The Tucson Unified School District Governing Board doesn’t seem to have any idea who will replace the superintendent, whose resignation was accepted at the Feb. 28 meeting in a 3-2 vote.
The board hasn’t had a chance to discuss the matter, said the newest board member Rachael Sedgwick. She added that they’ll probably hire an interim first, and they’re collecting names of potential candidates.
“People have been reaching out, letting me know they’re interested, and they know of other people who are interested or qualified,” she said. She wouldn’t specify who these people were or what fields they’re in, only that they’re very familiar with TUSD.
The now former-superintendent H.T. Sánchez’s job was in question ever since a last-minute agenda item was added to the regular Feb. 14 meeting by Sedgwick and backed by Board Member Mark Stegeman. Community members filled the Duffy Community Center for three consecutive Tuesdays, voicing their concerns for and against Sánchez, with notably more people speaking in his support.
Sedgwick said they’re looking for someone who will focus on “instruction,” which she clarified to mean raising student enrollment, student achievement levels and the percentage of TUSD funds spent on the classroom.
The qualifications she’s looking for in a candidate includes being a “superstar” and “fabulous instructional leader,” Sedgwick said, as well as a strong relationship with the business community, the faith-based community, the legislature and community leaders.
Frequent traveling to the Arizona legislature in Phoenix was one of the things Sedgwick cited, during a Feb. 15 interview with the Tucson Weekly, as being an issue she had with Sánchez.
Before he was sent packing, Sánchez seemed to foster those relationships Sedgwick finds important. Among his supporters were Mayor Jonathan Rothschild, who sent the board an email in support of Sánchez prior to the resignation, and Mike Varney, CEO and president of the Tucson Metro Chamber, who spoke at the Feb. 21 board meeting.
Varney listed things he believed Sánchez achieved, including reducing class sizes, enrollment declines, dependence on desegregation funds and administration costs while raising graduation rates. He ended with a bit of advice to the board.
“It is easy to nitpick and find fault,” he said. “How about doing some real work by coming together and uniting instead of constantly shuffling the deck.”
Stegeman said the board hasn’t had a chance to discuss the future much because they’ve been occupied with discussing Sánchez, but he hopes they have a list of possible interims by Tuesday’s meeting.
“Time is of the essence,” he said. “People need clarity.”
He said there’s no absolute list of qualifications a candidate for superintendent must have but that knowing about the district, the schools and the people is important. These are also qualifications Sánchez seemed to have down.
Many supporters at the meetings leading up to his resignation recounted times they saw him at school events and times he had personally helped their children.
There was also a party of TUSD employees thrown in his honor, four days after he resigned. According to Board Member Kristel Foster, one of his vocal supporters, there were only three out of the district’s 87 school principals not present at the party where he received a standing ovation.
The district was not achieving as it should be, said Stegeman. But he doesn’t blame Sánchez. He blames the board.
“The board is ultimately responsible for everything,” he said. “The buck stops with the board.”
Some of the things he sees as issues include overspending on central administration, over-management of schools, low student achievement, student discipline problems and poor customer service.
Stegeman would like to see an interim superintendent in place by March 14, and ultimately find someone who has “institutional, cultural values that align with the board.”
“In six months, the district will be in a better place,” he said.
This article appears in Mar 2-8, 2017.
Who paid for the party they threw for Sanchez?
I bet we did.
P.S. Two notes on the photograph where Ms. Khmara identified Varney:
1. I believe the woman holding the “No to Sanchez” sign is Betts Putnam Hidalgo. Ms. Putnam-Hidalgo spoke in the call to the audience at the same Board meeting where Varney spoke. You summarized Varney’s perspective and highlighted him in the photo, while in the photo Ms. Putnam Hidalgo was obscured behind her sign, and in the article she was not named and her commentary in Call to the Audience was ignored. Yet she is more relevant to understanding the current situation in the district than Varney is: she has worked for the district as a community liaison, served on Site Councils, on SCPC, and has been a parent in the district for more than a decade and a regular attender of Board meetings for a number of years as well. Oh, and she’s run for the Board three times now, this last time garnering only a few hundred votes less than Ms. Sedgwick. I’m willing to venture a guess that Ms. Putnam-Hidalgo knows quite a bit more about TUSD’s ground-level operations than Mr. Varney. Perhaps you should interview her some time, if you’re genuinely interested in understanding the “No” perspective, and not just interested in promoting the Foster-Grijalva-TucsonChameberofCommerce point of view on the district.
