A few weeks ago I posted about the independent expenditure campaign, TUSD Kids First. The main takeaway was that TKF had collected a total of $35,150, most of it from five local businesspeople: Committee Chair Jimmy Lovelace, $3,334; Treasurer Kathleen Campbell, $8,170; Cody Richie, $7,500; Jim Click, $7,500; and Tom Regina, $5,000. At the time, the TUSD board candidates and TKF had submitted their Pima County campaign finance reports listing their contributions through Aug. 18. Since then, a new set of finance reports have been filed which include contributions through Sept. 19. The only new contribution to TKF was from Jimmy Lovelace for $216.05. However, new contributions to the candidates reveal more about the priorities of the independent expenditure committee.
TDK appears to have two main objectives. The first, which has been clear since the IE began in February, is to get rid of either or both of two current board members, Cam Juarez and Kristel Foster. That would shift the balance of power to a new board majority, replacing the current majority formed by Juarez, Foster and Adelita Grijalva to one which included Mark Stegeman and Michael Hicks. The second objective, which has become clearer with the most recent financial statements, is to elect Brett Rustand as a member of the new majority.
Three of the major TKF contributors, Ritchie, Campbell and Flake, have been active in contributing to individual board candidates. Let’s go through them one by one.
We’ll begin with Cody Ritchie, even though at $7,500, he’s not the largest TKF contributor, nor is he one of the two people running the committee. The reason to begin with Ritchie is, he’s the principal owner and president of Crest Insurance Group. Board candidate Brett Rustand is a vice president at Crest, one of more than twenty employees with that title; it’s a large company. That means Ritchie is Rustand’s boss and most likely would be delighted to see his employee sitting on the TUSD board. Ritchie is a generous political donor who has given over $100,000 to political candidates over the past ten years, exclusively Republican candidates, including most recently, more than $5,000 to Donald Trump. His one contribution to a 2016 TUSD board candidate was for $1,000 to Brett Rustand. He gave $1,500 to Michael Hicks’ reelection campaign in 2014.
Next is Kathleen Campbell who gave $8,170 to TKF and is its treasurer. She isn’t listed as giving any contributions to board candidates. However, her husband James gave $1,000 to Mark Stegeman’s campaign and another $1,000 to Brett Rustand. Other than their contributions related to TUSD board races, the Campbells aren’t big political donors. The only other recent contribution I found was $1,250 to Martha McSally’s reelection campaign.
On her contribution to TKF, Kathleen listed her occupation as “Home Builder” with Mesquite Homes, the company she and James own, and for her address she used their downtown business office. On his contribution to Stegeman, James listed his home address and left both his occupation and employer blank, making it more difficult to connect James to Kathleen than if they had listed the same occupation and address. For his $1,000 contribution to Rustand, he used the name Jim instead of James and again used his home address. He listed his occupation as “Developer” rather than “Home Builder” as Kathleen did, and Oasis Tucson instead of Mesquite Homes as the company name. Oasis Tucson is the original registered name for Mesquite Homes. It looks very much like Kathleen and James are trying to obscure their connection to one another in the three financial reports.
In the 2014 TUSD board election, the Campbells gave $2,500 to Michael Hicks’ reelection campaign and $2,302 to Debe Campos-Fleenor’s campaign, both of whom were also supported financially by Mark Stegeman. Hicks won. If Campos-Fleenor had won as well, it would have moved the board majority into Stegeman’s camp.
The Campbells have a larger financial stake in the decisions made by the TUSD board than any other TKF contributor. Their company, listed sometimes as Oasis Tucson and sometimes as Mesquite Homes, placed bids to purchase three of the schools closed by TUSD in recent years, most likely so they could build homes on the properties: a $3,500,000 bid on Townsend, a $1,100,000 bid on Van Horne and a $1,656,000 bid on Wrightstown. All three school sites went to other bidders. A board which favored further school closures would increase the Campbells’ opportunities for buying district property in the future, and a friendlier board majority could improve their chances of coming up winners in the bidding process.
