We have the rare good fortune of having two good candidates running for the open seat on the Pima Community College governing board: Mark Hanna and Michael Duran. Both would work to steer the college in a positive direction, something it sorely needs given its much-deserved bad press lately and its fight to get off probation so it can maintain its accreditation.

Of the two, Mark Hanna is the better candidate.

Both Hanna and Duran attended PCC, which means that they don't have a helicopter view of the college. They both have a personal understanding of the students and instructors which will inform their decisions. With buildings, budgets, administrators and programs to worry about, it's too easy to forget about the flesh and blood students who are the reason the school is there.

That being said, Hanna has a few things going for him which will make him a more effective board member than Duran. The first is time. Hanna is retired. He was a general manager for Costco who helped open stores around the country and learned what he calls the "management by walking around" style of making his stores successful. Now he has the time to give the complex task of overseeing Pima Community College the careful attention it deserves, especially during this transitional period.

Duran is a vice president at the Tucson Medical Center and already sits on a few nonprofit boards. Because of his many responsibilities, he'll have to budget his time more carefully. Instead of going over the issues with intensity and focus, instead of "walking around" to get a sense of what's happening at PCC on the street level, he'll be more likely to depend on his management skills and experience — and he's got skills and experience, no question — and rely on others to summarize the issues for him.

I saw this in two debate/forum sessions with Hanna and Duran. Both gave good answers, but Hanna had done his homework more thoroughly. He answered questions with specifics, citing relevant facts and figures to inform and illustrate the points he was making. Duran gave respectable answers which were more general and leaned heavily on his past experiences. That is likely an indication of the way the two would handle the board position.

I always read Tom Danehy's column in the Weekly. No, Dan Gibson didn't tell me to say that. I used to read Tom before I wrote here. He's got a predictably enjoyable style and an unpredictable topic list. When I don't make it to the end, it's because I really, really don't care about his topic du jour, but that's the exception.

A column like this week's Tom talks about what really makes America great is the kind I read to the end, then go back and reread a few favorite paragraphs. Spoiler alert: It's a full-throated endorsement of our system of public education and what public schools did for him. No, it doesn't say everything's great, we don't need to change a thing. It just gives credit where credit is due.

My favorite part:

Willie Nelson's heroes might have always been cowboys. Mine have always been teachers and coaches. I'm not going to say that they saved me from a life of drugs, crime, and self-destruction. I was never headed in that direction. But they did push me when I needed pushing, they listened when I talked, and they talked well enough to make me want to listen.

There was my 6th-grade teacher, Mr. Carpenter, a man about whom I could write a book. Mr. Carpenter was so cool, he would have made Miles Davis feel like Urkel. He was proudly African-American way before anybody else. He had played pro football and occasionally sang with the Metropolitan Opera. He made these giant tapestries of Zulu warriors; each one sold for more than he would make in a year as a teacher. He lived in Bel-Air, right next to Vincent Price, but he taught elementary school in the ghetto out of a sense of duty. He taught me how to play chess and never let me win. When the other kids were being tested on the multiplication tables from one to 12, he asked me to multiply 18 times 17 in my head. He always pushed and I'm eternally grateful that he did.

Oh yeah, he wrangled some tickets and took me and some of my classmates to our first-ever concert—The Beatles at the Hollywood Bowl.

Michael Hicks declared bankruptcy in August, 2007. From then until his Chapter 13 bankruptcy case was completed in April, 2012, he made payments in a court-approved plan to pay a portion of what he owed to creditors who filed a claim in the case. There’s nothing uncommon about the situation Hicks was in, and it normally wouldn’t merit mention. However, he is one of five members of the TUSD school board who oversee the district’s budget, which makes his personal financial responsibility a relevant concern. It’s especially relevant because Hicks has made the district’s finances a major part of his campaign, accusing Superintendent Sanchez of fiscal irresponsibility. He has also demonstrated a lack of care in reporting his campaign finances and recently made a statement to a group of students about college loans which was careless and irresponsible.

Here is a general picture of Hicks’ bankruptcy, taken from public records. I went over the documents with someone who understands bankruptcy documents and procedures far better than I do to make sure I presented the situation with a reasonable level of accuracy.

On August 2, 2007, Hicks filed for bankruptcy under Chapter 13 of the bankruptcy code, which provides for a court approved payment plan generally determined based on a debtor's "disposable income" after considering his living expenses, mortgage expenses, etc. At the time, he had debts totaling more than $225,000. In approximate figures (the exact figures differ on documents throughout the bankruptcy process), he owed a total of $150,000 on his home and his car, $47,000 in credit card debt, $16,000 in student loans, $7,000 in personal loans and $6,000 in medical bills. Three of the six credit card companies he owed money to sued him before he filed for bankruptcy, with one seeking garnishment. During the years he was paying down his debt, the bankruptcy trustee filed actions three times because he was delinquent in his payments. When he came out of bankruptcy on May 30, 2012, he had paid about 14 cents on the dollar on the debts other than the house and car, where he continued to make his normal payments outside of the bankruptcy plan.

