Tonight’s Tucson Unified School District special meeting of the governing board is mostly about the search for the district’s next superintendent.
The meeting opens at 4 p.m. at TUSD admin, 1010 E. 10th St. The board goes into executive session the top of the meeting to talk about personnel issues related to outgoing Superintendent John Pedicone, who announced his resignation last month. Also on the agenda is looking at what reads like a public records request “exempt by law from public inspection.” Gotta love the executive session portion of agendas.
The public portion of the meeting tonight opens at 6 p.m. when board members are expected to vote on what just took place in executive — will be interesting to see how much discussion will take place in public. The action item is to approve recruitment and the hiring process for the next superintendent.
In other TUSD related news: at the next regular TUSD governing board meeting on Tuesday, April 9, an action is being planned by UNIDOS at 1010 that starts at 5:30 p.m.
From UNIDOS:
UNIDOS has been organizing a “Rally” for April 9th in response to the 11 school closures that TUSD has agreed too. After much discussion with board members, we are tired of their excuses and we are demanding that they “find the money and stop school closures.” We hope you can support us and come to this event at TUSD Headquarters.
If you can donate water and/or snacks for this event, please bring them to Derechos Humanos office, 631 S. 6th Ave, between April 2nd and April 9th.
This article appears in Mar 28 – Apr 3, 2013.
Hopefully they’ll be able to find somebody with a strong anti-illegal alien point of view.
I see that UNIDOS is protesting the school closures, I don’t agree with the closures, but demanding that TUSD, “find the money”, isn’t going to yield tangible results as the district has to makes cuts due to budget deficits. A more sensible protest would be to ask TUSD to cut 1010 administration down to a size that is commensurate with other school districts in the state, and then see what of that money can be used to reopen schools as the school closure process has already been initiated.
A big question will be how many students flee TUSD due to school closures, and the MAS controversy. It is no secret that a majority of Latino parents (as per ex-board member Cuevas), and a majority of white and asian parents wouldn’t want their kids to take these classes, and may well worry about making TUSD schools a hostile learning environment for non-Latinos. MAS proponents and their allies can try to setup an ethnic pride system at TUSD, but of course most parents of all races would resent this and look at taking their kids elsewhere.
Catalina Foothills school district has all A rated schools and has open enrollment, if you can get your kid there then you can enroll him or her, and I see more parents taking this option. I see Catalina Foothills school district as preparation for a college carrer in science and math, and also other professions like law. TUSD has problems in terms of offering an education which helps kids succeed in life and college.
I also think TUSD should be broken up into west and eastside schools districts as 1010 seems to favor the westside over the eastside, and was completely clueless with regards to eastside school during the closure process.
Miguel Cuevas was an honorable board member who really cared about the future of TUSD and the schools, I am upset that he was voted out of office as he didn’t necessarily blindly follow what Adelita Grijalva wanted. He got the big picture: if TUSD adopts a modern curriculum which prepares kids for 21st Century jobs, and actually makes TUSD a place people want to send their kids, then Tucson as a whole would benefit. Adelita Grijalva is constantly talking to her father, Raul Grijalva, who looks at national issues, and I feel that she just wants to nationalize Tucson’s problems and doesn’t care what happens to the kids in the district. You see it all the time during the school closures as Adelita blamed the state, blamed the TUSD school board when she didn’t understand the voting rules.