2. In Ms. Putnam-Hidalgo’s immediate vicinity in the photo is Dolores de Vera, a substitute teacher and former education journalist who has spoken repeatedly in Calls to the Audience at TUSD Board meetings about the terms under which substitute teacher labor was outsourced by the Sanchez administration. Before deciding on whether or not Sanchez should have been retained, perhaps, Ms. Khmara, you should try to understand what his administration did to the subs staffing too many of the classrooms serving poor children in the district. It’s an interesting topic to explore, and I’m sure Ms. de Vera, who is present at most Board meetings, would be happy to help you.
Removing TUSD Superintendent Prioritized Over Finding Replacement | The Range: The Tucson Weekly’s Daily Dispatch
By David Safier, Jim Nintzel, Danyelle Khmara
One of several good reasons to replace Sanchez was the ongoing battle over implementing the deseg plans for TUSD. Sanchez had TUSD paying for a $1million/year, 4 year contract with an outside deseg legal firm.. That far surpasses anything TUSD spent on outside deseg attorneys in the four prior years.
Every time TUSD goes to court, the plaintiffs’ attorneys and the Special Master have to respond. In addition to paying for TUSD’s outside attorneys, TUSD also has to pay the legal costs of the plaintiffs and Special Master. All those legal costs including the $1 million per year are paid for with the Deseg money, the money that is supposed to help TUSD’s kids.
Sanchez’s litigiousness has been burning up TUSD’s money with no results. With Sanchez gone, perhaps TUSD can implement the USP plan negotiated under Dr. Pedicone and quit paying a fortune to the outside attorneys!
Another good reason to replace Sanchez was so TUSD’s teachers would finally get their 301 performance money! Sanchez and his staff have continued to play games about the amount of unspent 301 performance money and the size of the 301 performance payout for 2016-17.
Tuesday night, 301 Amendment #2, instigated under Sanchez, is on the Board’s agenda. Amendment #2, claims to require paying all the 301 money to teachers, but it applies only to the 301 money TUSD got this year, exempting the unspent 301 money carried over from prior years! It also allows TUSD to keep 5% of the money. Furthermore, the amount of 301 money this amendment will pay out has been left blank. TUSD agenda descriptions are required to state the amount of money and source of funds for each agenda item. Unbelievable, that CFO Soto won’t provide the cost of what the Board is being asked to approve.
Ms. Kharma, you leave out the one thing that should instantly disqualify Sanchez for the job, and should immediately undermine every single one of his very well-known political supporters. He lies. He lied about 301 money, he lied about bonuses and pay packages, he lied about 123 money–IF you actually knew what was going on in the District AND you listened to what he said, you could see the lies, and they were plentiful. By the time I devised the red card/yellow card system that I had thought of using (red for a whopper, yellow for just a “white” lie) he was already on his way out, but I’m sure it will be useful in the future in any case. If Jonathan Rothschild, Michael Varney, Randy Friese and all of the other political hot-shots in the Democratic Party think that a taxpayer-funded public official who lies on a regular basis deserves their praise, then, unfortunately their own electoral status should be in question. I use “unfortunately” because they do other things that I support. Now I do understand that the new president has made lying quite commonplace, even “normal” along with his cabinet picks, but I expect something better from local officials who are supposedly in charge of the educational future of OUR future–our kids. Perhaps the rumor (attributed to an ex-Board member) that Sanchez was a registered Republican who was forced to re-register as a Democrat when he came to TUSD is true, and perhaps he was simply displaying “Cabinet level” tendencies while he was here!
Oops. Looks like we’ve got another tin foil sun blocker.
The only way to fix that district is to chisel out smaller districts that can act with focus. And hopefully split the deseg order out to a point it can be buried where the sun don’t shine.
I’ve been here 20 years and that thing has done exactly nothing except cost taxpayers money. And it was 25 years old back then.
It’s good for the lawyers I guess.
Questions for those supporting breaking the district into smaller units:
If you cut a thoroughly rotten apple in half, does that make it less rotten?