Next is Jim Click of Jim Click Automotive who gave $7,500 to TKF. Click is a generous contributor to local organizations, and he also gives generously to political campaigns. He’s given over a million dollars in political contributions over the past decade to state and national Republican committees and candidates. He and his wife Vicki each contributed $6,250 to Brett Rustand’s campaign. The total of the two contributions, $12,500, is a little under half of the $28,284 Rustand has collected. Those are by far the most generous contributions the Clicks have made in recent TUSD board elections. Previously, they gave $2,000 to Michael Hicks and $2,500 to Debe Campos-Fleenor in 2014 and $430 to Mark Stegeman in 2012.
Neither Jimmy Lovelace nor Tom Regina have contributed to any of the board candidates’ campaigns.
Summing up: Rustand received more than half of his total contributions, $14,500, from three major contributors to TUSD Kids First. Stegeman received $1,000. None of the TKF donors contributed any money to the campaign of Betts Putnam-Hidalgo, though the IE lists her as one of the three candidates it endorses along with Rustand and Stegeman.
A Note About Stegeman’s Campaign Self Funding. Based on the contributions to candidates, it appears that Rustand is by far TKF’s favorite candidate with Stegeman coming in a distant second. However, it may be that the group’s affection for Stegeman is greater than is indicated by their contributions. The reason is, Stegeman has a history of self-funding a major portion of his previous two campaigns and may not need the extra help their contributions would provide.
When Stegeman first ran for the board in 2008, he contributed $15,500 to his own campaign and received about $3,350 from other contributors. In 2012, he loaned his campaign $38,600, all of which he spent, and received about $10,000 from contributors.
So far in this campaign, Stegeman has only loaned himself $3,500, but that’s no indication of how much of his own funds he’s willing to spend. In his 2012 campaign, he didn’t make his first loan of $10,000 to his campaign until Oct. 11, so it didn’t show up on his campaign finance report until Nov. 2, a few days before the election. He loaned the rest of the $28,600 to his campaign well after the election was over. About $20,000 of his contributions came more than a year later.
So, based on his contributions to his past elections, if Stegeman needs to spend thousands of dollars more than he receives in contributions, he will be able to self-fund whatever it takes to pay his expenses. He doesn’t seem to need the financial assistance of the big TKF donors.
This article appears in Oct 6-12, 2016.
Is “TDK appears” in the start of the second paragraph supposed to read “TKF appears” ?
No.
Since Mr. Safier is implying that my wife is trying to cheat the system as well as being a greedy homebuilder I only feel I should respond. Unlike Mr. Safier, that donates to candidates and doesn’t disclose those conflicts, I am more than happy to explain our personal situation.
First and foremost, my wife believes deeply in TUSD. I have tried repeatedly to get our kids away from the drama in TUSD but Kathy feels as residents we should support our public school system. My son graduated from UHS and my twin girls go to Sahuaro and Sabino. I myself am a product of TUSD. Our family is all in with TUSD. Kathy refuses to run away as so many others have and deeply believes that with more dollars in the classroom and a better working climate things will change. Things will be better for our kids and for our teachers.
The other side. My wife has repeatedly donated to TUSD including $10,000 to the Career Counseling Center at UHS, thousand of dollars in art supplies, refrigerators, food, water and helped refurbish the vehicles for the great UHS-Rincon marching band. Cody Richie as well has donated to multiple schools including providing the Tucson high football team their shoes. Jim Click has repeatedly supported the auto mechanics program at TUSD as well as other TUSD needs. When it comes to TUSD this group that you ridicule are givers not takers.
TUSD’s own dysfunction caused my wife to engage. Of course as a developer I was against it for fear of retribution but as she stated eloquently, family comes before everything. One of our girls has been repeatedly bullied and beat up at her TUSD school. It didn’t end until the other girl was taken away by the sheriff but was back in school the following week. The advice from the sheriff was we must press charges because the school won’t do anything to protect our kid. This was very frustrating to Kathy.
Add to this the multitude of other issues; subs teaching for months on end with no permanent teacher, teachers that are not accredited and no little of their subject matter, the overall shortage of teachers throughout TUSD and administrators that were either too busy or too inept to truly care. Of course TUSD promotes the inept so that fixes itself sometimes. So before Mr Safier implies we are also racist let me state that our twins are Hispanic and my son is from Azbaijan.
