The Tucson Unified School District Governing Board announced last night they were once again postponing the agenda item concerning Superintendent H.T. Sánchez’s job.
The Duffy Community Center was so packed that overflow crowds had to wait outside. For over three hours, the board and superintendent were in executive session. At about 7:45 p.m., Sánchez somberly took his seat with the board and was met by loud applause from the audience. But not everyone was clapping.
For an hour, community members spoke for and against Sánchez with either raised-voice rancor or grateful tears on topics such as superintendent turnover rates, student-enrollment numbers, Prop 301 spending, childhood bullying, dropout rates, race and unsuccessful desegregation measures.
Several people spoke in Spanish with an English translator, recounting times Sánchez had personally helped their children.
Cassandra Becerra, a mother of TUSD students, is one of Sánchez’s supporters. While waiting for the meeting to start, she told the Tucson Weekly she’s seen the superintendent in the schools and fighting for the good of the district.
“I strongly believe he’s here because he cares about this district,” she said, holding a sign with a red, white and blue drawing of Sánchez, copying the iconic “hope” poster representing Barack Obama’s 2008 campaign.
David Morales, a TUSD parent and board-meeting regular, has been very critical of the board and Sánchez over issues such as underpaid teachers, teachers leaving the district and low student enrollment. He said TUSD has seen a drastic decline since Sánchez became superintendent, four years ago.
“I would like H.T. to leave town,” he said. “He’s not invested in this community.”
It’s not about firing Sánchez, newest board member Rachael Sedgwick said in a phone
interview in the days before Tuesday’s meeting. Sedgwick, who put the controversial item on the agenda just over a week ago, has issues with TUSD enrollment numbers, standardized testing scores, AP scores, graduation rates and drop-out rates, among other things and would like to see Sánchez follow a performance plan. She also said he’s welcome to resign.
President of the Tucson Education Association Jason Freed said this doesn’t make sense because the superintendent already has goals and measures that are part of his contract and approved by the school board. Amending those measures would be fine, but the agenda item does not imply that type of action, he said.
“It’s unfortunate that we’re taking the focus away from educating our kids,” Freed said, adding that the current controversy is about personal disputes, which shouldn’t be occupying hundreds of Tucsonans on a Tuesday night.
People in the community and other board members have said it seems like Sedgwick has a personal vendetta against Sánchez. But board member Mark Stegeman said that’s unlikely because Sedgwick has been talking about the superintendent’s performance since her election campaign last year.
The board wants to resolve this issue quickly because letting it drag on hurts the district, Stegeman said in an interview before the meeting.
“Getting to some speedy conclusion—whatever that is—is definitely something we want to do so people know what’s going on,” he said. “I think TUSD has a lot of positive potential and some fantastic assets, and it could be a superlative school district.”
This article appears in Feb 16-22, 2017.
Nicely written. Thank you, Danyelle.
Oh look, it’s Lisa Barnes holding a “Keep Sanchez” sign.
Wasn’t she the President of the University High School P.A. who came down to the “dog and pony show” portion of a TUSD Board meeting on June 23, 2015 to receive a $10,000 personal donation check from Sanchez on behalf of the counseling office at University High School?
I do believe Ms. Barnes was accompanied on that check-receiving occasion by Suzan Costich, a University High School fundraiser. By a strange coincidence, Ms. Barnes spoke in support of Sanchez’s leadership in the 4/21/2017 meeting, and Ms. Costich spoke in support of Sanchez’s leadership the previous Board meeting where “Fire Sanchez” was on the agenda, 4/14/2017.