After decades of misguided hiring that did not select for people with the right credentials or with the right motivation (to serve students rather than to serve the political machine connected with the district), is this “apple” more putrid mess or good fruit? Might it be possible that because of the commitment to and persistence of bad hires, at some point it passed the point where, if you cut out the rot in admin and in the schools, there would be enough good fruit left to keep the district (or smaller units of it) functioning?
I guess one point in favor of breaking it up would be that if you could get good CEOs in charge of each new, smaller unit, it would be easier for them to know conditions in each school in their smaller systems and to accomplish reform.
To all those who want the deseg case ditched:
The commentary provided by the plaintiffs, plaintiffs’ advocates, and Special Master constitute one of the few sources of information locally that provides reasonably good research and reporting on where funds are being applied by the district and on whether their application benefits students, and on what conditions students are experiencing on the school sites. The State Department of Education doesn’t provide adequate oversight and enforcement of reasonable standards, and the local media, though a few reporters (e.g. Huichochea and Steller) occasionally manage to get a good piece out, is weak and MIA on far too many important issues. Many who understand the conditions poor students are experiencing in some of the district’s schools shudder to think about how much more things would deteriorate if the deseg authorities were not calling attention to injustices and advocating, very reasonably, for improvement in services delivered to students. It would help if the community could pay attention to what they’re saying and get behind the needed reforms.
Either that or deseg funding IS the problem. Are we treating the symptoms or the ailment?
Might Debbi L be the illustrious Ms. Lesko, who keeps trying to cancel desegregation funding? (http://www.azcentral.com/story/opinion/op-…)
Way to honor the history of the state: after all, Arizona was originally on the side of the Confederates, so desegregation was never part of the plan. But desegregation of our schools is a federal mandate–which even Ms. Lesko doesn’t get to legislate at the state level. And research shows that, for whatever reason, desegregated schools are a benefit to ALL students who attend them. While the days of “why do I have to sit next to a kid of a different color to do well?” may come back as a part of “making America Great Again” (read: WHITE Again), currently Plessy was thrown out as racist, and desegregation was brought in as an attempt to improve the lot of students of color. Seems like the govt. and politicians know full well how to take care of white kids, but they need direction to actually take care of the needs of other kids. Those who call for canceling the funds because they are so poorly managed should put their energy into making sure their use is audited and reported on on a regular basis, instead of canceling them and cementing our institutional and historical racism into place.
Soirry but your attempt to incriminate is disappointing. I don’t even know who you are talking about, but you seem to have adopted the popular “blame America first” campaign.
Does any of this ring a bell?
E pluribus unum (/i plurbs unm/; Latin: [e plurbs un])Latin for “Out of many, one” (alternatively translated as “One out of many” or “One from many”) is a 13-letter traditional motto of the United States of America, appearing on the Great Seal along with Annuit cptis…wikipedia
It isn’t “out of one, many.”
If we can not control the theft of deseg funding…then thieves are running our schools. I won’t look the other way like so many are willing to do.
Learn something before being a chode, choad, choda, choaty or however it is actually pronounced and/or said.
It seems as if you have nothing better to do than harass the writers (especially David and Danyelle) and the commenters that oppose your long-winded, self-centered and self-conscious commentary.
At least the 7 devices you own are serving you well.
Nobody else would ever give you that many thumbs up in such a short amount of time.
Especially since your ugly personality would never attract accuatances — let alone good, legitimate and longtime friends.
Arrivederci, troll.
Thanks for the feedback.
“Be kind?” That’s what you advise, while writing a comment like that? Interesting.
The advice of people like you — people who want to suppress informed discussion of what is ACTUALLY going on in TUSD and who aggress, in the comment streams and elsewhere, against those who bother to take the time needed to share valid information — should be disregarded. But your opinions and advice (and insults) are definitely useful in helping us understand what is going on locally: as was highlighted nicely in the comment stream on the piece linked below, a network of bullies is hard at work in Tucson, relentlessly and systematically using every means at their disposal to make sure their lies steer public opinion. Oh, and (as above) punching anyone who dares to disagree in the face.
http://m.tucsonweekly.com/TheRange/archives/2017/02/22/did-the-tusd-board-come-to-bury-sanchez-or-to-praise-him-answer-c-none-of-the-above
Their reactions are strange aren’t they?
As are yours Ms. Lesko.
Once again my name is not Lesko.
Uh huh.