I opened my paper this morning to find this screaming headline on the front page, top right hand column: Sanchez left financial experts frustrated. Sounds bad. Sounds really bad. I unfolded the paper, took a sip of coffee and began reading.
I read the story once, paused to drink more coffee and clear my head, then read it again. The second reading left me with the same impression as the first. There’s not a whole lot of there there. The English teacher in me wanted to call the article Much Ado About Nothing, but that wouldn’t have been fair. The article is about something. To tweak Shakespeare’s title a bit, the article is Much Ado About Management Style. And it’s not nearly consequential enough to merit a front page story above the fold.
Here’s the thrust of the article. Superintendent H.T. Sanchez made financial decisions without consulting his Chief Financial Officer Karla Soto or his Deputy Superintendent Yousef Awwad who had been CFO before Soto. The article said both of them were frustrated with Sanchez at times and expressed their concerns in emails. Most of the concerns came from Awwad. Soto was mostly frustrated with the behind-deadline budget process which made it difficult for her to answer questions about the budget. That’s about it.
Sanchez makes decisions without consulting administrators who should be in the loop, the article states. I’m not surprised. Given his style and the hurry he’s in to move his agenda forward at TUSD, I imagine that happens on more than one occasion. So, what are the items Sanchez is impatiently pushing forward by taking some shortcuts with the process? According to the article:
Those initiatives included opening two early-learning centers, addressing salary inequity issues, lowering class sizes and moving away from the practice of annual layoffs.
Sounds like a pretty good agenda to me.
If the new programs Sanchez has put in place are valuable, the two questions raised by the article are: (1) Should Sanchez have consulted others more? and (2) Is he putting the district in hock with his expensive new programs? The answer to the first is probably Yes, he should consult with administrators more, at the district and school levels. The answer to the second is, we don’t know if he’s spending the district into debt. Awwad made that sound possible in the analysis he sent to Michael Hicks, but we haven’t seen the figures beyond Awwad’s early-in-the-school-year predictions.
That’s really not a whole lot to wrap a lengthy, front page article around.
Let’s dispense with the question of the possible $15 million deficit for the moment, not because it’s unimportant but because there are a few shoes which will probably drop in the next few days. Let’s take a look at Sanchez’s management style.
Here’s a private enterprise comparison. A company has been steadily losing business for the past few years, and maybe losing its focus as well. So it brings in a new CEO who is given the mission of turning the company around. She gets rid of some of the old management and replaces them with her own picks. She cuts through red tape and makes some bold decisions on her own, or pretty much on her own, which ruffle a lot of feathers since they shake up the status quo. That’s her management style. Did she do the right thing? The answer is, if a few years down the road the company stabilizes, maybe even gets back some of the business it lost, all that commotion was worth it, and the CEO will be hailed as a visionary on the newspaper’s business page. But if the company slips and falls and her initiatives drive it to the brink of bankruptcy, her tenure will be criticized harshly on that same business page. It’s not the style so much as the results which she’ll be judged by.
But school districts aren’t businesses, so let’s look at a deficit-ridden, ineffective city government where a new mayor comes in promising to make the city work better. Again, he’s a bold decision maker. City managers lose their jobs. Others are shuffled around and given new assignments. He does a little robbing Peter to pay Paul to move some of his projects forward. Just like that company in the previous paragraph, if his agenda shows results, if the city becomes more vibrant and the job situation improves, he’s a successful mayor. If things get worse, he’s a bum. Once again, it’s not so much the management style as the results that matter.
A company, a city government, a school district doesn’t exist for the sake of its employees. It exists to show positive results. If a little dose of “disruption” — a favorite business term these days which is being used in educational circles as well — improves things, then it’s probably a good thing. But if the disruption makes things worse, then it’s a bad thing.
Just one more point, folks, and then I’m done. (Sorry about all these long, ponderous posts lately, but I’ve been writing about complex issues and I want to talk about them in some detail.)
