According to a press release today from the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund (MALDEF), state Attorney General Tom Horne can’t get involved in the Tucson Unified School Desegregation case which has a strong chance of bringing Mexican-American studies back to TUSD.
The press release is below the cut:
JUDGE BARS STATE INTERVENTION IN TUCSON DESEGREGATION CASE
Court Preserves Possible Use of Ethnic Studies as a Means to Remedy Ongoing Discrimination in 38-Year Old CaseTUCSON, AZ – Today, a Tucson federal court barred the State of Arizona from intervening in an ongoing school desegregation case involving discrimination against Latino students by the Tucson Unified School District (TUSD). The State sought to intervene in order to impose arbitrary restrictions on ethnic studies courses in Tucson schools based on a 2010 state law, A.R.S. 15-112, that was proposed and has been used solely to target Mexican American Studies courses. The court rejected the State’s attempt to intervene, ruling that “[a]ny state law or state interest found to be contrary to or an impediment to the desegregation efforts mandated by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals…must yield to the supremacy of the Federal Constitution.”
This consolidated federal case, Mendoza, et al. v. Tucson Unified School District No. One, et al. (CV 74-204 TUC DCB), stems from a desegregation challenge filed on behalf of African American and Latino parents and students in 1974. The federal court in Mendoza appointed a Special Master charged with developing a plan to provide equal educational opportunities, particularly for Latino and African American students in TUSD. The Special Master, Dr. Willis Hawley, has acknowledged that he will consider the use of “culturally relevant curricula” to achieve that purpose. Rather than supporting the school district’s good faith compliance with the desegregation decree, the State of Arizona has challenged the potential reinstitution of Mexican American studies courses, before the Special Master’s initial proposal has even been offered.
MALDEF President and General Counsel Thomas A. Saenz, stated, “The court ruling stops the state of Arizona’s singleminded and shortsighted crusade against ethnic studies and puts the focus back where it belongs — on equal educational opportunity for all children in Tucson public schools.”
Further, the court’s ruling chided the State of Arizona for an “untimely and unnecessary” request to intervene, and suggested that ethnic studies courses do not per se violate A.R.S. 15-112. The ruling draws renewed attention to efforts by the State of Arizona to force Tucson Unified School District to eliminate Mexican American studies or face the loss of millions of dollars of state funding. The State’s assertion that Mexican American studies violates A.R.S. 15-112 rests on isolated anecdotes and was made absent measurable evidence that ethnic studies courses as a field of study “promot[e] the overthrow of the government, resentment toward a race of class of people” or otherwise violate the state law.
As stated in the ruling, today’s case remains “first, foremost, and only about desegregation in the TUSD,” and not about the ethnic studies ban, its application to Tucson, or its constitutionality.
MALDEF continues to challenge the school district’s violation of the civil rights of Latino students through the effort to eliminate Mexican American Studies in Arizona. On June 8, 2012, MALDEF filed a complaint with the United States Department of Education, seeking an investigation into TUSD’s suspension of the teaching of Mexican American studies courses. MALDEF has also requested that the Department of Education investigate the State’s selective enforcement of A.R.S. 15-112, which has solely targeted Mexican American studies. MALDEF charges that both the actions of the TUSD and the State violate Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits discrimination in any agency or program receiving federal financial assistance.
MALDEF Western Regional Counsel Nancy Ramirez, who filed the OCR charge and represents plaintiffs in the desegregation case, stated, “Latino students in the TUSD have waited far too long for the school district to achieve unitary status and for it to provide equal educational opportunities for all students. Students shouldn’t be forced to suffer through further delay caused by the State’s proposed intervention. Today’s order affirms the supremacy of federal law in a desegregation case and upholds the ability of the school district to take appropriate measures to remedy the inequities and close the achievement gap for Latino students.”
This article appears in Jun 14-20, 2012.
Maybe they should go back to the kind of education we had as children where everyone is in a class that teaches and discusses the views of all sides and does not select students from one ethnic group to educate in their ethnicity and each one having their own class. Part of education in the past was to main stream every kind of student and not select some for a different education that others. This happened with the learning disabled and the mentally or physically handicapped. Now they are all in one class but some how, it has changed so that there is a different history class for everyone and explain tome how that teaches American History in America. It seems that they want to separate students and teach different things to each group which is directly opposite of how they have touted mainstreaming all groups of students.
It’s good that Tom Horne has to stay out of this fight. He is incompetent at any job hes held.
Let Tucson deal with it.
“Me again”:
It seems you want to return to the “good old days” when the only version of history that was taught was a foggy compendium of dates and events that celebrated only the White Eurocentric view of USAmerican exceptionalism, dominator hierarchies and conquest by force of other people’s homelands and environment — with NO context included that didn’t fit that dominant “view”. With NO context that would include the needs and sensibilities of normal students…
I remember going through 18 years of “schooling” with no part of the “history classes” or “textbooks” including or considering the points of view of Workers, Slaves, Immigrants, Native Peoples, Mexicans whose lands were stolen from them, etc. etc. etc. The entire ignorant curriculum consisted of the points of view, actions and sayings of a few “great (white) men” as if those are the only things of importance happening at the time…
It’s not an ACCIDENT that TUSD also banned Howard Zinn’s “People’s History of the United States” from the classroom…
I think we need a LOT less of that kind of bigotry and more People’s History before it’s too damn late…
I’m just glad that the federal court is seeing the state’s “intervention” for what it really is: An unconstitutional, one-sided vendetta…TUSD’s compliance with state mandates may be seen as being complicit with the state’s views on ethnic studies, but the upshot here is that the district is trying to keep whatever funding they can to support the success of the students–all of the students.
This doesn’t make everything the district has done OK…but when one is basically being blackmailed or bullied by a larger more powerful entity, one must make the hard decisions. Maybe the court case will also shed some light on the evil that is going on in our state capital, and help to bring an end to all of this business.
I told you so. As time progresses you will see bigger and BIGGER wins for MAS and CHS not only in AZ but the whole USA due to Federal action; so when the high schoolers go back to school August 2nd, 2012, they can go back to studying the GOOD, the BAD, and the UGLY gabacho, and Benny Franklin, Uncle Tommy y todo eso queso.
-Manny Gracia