Tim Steller has a worthwhile column for anyone who wants to learn more about the twists and turns of what he calls this “mean and ugly” TUSD board race. There’s lots worth discussing in the column, but I want to focus on a short quote from Mark Stegeman where he kind-of denies wanting to close more schools, with one possible exception.
“I have said repeatedly, for several years, that closures are not on my agenda, with the possible exception of one high school, since we never reached the question of closing any of our 10 major high schools. It is also not on TUSD’s current agenda; it is a completely made-up issue.”
So, according to Stegeman, he has no closures on his “agenda.” Interesting word, “agenda.” It doesn’t mean he’s against more closures. It just means it’s not foremost in his mind right now. Currently, he’s not considering putting the issue on a TUSD board agenda. In the future? Who knows?
Except, he might seriously consider closing a high school, though since that’s not on the “current agenda,” it also shouldn’t be talked about right now. He might bring it up soon, but not now.
He sums up by saying the whole closure thing “is a completely made-up issue.” The reason is, it’s “not on TUSD’s current agenda.” Of course, board members are elected to four year terms, which means they’ll be making decisions long after the “current agenda” is history, so their view on all issues related to the district, including school closures, is a real issue. But Stegeman doesn’t want to discuss that right now.
I’ve written that I think Stegeman should be voted off the board because of his game-player’s strategy of taking positions, not so much because he agrees with them, but more because he wants to create alliances to build a power base which will increase his influence in district decision making. His short quote in Steller’s column with all its positions and half-positions is a good example. It allows Stegeman to argue that he’s on anyone’s side, depending on who he’s talking to at the moment. If you’re trying to figure out where Stegeman stands on the issue of school closures in the near or far term using this quote, you have your work cut out for you.
We have two other recent Stegeman statements which continue to confuse his stand on school closures, one from the candidate forum at Palo Verde High on October 4 and another in a statement he made online Oct. 10.
At the candidate forum, the question was, “Do you think there will be, or should be, any school closures in the next few years?” Though the question addressed future closures, Stegeman spent most of his answer talking about past closures, then only had time to say,
“I do not agree with the current agenda of closing more schools. I think, we closed twenty. That was a lot.”
In Steller’s column, Stegeman said school closings are “not on TUSD’s agenda.” At the forum he talks about “the current agenda of closing more schools.” It sounds like a contradiction, though, to be fair, when words come tumbling out of your mouth in answer to a question, they don’t always express exactly what you mean to say.
So let’s look at an online statement Stegeman wrote on the subject of school closures which was posted a week after the forum, where he had plenty of time to make sure what he wrote reflected his views. He begins by talking about the district’s history of closures, then has a three paragraph section subtitled, “Closures going forward.”
When people ask about school closures, my answer is always the same: we have closed 20 schools since I joined the board, which means that we have already picked the low-hanging fruit. Isolated further closures may make sense, but that is not on anyone’s current agenda and is far down the list of pressing issues facing TUSD. In 2009 it was a pressing issue, but not now.
The one exception, as I have said for years, lies in the ten major high schools. The previous closure rounds excluded the major high schools, and Pedicone left before we did any serious analysis of that part. High school enrollment has held up fairly well, which argues against closure, but it makes sense to study the potential costs and benefits of high school consolidation.
People often ask about closing Sabino High School, because of its relatively small enrollment. The problem with closing Sabino is that almost all of its students would end up outside of TUSD. The revenue loss would be so great that the closure makes no sense. Sabino is not, from my viewpoint, a closure candidate.
Here’s the same mixed agenda one more time. We closed 20 schools on my watch, Stegeman writes, so more closures aren’t on the district’s current agenda. However, he could be for closing more schools in the future, but let’s not talk about that right now, since it’s not a pressing issue. But then again, we should be looking at the possibility of closing high schools in the nearer future.
Then comes an entire paragraph devoted to the reason he wouldn’t consider closing one school, Sabino High. Why devote an entire paragraph to one school in a general discussion about school closures? Maybe it’s just for completeness. Or maybe it’s because Sabino has a majority of Anglo students and is in a reasonably affluent area where the voters tend to stay informed and show up at the polls, and Stegeman wants to assure them that he wouldn’t put their school on the chopping block. I’ll let the reader decide which interpretation, completeness or game playing, makes more sense.
So, is Stegeman for closing more schools or not? The jury is out, which is just how Stegeman likes it.
This article appears in Oct 27 – Nov 2, 2016.
David, when is it enough to simply sacrifice all of your credibility and reputation? At this point I feel like there is a little man inside of you who simply wants to commit hara-kiri.
IT ISN’T ABOUT CLOSED SCHOOLS.
It is about the policies of your buddies, the grihalva board, which are causing teachers and students to flee the district. And you know what happens when there are no teachers or students in a school, well it is closed. So why not for a change quit throwing BS, such as TUSD Kids Fist wants to push out kids for condos or Stegeman wants to close schools just because well he wants to close schools, and FOCUS ON THE DAMN ISSUES, FOCUS ON THE KIDS.
***Where did your Board Majority hide the 123 and 301 money THAT they took from the teachers? When are these dollars going to the teachers?
***Why did the Board hide the discipline issues and what is being done to fix these now, not next year, now?
***What is being done to handle IEPs and 504 plans which are not being adequately handled as kids slip through the cracks?
***Why do the support staff at schools get shafted financially while HT takes care of his buddies at 1010? Can we put this money back into the schools?
***Why is TUSD hiding the situation with Magnet schools and their precarious situation of losing their status? What is being done to fix this?