I have to say, I’m amused to watch folks hearing administrators complaining about Sanchez and taking what the administrators say at face value, as if their complaints are unquestionably valid and they’re speaking for the majority of the district. I’m amused because many of these same folks complain about all the administrative bureaucracy in the district and refer to administrators as “overpaid bureaucrats protecting their perks and their fiefdoms who are a big part of the reason TUSD is in such lousy shape.” All of a sudden, these same administrators are their heroes by speaking out against someone who is making their lives more difficult.
Now, I’m not one of those administration bashers. Sure there are lousy administrators out there, and sure there are some positions that don’t do anyone a hell of a lot of good, but there has to be an administrative bureaucracy, and national stats say that Arizona spends a lower percentage of its education budget on school administration than almost every other state. So I don’t think administrators are the enemy. But indulge me here while I try a little semantic experiment, where we put some recent complaints made about Sanchez by administrators together with people’s negative feelings toward all those “overpaid bureaucrats protecting their perks and their fiefdoms who are a big part of the reason TUSD is in such lousy shape.” Here’s what we get.
1. According to the article in the Star, some overpaid bureaucrats protecting their perks and their fiefdoms who are a big part of the reason TUSD is in such lousy shape complained that Superintendent Sanchez doesn’t consult with them enough.
2. An overpaid bureaucrat who spent the past few years protecting his perks and his fiefdom and is a big part of the reason TUSD is in such lousy shape left the district, but before he left, he alleged that the district is in danger of going $15 million in debt.
3. A group of overpaid bureaucrats protecting their perks and their fiefdoms who are a big part of the reason TUSD is in such lousy shape got together and wrote two anonymous letters complaining that they’re not being treated with enough respect by Superintendent Sanchez and he’s making too many changes in the district.
Those three statements have a different ring to them when I call the administrators the names lots of people who complain about TUSD call them. It’s hard to have it both ways. If administrators and all that overblown bureaucracy are the problem, why in the world would folks believe them when they complain? Or if folks believe them when they complain, why haven’t they shown the administrators the same respect in the past?
This article appears in Oct 9-15, 2014.
This is the most sense Safier has made in a while. This is exactly the reason these anonymous administrators are not courageous. Nobody can judge their records or credibility of their statements without publicly stating their opinion. They are not protecting students they are protecting salaries.
David, David, David. I get it. You’re doing your blind party duty, to protect Adelita and promote her new protégé, Jen Darland. But you’re wrong. HT is not an effective leader, turning around an ineffective organization. Its all smoke and mirrors, and resume stuffing for his next gig.
Adelita is going to lose big, and HT will be out of here, on his way back to the great state of Texas that he loves. And, you’ll be left holding the bag of $h!t they’ve asked you to hold.
Any school district in which a potential deficit is projected one week and a healthy reserve is claimed the following week is clearly poorly run and completely dysfunctional. The outgoing deputy superintendent was praised by the current superintendent, his predecessor and members of the Board for his knowledge, expertise and achievements during his years serving in both TUSD and the Arizona Department of Education. He was just named the CFO for the Portland (Oregon) school district. Is he now suddenly a crank and a moron because he brought to light some of Sanchez’s questionable practices on his way out the door?
Let’s assume that the outgoing deputy superintendent WAS either wrong about the potential deficit or acting out of spite as he was leaving to take another job. What would be his motivation for acting in such a manner? Conceivably, his immature actions could concern his next employer and cause them to question his professionalism and ability to oversee finances in their district. Why would he want to raise questions about himself in his new job by how he left this one, especially since his performance in TUSD up to this point had always earned praise and thanks from both the superintendent and the Board?
Everything that has occurred in the last two weeks points to a deplorable lack of oversight by the Board itself. They are not doing their job of staying on top of the finances in a district they were elected to run. They are not holding the superintendent accountable and they have failed to follow up on recommendations that have been made multiple times to hire an independent auditor who reports to them, not to Sanchez.