As for work, I do work for OasisTucson Inc. Anyone that knows me knows I am primarily a developer as I have a hard time holding a hammer. It is a fact that our multiple companies are related but Zach Hinman and my wife drive Mesquite Homes. There is no hidden agenda here as I put OasisTucson on everything including my e-mails. And Mesquite Homes has no interest in TUSD land. That decision was made a few years ago when Zach and Kathy wanted to stay small and only build 10-15 homes a year.
Finally it is laughable that Mr Safier can’t understand that there are people whose kids go to TUSD that may want something better. This isn’t about politics, it is about our damn children and it is people like David Safier that make even me willing to throw it all away in Tucson to make change happen.
Jim, I am so sorry that you had to respond but I am glad that you did. TUSD has incorporated people to make it appear to be a three sided fight. I went through everything you listed while our oldest was at Sabino. My wife and I agreed that we could not do it again and moved our children to Desert Christian. What an amazing difference in experiences for both, our children and ourselves.
Don’t wait any longer to put off what you know needs to be done. This district may never be fixed. Blessings.
David, where are your speculations about the motives of the wife of a marketing executive in ESI who lives in the Phoenix area and DOES NOT have students enrolled in TUSD schools, when she donates to the school board campaigns of Board candidates who recently voted to award her husband’s company a $21 million contract? Or the problems with the way the donations were recorded, listing the wife but not the husband in a Phoenix area couple whose names would not be easily recognized in Tucson? Still missing from your frequent blog posts on TUSD.
Yet, of a couple that is well known in Tucson and has children who have used TUSD schools, you write, “A board which favored further school closures would increase the Campbells’ opportunities for buying district property in the future, and a friendlier board majority could improve their chances of coming up winners in the bidding process.”
That presumes that everyone operates on a quid-pro-quo basis. Some people may actually support the installation of fair and transparent bidding processes, though I know that’s hard for some to believe, having never run into people who care to advocate for running public institutions the way they should properly be run.
You might also want to consider that people who’ve had kids enrolled in TUSD schools during the past three years have every reason to take an interest in this race: they have seen first-hand what kind of damage is being done in the schools. They have much more reason to involve themselves than an ESI-affiliated couple living in the Phoenix area.
Whats clear from this blog piece is that you have very little idea of who the people behind TKF are or what motivates their efforts to spread awareness of the district’s problems. As usual, you haven’t taken the trouble to ask. You never think it necessary to “investigate” anything other than what kind of manipulative propaganda the local political machine wants published this week. If Kristel and Cam got their hands dirty in a quid-pro-quo donation scam, you have to try to sling the same sort of mud at people on the other side of the majority-minority divide, even if there is no valid basis for doing so.
Your filthy insinuations and selective “research” methods hurt real people and are beneath contempt.
I hope TKF is motivated to get Foster and Juarez off the TUSD Board. They have been detrimental to TUSD. I can’t imagine what TUSD would be like, if the two of them get re-elected. TUSD is losing teachers at a horrific rate. Every year on their watch, TUSD has had more and unfilled teacher vacancies. Ask parents, like those at Utterback, whose children have subs instead of teachers.
The discipline problems and bullying in too many TUSD schools are out of control. Ask teachers and they will tell you! Many of TUSD’s elementary schools are in great shape and offer an excellent education to their students. Unfortunately, some elementary schools and many middle schools are in trouble. Those are the schools that teachers are fleeing. The problem is not TUSD’s teachers. They’re working very hard. but it becomes too hard when school discipline breaks down around them, when central administration prevents principals from enforcing TUSD policies on discipline.
TUSD fired the principal of Booth Fickett the day after he spoke to Channel 9. The remaining TUSD principals certainly got the word.
The current Board majority, Foster, Juarez and Grijalva appear unmoved by complaints and pleas from parents. Superintendent Sanchez claims Channel 9’s investigative reporting is old news and everything is great. It’s not. Three Utterback parents complained on October 6. Two parents, one from Palo Verde High School and one from Dietz complained on September 13.
As a graduate of THS, a life-long resident and a parent of 3 wonderful children in TUSD, I am so glad Mr. Click and others with strong community ties have joined this conversation.