Here’s a link to the video tape of June 23, 2015 meeting, where you can see Ms. Barnes and Ms. Costich receiving the $10,000 personal check from Sanchez at about minute 40 in the videotape:
http://www.tusd1.org/contents/govboard/gbvideo062315.html
If you’d like to view Ms. Costich speaking in support of Sanchez’s leadership, that’s at about hour 2, minute 14 in the video of the 2/14/2017 meeting:
http://www.tusd1.org/contents/govboard/gbvideo021417.html
If you’d like to view Ms. Barnes speaking in support of Sanchez’s leadership, that’s at about minute 17 in the video of the 2/21/2017 meeting:
http://www.tusd1.org/contents/govboard/gbvideo022117.html
Of course, “Who showed up”, the whole thing is a dog and pony show that forefronts politics while putting kids, achievement and learning on the back burner! There were a few key facts left out by this one-sided account of the most recent Board meetings. The majority of the speakers the first night that this issue was considered showed up solicited by Kristel Fosters’ campaign, and some had given campaign donations as well. Not noted here is that Cassandra Becerra is also an aide to Congressman Grijalva, the illustrious father of the previous Board president. Also not noted is the number of people who throw accusations at Stegeman and Sedgwick and heckle throughout the meetings that have deep connections to the local Democratic power structure: think Adam Ragan (major player in the Kristel Foster campaign and becoming well known for trumpeting invectives against the twosome) and Derek Harris, an OMA teacher. Neither of them have been active prior to this election at school board meetings and to my knowledge neither of them have children in the district either–not that parents are the only ones with interest in TUSD. Given that its all more about politics and less about substance, how surprising is it that people who received the Superintendents’ largess showed up to support his regime? What else is personal largess for?! I recall when the decision was announced to give $10,000 to an individual school as well as a considerable sum to Davis Elementary for their mariachi camp, (attended by a few Board members’ children)–conveniently enough, Davis families and administration are also strong supporters of Sanchez. I thought that it was unethical and should be against policy: in the past Superintendents have donated to Educational Enrichment Foundation and allowed it to give the money to children and schools on a greatest need basis.But there is absolutely no political patronage benefit to doing something so simple and altruistic–better to give it to a few chosen schools (whose favor you need) out of the 86 that the Superintendent is responsible for. It was so obviously buying allegiance that only a caudillo would have thought of it to begin with.
In trying to explain TUSD to an out of town friend the other day, I was reminded of how amazing it is that a district could be such an abject leadership failure on so many fronts all while receiving 65 million extra dollars to desegregate and improve the education of who has now become the majority of its students. How could that even happen if the Board and the Superintendents WERE focused on doing the best by the kids? Its always amazing to me that the Board member who talks about continuity the most often says “I have seen X number of Superintendents over my years on the Board” without wondering whether her own very long-term presence or actions could have been a part of that level of discontent! Continuity is a brand new value: I don’t recall any of the Board majority 4 years ago begging Dr. Pedicone to stay (although Kristel Foster did have an epiphany during the most recent campaign, with photos and stories to prove her new BFF relationship with the man she eviscerated for his MAS stance during the first campaign).
In short, this article is another stunning example of biased reporting on TUSD from the once-great Weekly. On that note, I will say that it was a real thrill to see David Safier, the usually very biased TUSD blogger actually AT THE MEETING taking notes. I’d like to think that by actually being there, he might have noticed the grotesque level of disfunctionality in the Board family that is NOT caused by the new majority. Whether or not he would make such a thing public, though, is a different question. I am not holding my breath!
One of the interesting things to observe here is that die-hard privatizer and former State Superintendent of Public Instruction John Huppenthal has repeatedly expressed his support for Sanchez in the comment streams. Below are a couple of links to pieces where this occurs. Huppenthal’s comments are near the bottom of the streams:
http://m.tucsonweekly.com/TheRange/archives/2017/02/15/tusd-superintendent-firing-update-nothing-to-see-here-folks-for-now
http://www.tucsonweekly.com/TheRange/archives/2017/02/16/tusd-sideshow
Elsewhere Huppenthal expresses opinions that are less puzzling: “The district school with the classical classroom is a dead end for students from poverty and students of color. Yet, you [David Safier] insist that everything is ok and keep writing testaments about the greatness of district education.”
What can it mean that a die-hard privatizer, the former State Superintendent of PUBLIC Instruction who saw fit to use his office to make robo calls to residents letting them know that if they were willing to abandon the public district system, there were public funds available for them to apply in private schools, wants Sanchez to remain Superintendent of TUSD?