It is clearly time for the incumbents on the Board to be held accountable for their utter failure in leadership. Both Grijalva and Hicks have demonstrated that they can’t do the job entrusted to them by the voters. The electorate should punish them both on November 4th by turning them out of office.
The biggest overpaid bureaucrat in TUSD is Sanchez. After the multiple exculpatory columns he has written about Sanchez it is no surprise Safier fails to see this. Maybe its because Sanchez paid him a little attention and inflated his self-importance. Every time someone…including the administrators who wrote two letters to the public…criticizes Sanchez we see David Safier leaping to his defense. This is simply Safier trying to defend the indefensible. I can just picture Safier reading the article and skipping over all the paragraphs that had numbers in them. By his own admission he is not terribly knowledgeable about numbers. What qualifies him to respond to an article that is all about the manipulation of numbers? Absolutely nothing but arrogance.
At a minimum Sanchez has to explain his own false and misleading statements, such as the ones about trying to secure a mythical loan to pay for his day care center idea. It is a bad idea because the millions of dollars it will cost TUSD to do this should be spent in TUSD classrooms. First, Sanchez tried to use desegregation money to pay for this. The plaintiffs and Special Master Hawley would not go along. At that point he supposedly tried to secure a loan to pay for it. But…he lied about that because there is no paperwork to support his claims about attempting to secure a loan. He also needs to explain how he knew the less-qualified principal he hired was Adelita Grijalva’s mother-in-law, but…at the same time…he did not know they were related. He needs to explain how it is that the more qualified principal he did not hire…allegedly because she lacked the needed Arizona paperwork did, in fact, have all that paperwork. The bottom line is that TUSD’s superintendent has misled the public so often he can’t keep track of his own misrepresentations.
I appreciate comments that add to and debate the issues brought forward in these blogs. I do not appreciate the ad hominem attacks on the blogger. I find them unnecessary, distracting, unbecoming and an impediment to further discussion. Please, can we discuss the issues laid out in these blogs without the personal attacks and the questioning of the blogger’s motives?
Dave, thanks for the defense, but really, the ad hominem attacks against me do more to make the commenters looks small than to damage my credibility. If they want to go after me, fine. If they think it makes my fingers quake as I type out my next post, well . . . keep trying if you wish. I’m not running for office. I don’t have to worry about a small group of people challenging my integrity. So far, they’ve stayed at an acceptable level of ad hominem attacks. I hope they have the good sense not to get vicious.
I agree with Safier (gasp), CEOs brought in to any organization to effect significant change have to work with available resources often “robbing Peter to pay Paul.” The changes sought by Sanchez were for the most part admirable. I also agree that at the end of the day (or fiscal year) CEOs will be evaluated on the results of the changes made and the overall effects of the changes on the organization.
As long as no laws are broken or regulations flaunted (think Enron) CEOs serve at the good graces of their boards. So yes, the Star article is “full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.” There is nothing in the ADS article charging Sanchez with criminal behavior or willfully defying regulators, he’s been doing what he was brought in to do by the TUSD board – change TUSD. That same board, however constituted after the election, will continue to evaluate his performance against stated objectives.
I also agree with Think About It: today it is not clear if TUSD is running a surplus or deficit of say $15 million. As someone once said, “a million here, a million there, pretty soon we’re talking real money.”
Not knowing if the district is tens of millions in the red or black should serve as an indictment of the administration AND the board entrusted to oversee its operations. It is clear, or should be, that both groups are clueless as to the financial state of the ship; either it is about to hit an iceberg or sail ahead into calm seas. Now, because of incompetence or worse, the Board and TUSD administration are forced to hand over the reins of fiscal accountability to the state.
While continuing to debate whether there should be an independent auditor reporting directly to the Board.
