have been raised recently. It is unclear what specific issues “Solve” was referring to — perhaps issues raised in “calls to the audience” at TUSD board meetings or in other public forums? I don’t go to all the board meetings, but if I recall correctly from the ones I have attended or viewed online, it seems like there have been questions or comments about the application of funds that were not addressed in your post. Ask yourself: if the legislator in question was so uninformed about TUSD that he did not know the facts relevant to the board room and the supposed pool, is it possible that there are other facts relating to TUSD that may have escaped his attention? It would seem quite probable.
My position is not to ‘prove’ that TUSD did not do anything wrong. My position is that the evidence was not there that TUSD did use funds inappropriately. Anyone who says my information was ‘selective’ did not provide any evidence of that. I provided all the evidence that was published. And there also is a reasonable assumption that the bill did not pass because of the reasons published for wanting an audit and 64M in deseg funds did not meet any criteria of proof By continually saying my information is not complete, you are passively defending indefensible behavior. Wasting taxpayer money with the time and energy this took is also indefensible.
The critiques of your commentary provided here do not entail anything with respect to the commenters’ approval (or not) of the behavior of the AZ legislators. There are people in the district who would very much like to set up the “good guy: TUSD” vs. “bad guy: legislature and the Koch brothers” interpretation mentioned by one of the commenters above, but that interpretation doesn’t hold water, nor do these notions hold water:
those who don’t unequivocally support TUSD are necessarily friends of the AZ legislature – not true.
those who don’t unequivocally support the board majority are necessarily friends of the board minority – not true.
I wonder what Ann-Eve’s opinion is on all these interesting issues. Perhaps she will begin commenting under her name — or perhaps we catch glimpses of her opinions here and there in the commentary of others.