Parents of kids at the five Tucson Unified School District schools at risk of losing magnet status feel their and their children’s voices are being ignored. Some say they have witnessed a more than 40-year-old desegregation lawsuit go from its initial purpose of providing minority students with the same opportunities as white students turn into something that could do more harm than good.
At last night’s TUSD board meeting the parents wondered, why is the focus on statistics and not student achievement?
The schools in question are: elementary schools Bonillas and Ochoa; Safford K-8; Utterback Middle School and Cholla High School. In order to maintain magnet status, and the approximately $64 million per year funding that comes with that, no ethnic group can make up more than 70 percent of the students. At these schools, Latinos continue to be the majority.
For Ochoa parent and organizer Cesar Aguirre, these schools are being punished for being “too brown.”
“Desegregation, integration, what year are we in again? 2014 was the year our district went from having the minority population become the majority population. I am still trying to wrap my head around this whole integration deal,” he said at the board meeting. “Talking to somebody who isn’t within our district, ‘We are going to lose our magnet programs and the funding that goes with it. Why? Because we didn’t have enough white kids at our school.’ And he looked at me and said, ‘That is straight up discrimination!’ Our school is too brown, so we are being punished for it.”
“This case 40 years ago was started with the intention of protecting our children to improve quality of education of our children now it is being used to harm our children, to take away the opportunities that we have been fighting for so long. Growing up brown and poor on the South Side of Tucson I can tell you the one thing that got me off the streets …out of prison…kept me out of selling drugs was education.”
Schools like Ochoa and Cholla went from a D rating to a B rating, and many parents and educators attribute the success to the magnet programs, which include service to reduce the racial and ethnic academic achievement gap. The schools are headed upward even though they haven’t met the racial balance demanded by the lawsuit. In the meantime, federal court appointed special master Willis Hawley hasn’t met with parents or students. Critics at the board meeting said he’s view is outdated and out of touch.
Aguirre sent Hawley an email inviting him to meet with parents after the TUSD board meeting, but Hawley didn’t show up.
From an email Hawley sent Aguirre in response to the request:
I am unable to engage in these kinds of sessions because of the role I play as an officer of the Court. If you have specific questions about the criteria or processes, I can provide that if you send me an email. I understand and respect your concerns. I have provided a report to the parties that the District has as do the plaintiffs. You might want to request that report. There is a great deal of misinformation and the report might help.
Some place the blame on the special master and the court, but others, such as Betts Putnam-Hidalgo, who’s unsuccessfully ran for the TUSD board twice, argue it is the district’s fault because they have mismanaged the deseg funds. (Earlier this year, a state Legislature bill hoped to defund desegregation programs.)
The current situation has left many to wonder, is this another attack against minority students at TUSD? Similarly to what happened with the Mexican-American Studies program and the culturally relevant curriculum, which were proven to help student achievement, particularly minority students who are more likely to drop-out, but the state and other parties ignored those results. Instead, the district gave into threats from the state and gutted MAS. As far as the culturally relevant curriculum, that was recently also watered down even more, according to critics.
This article appears in Oct 1-7, 2015.
As I understand it, the plaintiffs and Special Master have been in support of increasing funding to the magnets. It’s the district that’s been failing to support these schools adequately, and now they are misleading parents by painting the courts, plaintiffs and Special Master as the villains.
Betts Putnam-Hidalgo is correct in her assessment of what’s really going on here.
Just as with MAS, if this is in fact “another attack against minority students in TUSD,” the district is either failing to defend its students’ best interests, or it is actually actively working against their best interests.
“For Ochoa parent and organizer Cesar Aguirre, these schools are being punished for being “too brown.””
Palo Verde, Sahuaro, Santa Rita were all punished for being “too white” when this whole mess started.
But those families really don’t matter, they deserved it.
End the deseg and the institutional racism.
Unfortunately it will never happen as TUSD is the Grijalva’s personal radical chicano indoctrination empire.
Whites are being punished for being TOO WHITE!
That’s how desegregation came about! Brown is subject to the same law.