Rich Kronberg makes the following point in the Comments Section of the Arizona Daily Star:
“….One way that school administrators hide money is to build a budget based on the
number of full time equivalent (FTE) teachers the district should have. Multiply
that by the average cost per teacher and that generates the cost of the teacher
unit. If, however, the district does not hire full time staff for all its teaching
positions…and TUSD has faild to fill all its teaching slots with full time
teachers for quite a few years…that leaves a lot of money in the budget that
will not be used to pay for teachers and is available to spend on what might, at
best, be termed “fluff.” Unless the Governing Board actually knows the number of
FTE employed by TUSD, it can easily be misled by the budgeted figures. What do
you want to bet that the members of the Governing Board (with the possible
exception of Dr. Stegeman) have no actual knowledge of how many TUSD classes are
taught by a parade of substitutes instead of full time highly qualified
teachers?…”
There are approximately 180 Positions Posted on the TUSD Web Site. It needs to be determined if the Current Budget Estimates are a piece of “Financial Legerdemain” to hide the misuse of Public Monies and possible Fraud. Since Public Funds are involved, an immediate Audit by the State and Federal Government should be called for the TUSD Board..
“the ad hominem attacks against me do more to make the commenters looks [sic] small than to damage my credibility.” Precisely.
Well Mark, not quite “precisely.” This highly trained English teacher and expert proofreader put in an “s” where it didn’t belong. Otherwise, you’re right, my statement was ferpect . . . I mean, perfect.
It is hard to know how to convey to people who do not have direct experience of trying to get students’ needs met within the current TUSD bureaucracy and administration just how dysfunctional the current system is. The dysfunctions are at this point so woven into the institutional culture of the district that the causes are not identifiable and in a sense it doesn’t even matter what they were. What matters is: can this institution be fixed; can it begin to function well and address students’ needs?
I had hopes that Dr. Sanchez would be able to effect positive change and I believe he wanted to do so. The problem for me at this point as I continue to think about how to get problems on our site addressed is that there have been so many mutually contradictory stories coming from the factions on the board that oppose one another, and so many reports in various media outlets (most of them credible) of irregularities in procurement processes, hiring processes, and poor and opaque financial planning, I find that I don’t have the trust needed to believe that approaching the Superintendent and board will do any good. My trust has been destroyed. There is at this point nowhere to turn to get advocacy issues addressed, and in a district that is responsible for educating somewhere in the neighborhood of 49,000 students, that is in itself a very big problem.
From what I’ve seen during the last year, the commenters who note that BOTH Stegeman and the Grijalva / Pedersen network have contributed to the board’s divisiveness and dysfunction are correct. I’m counting the days until the election and waiting to see how the board is then constituted. If the elections produce either a Stegeman-controlled majority or a Grijalva-controlled or -affiliated majority, I’ll throw the materials I’ve assembled relating to student need advocacy in the trash and give up.
The superintendent is a lightning rod, and through the years many have felt the lethal shocks. Thinking back, I can recall a smart guy like Paul Houston giving it a good shot and then moving on as gracefully as possible. Those who certainly seemed less inspired (e.g., George Garcia, Roger Pfeuffer, et. al.) seemed to stay longer. The more recently departed superintendent Elizabeth Celania-Fagen showed just how suddenly the revolving door can spin. The job is a meat grinder and few realize it until it starts. H.T. Sanchez looks young and energetic and we hope he can learn quickly and effectively, but the air is rarefying around him. Hopefully, someday, all the people who really work hard every day, every year in TUSD will prevail.
In fairness to all TUSD superintendents who dared to endure the office, regardless of their efforts, there is a long-standing problem that was described eloquently 28 years ago: “In a February, 1986, speech to the Tucson Metropolitan Ministry, Dr. (Paul) Houston described the tone of the district. He said, “The board may be the most visible example of this, but it’s more than the board. It’s between parents and board members, board members and teachers, teachers and administrators. This whole district has become programmed, over a period of time, to conflict, and I would rather be in the position of searching for solutions to problems than acting as a referee. We’ve got to stop this senseless bickering we have here and get on to some action.”