TUSD is the economic engine that drives Tucson. Our children are worth more than the 49% going into classrooms. I am voting for a fiscal conservative who can prioritize our classrooms. I will vote for anyone who has a plan to stop Juarez and Foster giant bonuses, stipends and compensation packages. #kidsworthmorethan49cents
Vote for Rachel Sedgwick and Brett Rustand because they want accountability, sound fiscal decision-making, and student-centered priorties. They are focused on our students and not involved with the drama.
Stegeman and Betts are well intentioned. A vote for them wouldn’t be bad but they both have histories…..and drama…..
Do
NOT
Re-elect
Foster or Juarez unless you want more bonuses and more directors at district office!!!!
Mr. Campbell simply isn’t being honest when he says Oasis and Mesquite Homes have no interest in TUSD land when they put MULTIPLE multi-million dollar bids on multiple parcels.
Whether Mr. Campbell likes it or not, the fact is that these kinds of campaign contributions along with these kinds of business dealings look extremely suspect. They are THE EXACT same kinds of complaints that TUSD Kids first is making about current members of the TUSD board. We have a word for this sort of thing, it’s called hypocrisy, and it deserves to be called out. Kudos to Mr. Safier for doing it.
Dear Sorry,
Mr Safier is connecting dots that don’t exist. It would be like someone saying Kristal Foster is trying to destroy TUSD to make Sunnyside better since she works at Sunnyside. Ludicrous. Believe it or not, people in business do have kids in school and in our case, kids in TUSD. We have felt the direct impact of the struggles of TUSD and our kids have been harmed. My wife did not donate all her time and treasure into TUSD expecting anything in return. Yup, sometimes business people truly do care about their kids welfare as well as the teaching environment they learn in. We not only have a stake in TUSD as parents but also as business people. In order for Tucson to be more successful and not be one of the poorest cities in the US we need higher wages and productive businesses. This all starts with our public schools being A rated and overachieving. It is as simple as that.
As for work, OasisTucson and/or Mesquite Homes will never bid on another TUSD project. We did it previously to try to help the district and the City bridge the gap of two very different visions. That scenario is completely different than taking $10,000 from a vendor up in Phoenix with no other interest in Tucson or TUSD. As my father used to say this is a typical situation where the Board majority is trying throw mud to cover up their own crap (he used another word).
Mr Safier is connecting dots that don’t exist.
We are used to that Jim. He creates the dots and then connects them for us. But most of us aren’t having it.
TUSD must change or be eliminated. he knows it.
“Sorry Mr. Campbell” writes, “these kinds of campaign contributions along with these kinds of business dealings look extremely suspect. They are THE EXACT same kinds of complaints that TUSD Kids first is making about current members of the TUSD board.”
No, they are not. The donations to Foster and Juarez from a Phoenix couple associated with ESI were given to two board members after they voted to award a $21 million contract to ESI. How is this different from the fact that the Campbells’ companies bid on TUSD property in the past, and then the Campbells donated to the campaigns of TUSD Board candidates?
The Foster-Juarez donations happened after these candidates voted to award a multi-million dollar contract to a company whose marketing executive made the donations. There is documentation that the multi-million dollar contract was awarded, that two incumbent candidates who voted for the contract received the donations, that one incumbent candidate who did not vote in support of the contract did not receive a donation from the couple, and there is documentation of how the donations were recorded by those receiving campaign funds for Foster and Juarez. There is documentation that Foster and Juarez kept the contributions and did not propose to return them until after the connection between the donations and the company to whom they had voted to award a contract was outed in the media. On the other hand, the Campbells bid on TUSD property in the past. There is no documentation that their support of TUSD Board candidates is related to an intent to bid on TUSD property in the future, and no documentation that their interest in these candidates relates to their business affiliations and not to their belief that these candidates will manage a district in which they have children enrolled better than the incumbent members of the board majority have been running the district. (The Campbells, unlike the ESI couple, live in Tucson, have children enrolled in TUSD schools, have a demonstrated history of concern with TUSD and philanthropic investment in TUSD.) The supposed connection between The Campbells’ businesses and their political activities is purely speculative and entirely un-proveable in a context where they have many other valid and easily understandable reasons to be taking an interest in the TUSD Board race. With the ESI donation, what other interest can that Phoenix couple have had in a Tucson-area school board race, besides their interest in the fact that the firm employing the husband had just been granted a multi-million dollar contract on the vote of the two candidates to whom they donated? Their expressed reasons for taking an interest are nowhere near as plausible as the Campbells’ clearly expressed reasons for taking an interest, which include that their children have experienced problems in TUSD schools as a result of the way the district is being managed by its current leadership.
