In the wake of a divided governing board driving out Superintendent H.T. Sanchez, the Tucson Unified School District is now celebrating Kindness Week.
The TUSD board spent weeks discussing the fate of then-superintendent H.T. Sánchez before Sanchez worked out a deal to resign. Many will miss him, including Stefanie Boe, TUSD’s communications director. And while district employees adjust, they’re making an extra effort to stay positive.
“We are a kind community, and we’re here for each other,” she said. “We’re all in it together, and we make up the ‘unified’ in ‘Tucson Unified.’”
Bearing the tagline “find the kind,” the communication team will go to the schools and look for stories of kindness. They’ll be documenting these stories and buddy benches and murals on Facebook Live.
“People are doing these things already, but we just want to go find the kind,” Boe said.
The district usually does kindness week in May but decided the added focus on goodwill would be good for the district.
TUSD families and employees can share their school’s kindness stories by emailing media@TUSD1.org or posting on the district’s Facebook or Twitter with the hashtag #FindTheKind.
This article appears in Mar 2-8, 2017.
Yes, Stephanie Boe would have reason to miss him, as anyone who paid attention during the Calls to the Audience at TUSD’s recent Board meetings could have observed: the Call revealed that public records requests had been done that indicated that Sanchez had inflated Ms. Boe’s salary from the $40K per annum at which she was recruited to over $90K per annum over a short period of time, and without Board approval.
Now that the new Board majority has gotten rid of an incompetent administrator who showed himself chronically unable to apply Title 1 and desegregation funds for the benefit of poor and minority students, perhaps they will get down to business and un-do that ill-advised pay increase. By chopping $50K per year off of Ms. Boe’s inflated central administrative salary, they could attach five permanent $10K per annum stipends to some of the hard-to-fill teaching positions in the district, ensuring that five of the many classrooms in the district where the district has been unable to recruit qualified faculty will in the future have qualified educators delivering instruction and not long term subs with no teaching certification.
One can only hope that the lipstick-on-a-pig Boe approach to telling nicey-nicey “kindness” stories about the district to mask the very real and very ugly reality of what has happened in the schools during the last three and a half years will disappear soon, not TOO long after the district finally rid itself of conspicuously incompetent Sanchez.
Thank you board members Rachel Sedgwick, Michael Hicks and Mark Stegeman for having the courage to take on the Grijalva mafia and ‘driving out’ the most hate filled administration in TUSD’s history.
Things can only get better. “Be kind” is difficult when you are being secretly looted. Maybe they should have tried a little kindness.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FMvMGCTxZwg
Sanchez was initially forced on the community, something that newbies like many of those who showed up to express undying support will not remember. See this article by the editor of this very paper before it started presenting a solid pro-Administration viewpoint on TUSD: http://www.tucsonweekly.com/TheRange/archi… for confirmation. Pedicone “was driven out” by the very same people who brought Sanchez in (during roughly this time of year) as the article shows.
If there is anything that is going to keep good candidates for the job from applying, it will be the Board tone, mostly embodied these days by Kristel Foster. The inability to get off of invective and on to constructive showed up around the issue of the latest proclamation for transgender rights, where Ms. Foster was unhappy about compromising in order to get the item passed. Perhaps one of the parents of a transgender student crying out from the audience “This is not about politics its about our KIDS!” convinced her to compromise and refer to “the federal government” instead of “the Trump administration” when protecting students’ rights. While she acted like she was surely fighting against an intransigent majority, both this item and the one about sex education passed unanimously. Do you hear that? UNANIMOUSLY. Imagine what could happen if she could only actually try to work with her other board members instead of constantly insulting them. Why, the District might actually move ahead through more UNANIMOUS votes.
“If there is anything that is going to keep good candidates for the job from applying, it will be the Board tone, mostly embodied these days by Kristel Foster. “
No it won’t. It will be the relentless pursuit of illegals to fill the seats, as you advocate. Tucson does not want to be Mexico, even if it means you line your pockets with government ‘gold’.
The Pope collected $80M dollars for getting his faithful support the ethnic cleansing of the world through open immigration.
Which god are they worshiping now?
http://www.nowtheendbegins.com/catholic-church-paid-79-million-by-obama-administration-to-force-migrant-invasion/
One thing upsetting is what difference does it make someones salary. Obviously Mrs. Boe is doing something correct in the media position to suddenly be attacked the way she is. I do NOT have children in TUSD but in all my years in Tucson, 39yrs this September, this specific district has failed in so many categories its sad. Someone comes in with NEW ideas or suggeations and suddenly most hated by all. Ever think the VOTED board members are the issue. Its been proven time after time people vote by name recognition not what they campaign. Its time to dump this board and bring back Sanchez or Petticone. The district will be better off. Less drama more positive action……. BE KIND…. Sorry Mrs. Boe none of this is your fault chin up you are amazing.
In a democratically controlled public institution, in order for the public to make the right choices about leadership, they have to get ACCURATE and REASONABLY COMPLETE information about what conditions are in the schools and how leadership’s choices are affecting those conditions. The notion that all negative information should be suppressed and only positive stories should be highlighted, no matter how many mistakes are made by leadership and how much they degrade conditions in the schools, will destroy a democratically controlled institution because it will result in bad leadership being re-installed in election after sad election.
Stephanie Boe was brought in as part of the “good PR at all costs!!!” approach to dealing with this troubled institution. Many believe that she is part of the problem and a large part of the reason some of the conspicuously bad leadership in the district has been RE-elected.
It is sick that this district would pay a propagandist close to $100K per year and most of the hard working, college educated people teaching our kids less than half of that. Get the money out of admin and into the CLASSROOMS where it belongs. Reduce Ms Boe’s salary to what a teacher with the same number of years of professional experience would earn. This district should stop being a place where administrators are paid and treated like they are more valuable than those doing the hard work of educating kids. If the values changed, perhaps there wouldn’t be so many unfilled teaching positions in the district. Other districts that pay the same (or less) don’t have the teacher recruitment and retention problems TUSD does, and that is in part because of the bad attitudes and privileging of overpaid central administrators that are part of the district’s institutional culture and m.o.