Jeff Biggers has contributed many great pieces on the ethnic studies battle in Tucson for the Huffington Post. His latest captures another of the many mistaken and lost approaches TUSD has taken rather than celebrating a program that works: the demotion of Mexican American Studies co-founder and director Sean Arce.
You can read Biggers' work here.
"Mr. Arce has been in the business of saving lives for many years, whether he realizes it or not," said Jesus "Tito" Romero, a 2007 alumni of the Mexican American Studies program. "It wasn't until I had Sean Arce as a history teacher that I discovered what it meant to be as a student, and I soon realized that Mr. Arce had not only saved my life, but had changed and touched so many others."
In this week's Tucson Weekly, we have a story previewing the three-day administrative hearing on TUSD's appeal of state Superintendent of Public Instruction John Huppenthal's June findings that the Mexican American Studies classes are illegal. The hearing starts Friday in Phoenix. We plan to be there to see how TUSD's attorney's from DeConcini McDonald Yetwin and Lacy present their case along with Huppenthal's Phoenix attorneys from Burch and Cracchiolo.
The hearing starts at 8 a.m. and takes place at the Office of Administrative Hearings, 1400 W. Washington, Suite 101, in Phoenix. The hearing continues Tuesday, Aug. 23 and concludes Wednesday, Sept. 14.