Kathy Campbell has a master’s degree in education and teaching experience and is better qualified than most people who take an interest in TUSD to recognize valid educational methods when she sees them. She has been a generous supporter of and advocate for TUSD for many years and in many different contexts. For partisans who support the Board majority in this district to disparage her and imply, based on pure speculation, that her efforts are motivated by business concerns and not by a genuine concern for students is both implausible and inexcusable.
The board majority in this district proposes to run a bond campaign in the future. Perhaps these politicians and the CEO they selected should be asking themselves how exactly they expect to garner the public support necessary to do that if this is how their affiliates and supporters treat business leaders who donate, volunteer, and take an interest in the district’s affairs. Tucson residents have every right to support and oppose the campaigns of anyone they please. Business people, like others, have a right to participate in the political process and there have been no documented instances of the Campbells failing to be completely honest and open about what they are doing politically, how they are doing it, and why they are doing it. If in the future candidates to whom they have donated vote to award one of their businesses a contract when there have been other bidders who can credibly be said to be offering the district a better deal, there will be cause for concern. Until such a thing occurs, all these speculations and insinuations are without foundation and are not worthy of the time it takes to read them.
In the context of the dishonest and unprofessional way this district has been run since this Board majority took over, putting up signs that say “Change the Board” is one of the sanest and most civic-minded things anyone could have done. Safier fails to mention that in a town like Tucson, business people who need to obtain permits for the work they propose to do may actually be risking damaging their enterprises by openly opposing some of the entrenched politicians on the TUSD Board who have connections in city and county agencies, but it would never occur to Safier to make note of that while he tries, ineffectively and entirely unpersuasively, to drag the name of civic-minded Tucson residents who have done nothing wrong through the mud. Over the course of the last three years, Safier has made what he is completely clear: not a progressive, not an advocate for sound educational methods or humane treatment of students in the schools, but a petty propagandist who can always be relied upon to defend the operations of an entrenched, ugly political machine and its soiled operatives. He has, in the past defended many things that are indefensible, including Sanchez’s compensation package and his management of the desegregation order. That he is now stooping to the level of resorting to these kinds of smear tactics on his friends’ political opponents is, as was said above, beneath contempt.
It’s starting to look like the laundry list of the Clinton’s lies, fraud and deception that is the haulmark of the Clinton family. Why are we not holding these supposed public servants responsible?
Has America become this lazy? Turn off the TV and pay attention. Your present and your future along with your children’s future are being stolen from you.
Do you even know it?
Truly, it doesn’t matter.
Here is the only thing that counts. Don’t let those in power distract you from the message.
1. If you take a chance and vote for Reigal, Rustand, Sedgwick….. who all want positive change for TUSD and are new to the TUSD board……….you will probably get A LOT OF GREAT NEW IDEAS.
2. Vote to keep Foster, Juarez, Stegeman and guaranteed to get more of the same high bonuses, high district-salaries, keep classroom spending at 48.7% probably lose more custodians, more monitors, more instructional support probably have more teacher vacancies and less long-term substitute teachers as their pay has been reduced through ESI.
I am a Democrat who voted for Foster and Juarez four years ago thinking that they would truly contribute to TUSD. It was a monumental mistake! Juarez and Foster have been a very big disappointment, especially on one of the most critical areas needing support and attention
within TUSD – – the desegregation court order. Time and time again each has conceded to the recommendations of the Superintendent, who came into the District arguing against the court order.
