A special TUSD Board meeting is scheduled for Tuesday, Feb. 21, with only one agenda item: a discussion of the possible firing of Superintendent H.T. Sanchez and General Counsel Todd Jaeger. It’s a bit more complicated than that—you can read the agenda here—but that’s the gist of it.

The same item was on the February 14 agenda, submitted at the last minute by newly elected board member Rachael Sedgwick, but it was pulled before it was discussed in the open meeting. On Feb. 21, it is the agenda, period, unless other items are submitted. And Mark Stegeman has joined Rachael Sedgwick in requesting it.

After the last board meeting, I wrote that I wasn’t sure if Sedgwick put in the earlier item on her own, but I suspected she did. This time, however, it’s clear she has Stegeman with her, an experienced, thoughtful, strategic board member who knows how to dot his “i’s” and cross his “t’s.” I expect the item will be discussed and voted on.

We’ll see what happens. We could get a drip, drip, drip of information over the next few days, or not. I certainly wouldn’t lay odds that Sanchez will have his job after the meeting; then again, I’m not a betting man. But you never know. These things have a habit of taking odd, unpredictable turns.

Stay tuned. I know I will.

This article appears in Feb 16-22, 2017.

6 replies on “TUSD Board Meeting Scheduled For Tuesday, Feb. 21. Only One Item on the Agenda”

  1. The Network for Public Education sent out an e-mail this morning urging the people on its contact list to work against the passage of HR610:

    “HR 610, the School Choice Act, would eliminate the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965, which was passed as a part of Lyndon B. Johnson’s ‘War on Poverty.’ Federal funds would be used instead to create ‘block grants’ to be used to ‘distribute a portion of funds to parents who elect to enroll their child in a private school or to home-school their child.’ It would also roll back nutritional standards for free lunches for poor children.”

    This is the alternative to insisting that public school districts be competently managed. If they cannot be competently and honestly managed, the nation will take — and is taking — a different path.

    What lessons about the direction national policy should take can we draw from observing TUSD under the Sanchez administration?

    **Under its current leadership, the district redistributed Title 1 funds to achieve an across-the-board reduction in class sizes. This had the effect of reducing class sizes by adding fully qualified, experienced and certified teachers in schools like University High School and Fruchthendler that serve primarily affluent students, while in many of the schools serving primarily poor students, the new teaching positions created by the initiative could not be filled. Since the district reduced class sizes, too many classrooms in low-SES schools have been staffed with under-qualified long-term subs whose labor the Sanchez administration then outsourced to the for-profit company ESI, reducing their wages and destroying their ability to qualify for benefits. Does this provide the public with a “case study” that supports maintaining the provisions of ESEA? The public could be forgiven for asking: if this is what happens to Title 1 funds in districts like TUSD, what is the point of the government granting them? They are not benefiting the students they are intended to benefit.

    **Under its current leadership, the district began spending millions in desegregation funds that should be spent to benefit minority students in increased legal fees to try to get out from under its desegregation order. Leaving aside the question of whether these funds would be better applied in the classrooms to benefit students, let’s look at what the probable result of getting out from under the desegregation order will be: the Arizona legislature will have an excuse (“They’re no longer under court order!”) to eliminate the funding supplement entirely. Is the loss of $60 million per year that could potentially be applied to benefit minority students and achieve greater integration too high a price to pay for TUSD’s central administrators no longer having to deal with independent desegregation authorities asking questions about how these funds are being applied? I guess it would depend on who you ask: the parents of minority students or the central administrators in TUSD, who will continue to receive inflated salaries and bonuses whether or not the district continues to levy desegregation taxes on its residents and business owners.)

    **Are the best interests of poor children being served in a public district system where the Superintendent takes home nearly $500K a year and gives $10K bonuses to members of his central administrative cabinet while the district hoards 301 money meant for teacher bonuses in the districts’ bank accounts and teachers leave the district and / or the profession because the working conditions in TUSD are so poor and / or they cannot put food on the table for their families with their shockingly low salaries and lower-than-they-should be bonuses? Half way through this school year, there were still more than 100 teaching positions the district had not been able to fill. Considering the district’s inability to apply the funds available to it in ways that result in its classrooms being uniformly and reliably staffed with qualified educators, how do we then make the case to the public that it would not better serve students to be given the option of enrolling elsewhere, as the federal legislation under discussion proposes to do?

    Whatever decisions are made about TUSD’s leadership in the near term, the community should be considering these questions and keeping in mind that while the public observes a district enrolling 50,000 students systematically and persistently failing to offer quality services to minorities and the disadvantaged, many of the legitimate arguments for maintaining federal education laws and policies like ESEA are being effectively undermined.

  4. Deja vu. Bash and crash the TUSD superintendent. Then hire another. Bash and crash. Then another one. Repeat process ad nauseum to the satisfaction of ornery ignorant people with nothing good to say about anybody.

  5. It’s the ignorant who support keeping Sanchez in place just for the sake of continuity. The policy and funding allocation disasters of the last three years discussed in detail above make it clear to anyone who understands progressive education policy that what we’ve got here is someone in the driver’s seat in this district who is undermining not just the proper functioning of a district serving tens of thousands of students, many of them disadvantaged, but the legitimacy of the broader cause of progressive federal education policy.

    It could well be asked, and has been asked by many who understand the policy issues: how can we lobby for federal education dollars like Title 1 funds — or for tax levies like desegregation supplements — when this is what happens to them when they reach Southern Arizona? We need to be able to make a clear and well-documented case that the funds are being applied to provide significant benefit to the targeted populations. If there is no evidence of that kind — and much evidence to the contrary — we have no legitimate basis for saying to the “privatizers,” “Poor students do not need to get out of these schools. They are being well served in public district schools, and here is copious evidence to document all the good that has been done with Title 1 and desegregation funds.”

    Is it really impossible to get a chief administrator in place who understands this? If so, then the privatizers have already won. Fold up your tent, “supporters of public education,” and go home.

  6. Just ran into someone who had received their “quid” from TUSD and had been asked to pony up their “quo” in the form of a public thank you to TUSD’s current administration in the Call to the Audience at the 2/21 Board meeting.

    So it’s clear that everyone in Tucson to whom the panicked “leaders” in this malfeasant district have been able to toss a few coins (and definitely those who hope to have a few coins tossed to them at some point in the future) will be lining up to create the impression that “This is the best administration TUSD has ever had!!!” and to offer their obeisance.

    It will be a sick spectacle of “business as usual” in Tucson, for those who go in for that sort of thing. Right up David Safier’s alley.

    So get out your popcorn, David, and enjoy. (Though we know there will be no suspense involved for you because you’ll know what the outcome will be well in advance, right? One of the many fringe benefits of being the most obedient little lapdog in town. You urge people to “stay tuned in,” but I’m guessing those of us who know the TUSD drill — i.e. anyone with a shred of intelligence who has had the misfortune of watching the district’s clumsy operations for even a brief period of time — will not be joining lapdogs like you and members of the general public uninitiated in the malfeasant mysteries of TUSD in watching this sad spectacle.)

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