An agenda item on TUSD’s Tuesday night board meeting asks the question, Should TUSD provide education for the children living at a federal detention facility located in the district?
The agenda item “direct(s) staff to research what authority and responsibility our district has to provide educational support to school aged children held in federal detention at the Southwest Key Program Facility.”
The building is located at 1601 N. Oracle Road between Grant and Speedway. The children are school aged. School districts are required to educate children within their boundaries without regard to their immigration status. Though staff say they are educating the students, the facility isn’t affiliated with an educational institution, and staff members have been vague about what the “education” entails.
Does TUSD have the responsibility to seek out children in its district? Probably not. But these children have no parents or guardians to enroll them in school, and the Feds aren’t interested in making a connection with a local educational institution. That makes this situation unique.
By raising the question, TUSD is spotlighting yet another issue which arises when children are detained by the federal government for an extended period. Some of them were separated from their parents by the Trump administration against the parents’ wills. Others arrived in the U.S. unaccompanied. As children, all of them deserve the most comprehensive care and attention we can give them.
If you want more information, Hank Stephenson wrote a detailed article about the TUSD agenda item in the Friday Star. The Weekly’s Danyelle Khmara wrote about a visit to the Southwest Key facility by 16 state legislators to the facility in the last issue.
This article appears in Jul 19-25, 2018.
From the Star article on the subject:
We have to find out if we have a right to educate the detained immigrant children, [TUSD Board Member Kristel] Foster said.
Interesting language to use. Makes more sense when youve been watching TUSD for awhile and you know that around this time of year they are very eager to boost their enrollment numbers (and the per pupil funding enrollment brings in) through any means possible.
As for the quality of education delivered, perhaps Ms. Engel and the other legislators who visited the Southwest Key facility should do some visits to South and West side TUSD schools and request the latest data on how many certified teachers have signed contracts to teach for full salary and benefits in those schools for the 2018-2019 school year.
“Does TUSD have the responsibility to seek out children in its district?”…. YES!!!
“The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 1982 that school districts have a responsibility to educate all children within their boundaries who enroll, regardless of immigration status. (Plyler v. Doe, 457 U.S. 202 (1982)) A state cannot prevent children of undocumented immigrants from attending public school unless a substantial state interest is involved.”
Donald Trump used Nazi Germany as a paradigm for his Immigration Policy; the Sequestration of those that Hitler considered undesirable. For Trump, he had Set His Immigration Policy; the sequestration of the Children of Parents that tried to enter the US illegally and considered undesirable. These Children were placed in “holding cages”.
Thus, these Children are considered Prisoners of the United States Government. TUSD has the Responsibility and Authority to offer Educational Programs to Prisoners within the District!
A Court Challenge may be necessary if TUSD is Serious about Providing Educational Opportunities to these Prisoner Immigrant Children!!
If TUSD can’t educate local children, what makes them think they can educate immigrants speaking a foreign language?
MONEY. That’s all this is about. They have run out of willing participants so why not import new ones?
TUSD is spotlighting that they stick their noses in business that they have no business with while wasting taxpayer dollars. The Feds rightly run immigration enforcement. If the Feds decide TUSD is needed I’m sure they’ll call.
The TUSD board voted unanimously to follow through on this agenda item.
GREAT!!!! I hope that TUSD will file a court Challenge if the Federal Government rejects TUSD efforts to offer Educational Programs to these Prisoner Immigrant Children. The TUSD Board/ Administration/Lawyers should consult Legal Immigration Experts and the ACLU.
Of course they did, David. It’s their best hope of adding several hundred more allotments of per pupil funding at one stoke right before the school year starts. Will they be able to deliver decent services to those several hundred children, services that are demonstrably better than whatever Southwest Key is providing? Oops, you forgot to answer — or even ask — that question.
I suppose all those kids will be integrated smoothly into the few TUSD schools with uniformly highly qualified faculty and high the test scores, Sam Hughes and Fruchthendler, University High and Sabino, right? Certainly none of them will end up in TUSD schools where uncredentialed subs are paid hourly wages and no benefits to fill classroom positions for which no fully qualified teachers have signed contracts. Certainly none of them will end up in classrooms where the instructor is not fully bilingual.
Right?
They will do it for the money, hire more teachers and once again use the pay raise money for their own gain, leaving the teachers high and dry.
When will we wake up?
They cant hire more teachers. They have scores of teaching positions filled with uncredentialed, hourly wage subs because there is a severe, state-wide teacher shortage and their Step 1 pay is not competitive with Step 1 pay of other local districts. (Last time I checked a few weeks ago, TUSDs Step 1 pay was $5,000 less than District 16s Step 1 pay, and District 16 is a district that is a lot easier to teach in, with a better institutional culture, a sound curriculum and a lot more infrastructure to support teachers.) Recently, in the months before the next school year starts, an active teacher recruitment period, TUSD made the deliberate choice not to use its RedforEd funds in ways that had any hope of solving its certified teacher shortage. That says a lot about how much the decision makers and interest groups behind the scenes in TUSD ACTUALLY care about providing high quality services to the disadvantaged, but give them a PR opportunity like this and they will make a great show of their desire to help the poor children!
More people should be asking very focused, very specific questions about HOW they propose to care for these children. By dividing them up, busing them to various sites, and dumping them into classrooms with under-qualified, non-bilingual staff? Will that actually be better for these traumatized children than for them to receive education on site with the other refugees whom they have gotten to know? It all depends on precisely what is going on in the Southwest Key facility and PRECISELY what will be going on in the TUSD classrooms that propose to take these children. But watch the Dems fail to ask any of the relevant, responsible questions while they all jump on the emotionally reactive, ideologically driven bandwagon of using the districts sadly limited resources to try to prove their RIGHT to serve these children.
Its disgusting, frankly.
Seems simple… just ask if it is in our best interest to have educated people around us. Yes or no. Save your rants about how for the board meetings. Or start a charter school and get rich yourself.