But this is not the only area within which they have failed to do what is needed. The overall management of the District is in a state of confusion, frustration, and crisis. Everything from student discipline policy; to purchase orders and work orders not being filled; to TUSD’s new student data system (which allows for less data integration than the former system); to severe facility problems; to the 1 2 3 and 301 funding being stashed to balance the budget while denying teachers what is due to them; to not providing the appropriate number of books per class is all in shambles. TUSD classrooms are not being filled by highly qualified certificated teachers. Instead classrooms, especially on the south and west side of the District are filled with temporary teachers who change every few weeks.
What is most consistent in TUSD is that most things that HT and his team are responsible for are simply not working. HT remains in a position for which he was not qualified to assume. The turnover rate within his immediate team has turned over at least one and half times. He habitually has filled top leadership positions with men who he hangs out with socially. It is a poor practice and an unfair and discriminatory practice. He passed over qualified female administrators to promote Mark Alvarez to an assistant superintendent position. Mark was barely managing a department and now he oversees numerous schools. Insiders can not help but snicker at the joke of all of this. These type of decisions do not support the District and demoralize those who have committed their careers to the institution. What is working best is what is happening at the schools, however, the schools need to be shown respect and support (as in the provision of workable budgets, as in highly qualified teachers in every classroom; as in supplies and books which are needed; as in “systems” that support teachers and students; as in full support of the magnet schools; etc.)
Transparency as a result of how TUSD is managed by Sanchez and his Board bloc (Cam Juarez, Kristel Foster and Adelita Grijalva) has all but disappeared. Retaliatory behavior is at an extreme.
Instead of looking at the reality of the situation, David Safier looks at the situation through his personal biases and has consciously decided to demonize anyone who might possibly unseat Governing Board members who have seduced him into believing anything they or HT Sanchez says. Safier must stop covering TUSD. His personal and twisted political loyalties are dangerous to our community.
Voters should vote for any of seven candidates who are running other than Foster and Juarez. These two rubber-stamp Board members are part of the problem and are so entrenched in defending their errors that they are unable to be part of any solution.
It is no wonder that groups such as TKF have surfaced and been supported both by high profile donors and many grass root individuals from all parties. Safier, Foster and Juarez can continue to do all they are able to discredit the group but all one has to do is take a look at what these two candidates did with their illegal campaign contributions of $5,000 each. What TKF is doing has been above board. Nothing Foster or Juarez have done over the course of their terms or during the current campaign has been above board.
Foster put what she had learned at a political campaign workshop to use. Very early on, she actively sought and gained endorsements from the majority of individuals who hold public office in Tucson as Democrats. Most do not know what is happening in TUSD and none actually did any vetting. This time around, please do not blame the Republicans for having done their homework!
Burn me once, shame on you. Burn me twice, shame on me!
Just remember when a politician promises transparency….well that is the first of many lies. Don’t listen to what they say, look at what they have done.
League of Women Voters of Greater Tucson’s Transparency Check on TUSD Governing Board and other local governing bodies:
http://www.lwvgt.org/ObserverCorps.html
It’s worth a look, for those who are taking an interest in our local governing board races.
Many of the comments have been helpful. Here’s another site: http://tucson.com/news/local/education/tusd-board-candidates-take-on-education-issues/article_1204ffa6-c64a-596f-b493-f7a1701d76a9.html Thanks everyone: I feel like I got a good picture of the situation from your comments.
I find this article lacking in detail. It is written as inside baseball and leaves out the bigger story. I was tracking with the commenter ‘jim campbell states the obvious’ but my trust is blown mainly because on the one hand he is a real estate developer (ill assume successful) but on the other leaves his girls in school to be repeatedly beat up. Even poor folks could move their kid to a charter school… this person has Basis and St. Gregs available to them and could purchase peace of mind far easier than this bruising multi-year political struggle which won’t pay off in time to make a difference for his kids anyway. I am disappointed.
Vote out Kristel Foster and Cam Juarez! It is time to change the Board!!
You know, one has to question why someone would give $7,000 to TKF and then $12,500 to one candidate. $20,000 in a school board race: perfectly legal but definitely motivated by something. If you look at who’s playing in the sandbox you see quickly this is about something larger than education or the district. The folks donating to TKF are coupling up for one reason. They stand to make a lot of money if they win. Why invest 20-large in a school board race? Because “changing the board” lets the donors grab up shuttered schools and develop on the land.