Perhaps Huppenthal understands that the longer Sanchez remains in his post, the further conditions will deteriorate in the district, and the larger the “market share” of privates and charters will become.
I am not expressing support of Sanchez. I am simply stating an obvious public policy – well supported Superintendents serving for decades create excellent school districts. I know that Elizabeth Fagan and John Pedicone were world class Superintendents based on their performance both before and after their service at TUSD. The TUSD community ate through them in less than 4 years each. The TUSD community is sick and is producing a sick school district.
TUSD is a cash cow of over $300 million per year. Commentators on this blog are just overt about it. With the passage of Sanchez, they hope to get more of the loot. An organized pack of jackals took down a water buffalo.
Now, burning through Sanchez is much more likely to be a verdict on the TUSD community than it is to be a verdict on Sanchez.
Who will be the next victim/Superintendent?
Arizona education can’t be successful unless TUSD is successful. This TUSD mess is a tragedy that will take years to even prove that it has been overcome. My prediction: the sharks will circle again and soon around the next victim – 4 years at most.
jhuppent:
As has been pointed out before in these comment streams, it’s important not to make invalid assumptions about cause and effect relationships. It may be true that well supported Superintendents serving for decades are associated with excellent school districts, but that does not mean that holding on to a poorly performing Superintendent will cause a bad school district to become an excellent one. This is an obvious point that many people who are moaning and complaining about the Sanchez resignation fail to understand.
Especially in school districts that are troubled and have experienced high rates of turnover in their Sup position, competence matters. Honesty matters. Here is what one activist parent — not a jackal, not a disgruntled contractor — but an extremely well informed Board watcher, parent, former Board candidate, and volunteer said about the Sanchez resignation in the comment stream on another of Ms. Khmara’s recent pieces about TUSD: “Ms. Kharma, you leave out the one thing that should instantly disqualify Sanchez for the job, and should immediately undermine every single one of his very well-known political supporters. He lies. He lied about 301 money, he lied about bonuses and pay packages, he lied about 123 money–IF you actually knew what was going on in the District AND you listened to what he said, you could see the lies, and they were plentiful.” (Betts Putnam-Hidalgo)
The lies destroyed the trust that teachers had in him. They destroyed the trust that parents (or, to be more accurate, parents who were paying a reasonable amount of attention to the district’s affairs) had in him. When you don’t have your constituency’s trust, you cannot lead, and you need to move on. It was best for him, it was best for the district, it was best for the region. The Board minority who brought him into town and did not want their political opponents to have the opportunity to control the selection process for the next Sup had an obvious motive for trying to hang on to him, and that’s what they did. They shrieked and staged shabby “showdowns” in parking lots and called in all the favors they were owed locally to drum up a weak and transparently self-interested show of “support” for this deeply unpopular leader. Now they are “playing the race card” and circulating the spurious argument that it was prejudice against Hispanics that caused Stegeman et al. to organize a campaign to get rid of Juarez and Sanchez. More BS. What the Board minority has been doing in recent weeks just shows how little they care about this community, that they are willing to engage in bitterly divisive (and false) mud slinging and invective rather than working with other Board members to engage in a proper recruitment process and turn the community’s attention to what needs to be done for the benefit of students, not what the Board minority selfishly think needs to be done to undermine their political opponents.
Unfortunately, the whole sad story is one more nail in the coffin of the idea that democratic control produces good results in troubled urban public school districts. Too bad, because Arizona has no good alternative available to democratic control of this district, which enrolls 40-something thousand students. Those who had the resources needed to get out have gotten out through choice policy. Those who remain stuck in the thing are being under-served, and the blame for their damaged educations and diminished prospects in life can be laid squarely at the door of leaders in this state who failed to understand that BOTH sufficient funding and proper oversight and regulation were needed to keep this massive public institution of education from deteriorating into the sad mess it is in now.
Well said. All we need is MORE choice. Vouchers will solve TUSD’s failings.