Let Chicanos immerse themselves in themselves. They will remain in the bottom 2 quintiles of income where they are today! Perhaps they do not have the literacy to achieve anything. Perhaps their culture inhibits them so let them stay that way:
Global Map of Nobel Laureates
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Nobe…
So NOW that you have TOO many “brown students”.. you want to be treated differently?? So NOW its OK to be “not segregated” because its in YOUR favor? Wow.. I hope they take away every DIME and that precious STATUS too. You get what you DESERVE.
Like Cesar Aguirre, I am still trying to wrap my head around the concept of desegregation in a district that is 75% minority. How exactly does that work?
As I understand it, the magnet school program offerings include fine and performing arts, global studies/dual language, STEM and traditional academic studies (TUSD website)
http://www.tusd1.org/contents/depart/magne…
I’m not clear on how this relates to the MAS/culturally relevant programs and issues with the State as the author suggests. But, Aguirre is right on target, closing schools for failing to achieve the statistically impossible is awfully suspicious, especially in light of the success these schools have demonstrated.
The “culturally relevant” MAS Program?? Relevant to Who? Those same “brown” students who you have TOO many of now?? Really?? News is to be reported NOT interpreted and Your Spin Put On It. Did you people even GO to school?
Please stop with this foolish waste of money called deseg and try to educate the d**n kids. That was our original goal.
UHS changed its admissions standards so it could comply with the desegregation order and enroll more Hispanics and African Americans. I didn’t hear the TUSD board majority complaining that complying with the desegregation order was “racist” in that case. But when it comes to increasing Anglo enrollment in the magnets, expecting the school to increase racial diversity is now somehow bad?
Sorry, Grijalva-Foster-Juarez: you can’t have it both ways. Either desegregation (i.e. enrollment stats in each institution somewhat comparable to the balance of ethnicities in the community at large) is a goal we should be aiming for, or it is not. You can’t have forced manipulation of admissions and enrollment policies to change the ethnic balance at UHS without having the same forced manipulation at the magnets. You can’t have “desegregation funding” without agreeing that desegregation is actually a goal that the community needs to achieve.
It’s been a good game for a long time, “having it both ways” with no accountability and no consistency, and convincing constituencies that don’t know better that “you’re on their side.” But the game is up: too many parties in the community have woken up to what’s going on.
There has been so much misinformation put out by Sanchez and the majority, that it is sickening. The plaintiffs , representatives tried to get more money and attention brought to these schools, TUSD wouldn’t do it , they even fought it in the court. Sanchez has lied and made racial statements to pit everyone against each other, while these parents are fighting everyone but TUSD, Sanchez and the majority are robbing the district blind. If the parents of these schools don’t open their eyes, there schools will be gone soon. Don’t allow this to be a racial issue , it is all about money , money that your schools wont see with these people in power. Forget about the color of your skin and bring people into TUSD that truly care about children and their education. Sanchez and the majority are breaking the law with these actions, it is time to put an end to this. Stop fighting the wrong people, demand that Sanchez and the majority resign, watch how quickly things get better.
Follow the money on this. It has morphed from the original court order into something radically different, but the same people are drinking from the trough. This is a travesty and a waste of our tax dollars.
Is this real life? If you can’t see the pattern by now, you don’t want to.
Should we start busing in those evil white racist oppressors’ children for diversity’s sake now?
Or some evil academically inclined Asian children?
If you want true diversity, no strings attached, we should not know the racial make up of a student body. But, that wouldn’t fit certain people’s narrative, now would it?
Sanchez is playing with fire and his district’s funds. The Legislature almost pulled deseg funds back when Stan Paz was the supe back in the early 2000’s, but there were enough reasonable Southern Arizona legislators to cobble together the votes needed to thwart that move by then-Rep. Steve Huffman…who would now be considered a RINO using the 2015 definition of GOP party loyalty. If HT doesn’t stop feuding with the plaintiffs and Dr. Hawley, he will have more than Judge Bury to worry about. When is this community going to realize that this arrogant, posturing ass running our largest school district is nothing but a self-serving conniver already angling for his next job? When will the local media start digging into some of his schemes and asking the right questions? The Board majority is in cahoots with Sanchez, so we can’t count on them to fulfill their oversight role.