Jim Campbell can say it’s about protecting his children. Sure, I won’t criticize him for being a protective father. I will criticize him for saying he won’t bid on future contracts. Hey everyone, that’s great: I did it once when it suited me, but won’t do it again.
It’s motivated by something: perhaps by the desire to see this district cleaned up. Some people, when they take a good, hard look at how the district is being run under Sanchez, feel outrage and it motivates a deep investment and hard work to expand community awareness of the need for reform in an institution delivering “education” to between 40,000 and 50,000 students.
People who accept the filthy quid-pro-quo way the district is being run see money motivation in everything and cannot believe there are people who would invest money in the hope of improving an institution that serves tens of thousands of young people, not in the hope of personal gain. What did Kathy Campbell expect in return when she invested in UHS college counseling? Improved services to students in a sadly underfunded institution. What does she hope to gain in investing money to “change the board”? Improved services in a district educating a troublingly large portion of our community’s youth.
This is one of the many risks a community runs when it continues to allow one of its public institutions to be run the way TUSD is being run: the community looks at what is going on in its public institutions and comes to expect money motives, not genuine motives to serve the common good, in everything it sees, whether they are really there or not. It loses its belief that there can be clean motives in philanthropy and public service.
Corruption exists in, for example, things like the ESI donation to Foster and Juarez. But it is not everywhere, motivating everyone.
If at some point in the future it can be documented that a changed majority benefited the Campbells financially, then there will be grounds for concern. At this point there is no wrongdoing to point to, just philanthropy, civic concern, volunteerism, and community service.
What will the Campbells relationship with TUSD be in the future? I wouldn’t be at all surprised if they, like so many others who have worked hard to benefit the district in the past and have encountered mistreatment while doing so, washed their hands of this diseased institution and walked away.
You can’t believe what a difference philanthopry and volunteerism take on once you pay tuition to a private school and actually become a temporary owner.
Public schools will never give back that decision making ability because it erodes the educrats source of power.
Hey David, you forgot to highlight the past history of the other principal in TUSD Kids First – CPA Jimmy Lovelace. Here’s his editorial piece about how the board majority and superintendent changed the residency requirements on the TUSD audit committee after he started asking questions they did not want to answer:
http://tucson.com/news/opinion/column/guest/time-for-tusd-to-stop-making-unforced-errors/article_6293e564-8228-587b-aed1-4051d3d35d70.html
Chuck Kill’s piece on the changes made to the audit committee is also good:
http://tucson.com/news/opinion/column/guest/tusd-volunteer-district-residency-requirement-among-red-flags/article_690f81f3-b6cc-5443-8427-72e352b8fb28.html
Here’s a good passage from Kill’s editorial that describes very well the kind of thing that goes on in TUSD under its current “leadership”:
“In addition to changing the residency requirement for audit committee members, the Governing Board also added the district CFO as a permanent voting member of the audit committee. The committee was designed to assist the board by making sure it was independent of the TUSD management team. With the addition of the CFO to the audit committee (including the possibility of chairing it), the committee will lose some independence from the TUSD management team, since the CFO reports directly to the district superintendent. It will actually be checking up on itself. In addition, since the CFO will be instrumental in recommending the new internal auditor, that position will now also be subject to suspicion. Apparently, a majority of the Governing Board voted to substantially reduce the independence of the audit committee to give less oversight to the superintendent and the finances of the district. Additionally, other audit committee charter changes included removing protective language authorizing members to submit requests for information, setting the agenda and their direct role in selecting the external auditors.”
It would seem that some of those taking such an interest in the Campbells’ small donations to the campaigns of candidates in a school board race they care about, a race that will affect the quality of management in their children’s schools, should perhaps direct some of their attention to how this public district’s hundreds-of-millions-a-year budget is being managed and overseen. But genuine concern about real malfeasance seems to be beyond the ability of some — they don’t examine the actions of the $500K per year CEO in the district and the board majority that rubber stamps his questionable practices, they’d rather waste their time on baseless insinuations and speculations about how other TUSD parents are allocating their political contributions to board candidates.