No, not meaningful discussions!!! For you Mr. Safier it is all about protecting the control of the $600M budget so your grijalva friends can hire their inlaws and spread the money wherever they want while destroying our public school district. I hope you are proud of yourself. Can’t wait to send the Auditor Generals Report this coming year to you so you can see how good you are doing.
Man how do you sleep at night? What kind of journalist are you? You pig. You should be ashamed of yourself. You might as well work in Turkey, Syria, North Korea or one of the many other countries that does not have freedom of the press. You are clearly false and have the reasoning of an uneducated TUSD student. Kick rocks David and pray to God that you pay for what you are doing to our kids by justifying this behavior. Stegeman, Betts, and Rustand are my choices!
The problem with liberals like safier is they are totally closed minded. It’s all their way or no way. Critical thinking, alternative perspectives not allowed. They love to be ignorant and arrogant.
David:
You presume to write about TUSD, but you are ill-informed.
What is all this beating around the bush and hinting about Stegeman and his mysterious plans? Anyone who has been following the district knows that he has been scheming for some time now to evict some hapless neighborhood high school enrollees from their TUSD campus and turn the campus over to University High School (UHS) and a newly created, co-located middle school. This shockingly clueless, elitist, anti-integrationist plan is about all Stegeman has up his sleeve in the way of high school closures. There is no formless monster of collaboration with evil capitalists lurking in the background.
Would you like to start becoming decently informed about what is ACTUALLY going on in the district? Go on the Three Sonorans website and find the link to the League of Women Voters-YWCA sponsored TUSD candidate forum and listen to Stegeman brag about his UHS-separate-site plans and state his belief that electing any combination of candidates other than Foster and Juarez will result in a majority that will make UHS-separate-siters dreams come true. (He is wrong about that, but I’ll leave that discussion for another time.)
For now, let’s just emphasize what anyone actually WATCHING this district knows full well: NONE of the incumbents, not Stegeman, not Juarez and CERTAINLY not Foster, merit re-election. Enough dysfunction. Enough scheming and infighting. We need a fresh start with honest leadership.
Wrong, Again posted that liberals love to be ignorant and arrogant.
Taking that definition into consideration, that would make Wrong, Again the most devoted liberal on the TW site.
Get your self some help. Can’t wait till this election is over.
Jesus Christ, Safier … You write an entire bitch rant because the guy said the issue is not on his agenda?
Do you always have such a hard time understanding English?
David, you are not understanding that a nuanced position is not a contradictory position. (1) You may like or not like my position on closed schools, but it is consistent over time. It is not a black-and-white position, but it is clear. This column is like trying to divide the entire debate over different approaches to legalizing marijuana as being “for” or “against” marijuana. I am sure you are smarter than that. (2) There are scores of critical issues in TUSD right now, and none of them is closing schools. No one has been talking about it until the last few weeks. It is an issue manufactured for the election. (3) In 2012 my main role was to slow down closures not promote them. The Pedicone administration wanted to close up to 25 and I voted to close 7. To portray me as having a hidden closure agenda is completely at odds with the historical record. (4) The hit mailer just sent out against me claims that I have voted to close 20 schools, which is flat false. Maybe it would be worthwhile to write about that.
To Stegeman’s plans…: You may oppose my reelection, but I agree that you seem much better-informed than the writer of the column. I believe that the UHS plan is integrationist rather than the reverse, but that is a debate for another time; at least you understand where the issue is. It is not quite as simple as you say: the strategic planning for high schools is about more than UHS, but you are right that is a significant part of it. The board voted 5-0 several years ago to consolidate those issues. Finally, I regret saying that I expected any change in the board to lead to support to some version of the UHS plan, because Betts did promptly shoot that down. I honestly misunderstood her position on the issue.
Stegeman:
The need for transparency has been a constant theme of your commentary on the district. And yet, many people locally seem to be confused about the University-High-School-separate-site portion of your agenda, and about the fact that implementing this plan will involve closing one of the neighborhood-feed high schools in TUSD. You have not been sufficiently clear about this when communicating with the public. Also important for the electorate to understand are these facts: AP opportunities are still deficient in many of TUSD’s high schools and removing UHS from the Rincon campus will result in a significant reduction in academic and fine arts opportunities available to Rincon students. When information this important is consistently absent from your discourse about what you plan to do in the district if you succeed in your concerted and systematic attempts to change the majority on the Board, it raises the question of whether you are in fact as committed to “transparency” as you try to give the impression that you are.
If the slate you recommend is elected (yourself and any two of these candidates: Rustand, Putnam-Hidalgo and Riegel) you will, in spite of Putnam-Hidalgo’s opposition to the UHS plan, have a majority on the UHS-separate-site issue unless Hicks and Rustand or Riegel change the opinions they seem currently to hold. If you achieve the kind of majority you seek and you relish another district-wide debacle like the MAS controversy, you will pursue this UHS-separate-site plan. It seems likely that what will happen if you try to push it through is more destructive conflict and controversy, creating more wounds in the district it will take decades to heal.
A commenter like Safier, who does not understand the district and who seems to just take orders for his conspiracy-theory hit pieces from the political camp he affiliates with, will not help the public develop an ACCURATE understanding of the positions of the various candidates for this Board. In a context where the Arizona Daily Star’s coverage is so weak and incomplete, one wonders just how many voters will have anything resembling a decent chance of making properly informed votes in this election.
Whatever the election’s results are, I feel fairly certain that we can expect this: observation of and professionally informed commentary on the Board of this district will continue, in these comment streams and elsewhere.
Bravo Stegeman.
At least you have the cajones to stand up to this little slime ball Safier and refute his propaganda.
It reaffirms my vote for you (on my early ballot) last week.