No, it’s not public schools VS. private schools, Rat T. It’s poor urban public schools in the death grip of a corrupt political machine VS. schools, public and private, where the parent community has enough social capital to organize itself effectively and hold administration accountable. Parents have plenty of power in districts like Catalina Foothills, Tanque Verde, and Vail. What happens in districts like TUSD is the majority of the parents aren’t able to develop the leverage they need to ensure good management, and corruption and machine politics take over. It has happened in any number of poor urban public districts in cities throughout the U.S.
When parents who do have some leverage step forward and try to get things cleaned up, they get smeared like the Campbells are now being smeared.
But there are many signs that Raul Grijalva is losing his grip. What’s happening in TUSD right now may or may not result in a change of leadership on the board of the district in November 2016, but it seems highly likely that it will prevent Adelita Grijalva from taking her father’s place in Congress when he proposes to pass the baton to the next generation of Grijalva leadership. The electorate in TUSD is easier to manipulate than the electorate in a congressional district, and if you look around Southern Arizona, you will see that candidates independent of the Grijalva machine are gaining strength in challenging their opponents and sometimes winning elected office.
It’s just a matter of time before this particular regime is over, but unfortunately it will be a painful and ugly process watching the politics surrounding TUSD as the machine that has been running it loses its will to lead and finally, after decades of having its way, breaks down.
I never said it was. I simply stated that once we left the public schools we actually achieved equality with the board that actually did represent parents. TUSD will never achieve that participatory level because of the money and power involved. There are many upper income parents upset with public schools.
This article is ridiculous in so many ways. First, Brett Rustand is a man of principle a person who flew combat missions and put his life on the line in Iraq and Afghanistan, he is everything that is good about our country, a humble, kind, smart and generous person, a family man and an all around good guy. Brett is pragmatic, he would be excellent on the board, a person who can bring all groups together. I don’t consider myself Brett’s boss but his peer, if he serves on the school board that is one more person that i serve with that would be a proud public servant who is giving his vast experiences and wealth of knowledge as a service to the community .
As far as my giving I have never met the author of this article in my life but let me tell you a little about myself, I am a person who has never bid on ANY contracts, TUSD, city , county etc, my business is old fashioned we are givers, yes, we outfitted Pueblo High Schools football team a couple of years ago with brand new shoes, have given money to, Tucson, Rincon, Sahuaro, Sabino and other schools in TUSD. We gave $7500 for Sunnysde little league to go to the world series, paid for parents to see their hurt us military children at Walter Reed hospital, give to every charity imaginable in Tucson. We sponsor San Miguel High School which allows kids from lower economic backgrounds to get a college level education, heck this summer their was a basketball camp at Pueblo high School that was not funded and at the last minute a democratic city council member asked for our help to pay TUSD kids scholarship funds. Every single day we get asked for help, I am proud to say that it is done with “No quid pro Quo”.
You see we do things because we are community oriented, take a drive down Tucson Boulevard and see the nice medians, we Crest paid $80,000 to help make the gateway to Tucson look nicer so we can attract companies with good paying jobs.
My two boys went to TUSD schools and I saw year by year the level of the schools falling, I live on the Eastside and will drive by Santa Rita and see a school in terrible decline. I live in TUSD and my home value has not improved on par with the surrounding districts. SO why did I get involved with this election? it is because I CARE..
I can promise you this, there is absolutely no financial incentive for me to be involved in this election. I find it so hypocritical that we get lumped in as business people with an innuendo that something is up when two of the current board members so obviously took a donation from a company in Scottsdale that does business with TUSD.
BTW, yeas I gave money to Trump (and Bush and Rubio), he wasn’t my first, or second choice, however when you have worked as hard as I have my whole life and you give so much back to society and the alternative is even paying higher taxes than I already do then I/we cannot hire more people, offer excellent benefits, and give to so many needy charities, you see the narrative that all business people are bad is so patently false it get’s old. Also, I have given plenty to some local democrats who I feel like are not so opposed to small business owners.
You see, like a an earlier comment said a lot of the people who can get involved in helping make our city better have moved to the suburbs, not me , I choose to try and help. My political contributions pale in comparison to our contributions to many non profits that help children, single moms, people of all races colors and creeds. It is easy to paint a broad brush on people but in this case it simply isn’t the case…..