Hicks has recently created a new one page campaign website, hicksis4kids.com. His earlier five page campaign website can be found at hicks4tusd.com. It includes a personal statement, part of which emphasizes “full disclosure,” “bringing transparency to the Tucson community regarding myself” and a commitment “to continue to bring fiscal responsibility to the district.”

”Those who know me, knows [sic] that I believe in full disclosure, and in bringing transparency to the Tucson community regarding myself and the business of TUSD.  It is my intention to call for and listen to public input on important matters, and to encourage fresh ideas from students, parents, teachers and tax payers.  I am confident that if we work together, we will be able to improve the TUSD experience for everyone, and provide our children with the best quality education they deserve.  I want to continue to bring fiscal responsibility to the district.”

• Flier handed out before the board meeting

I attended the TUSD board meeting Tuesday night and scribbled notes as fast as I could. Here are some of the takeaways.

The district is submitting its annual report about its finances for the 2013-14 school year to the state Department of Education and the Auditor General. That means the finalized figures for the last school year ending in July, 2014, are signed, sealed and delivered. They're official numbers, not estimates or predictions, so if TUSD has it wrong, it's going to hear about it from the state. I think it's probable the district doesn't have it wrong.

Here's a summary of the information Chief Financial Officer Karla Soto presented to the board and the audience. Every one agreed it was the most detailed financial presentation in recent memory.

The 2013-14 school year began with about $14 million in cash reserves carried over from the 2012-13 school year, which was Superintendent Pedicone's final year.

This wasn't part of her presentation, but it's worth remembering, that year Pedicone said the district was facing a potential $17 million deficit. As a result, TUSD closed 11 schools and made other deep cuts. And yet, after the 11 schools were closed because the district said it had no other choice, it had $14 million in reserve, significantly more than the total savings from the 11 school closures.

So Superintendent Sanchez began the 2013-14 school with, in essence, a $14 million cash cushion. That's how much was sitting in the reserves before he started spending that year's budget. At the end of that year, in July, 2014, that reserve had grown to $20 million.

This also wasn't part of Soto's presentation, but a very different cash reserve figure has been floating around for the past 3 weeks, which came from leaving Deputy Superintendent Yousef Awwad's spreadsheet predictions of potential financial disaster. Awwad said the end-of-the-year reserves were $10 million, half of what Soto put in the report which is being sent to the state. According to Soto, instead of the reserves being spent down $5 million during Sanchez's first year, they grew $5 million.

Next, Soto presented her budget projections for the 2014-15. We have a long way to go before we reach July, 2015, so these are her best estimates. She said the district will spend $5 million from the $20 million reserve it began with, adding it to the district's budget to make a variety of improvements (I don't know where those funds will be spent). As a result, she projects the district will once again have cash reserves in the $14 million range in July, 2015, just as it had in July, 2013, when Sanchez took over as superintendent.

I opened my paper this morning to find this screaming headline on the front page, top right hand column: Sanchez left financial experts frustrated. Sounds bad. Sounds really bad. I unfolded the paper, took a sip of coffee and began reading.

I read the story once, paused to drink more coffee and clear my head, then read it again. The second reading left me with the same impression as the first. There's not a whole lot of there there. The English teacher in me wanted to call the article Much Ado About Nothing, but that wouldn't have been fair. The article is about something. To tweak Shakespeare's title a bit, the article is Much Ado About Management Style. And it's not nearly consequential enough to merit a front page story above the fold.

Here's the thrust of the article. Superintendent H.T. Sanchez made financial decisions without consulting his Chief Financial Officer Karla Soto or his Deputy Superintendent Yousef Awwad who had been CFO before Soto. The article said both of them were frustrated with Sanchez at times and expressed their concerns in emails. Most of the concerns came from Awwad. Soto was mostly frustrated with the behind-deadline budget process which made it difficult for her to answer questions about the budget. That's about it.

Sanchez makes decisions without consulting administrators who should be in the loop, the article states. I'm not surprised. Given his style and the hurry he's in to move his agenda forward at TUSD, I imagine that happens on more than one occasion. So, what are the items Sanchez is impatiently pushing forward by taking some shortcuts with the process? According to the article:

Those initiatives included opening two early-learning centers, addressing salary inequity issues, lowering class sizes and moving away from the practice of annual layoffs.

Sounds like a pretty good agenda to me.

If the new programs Sanchez has put in place are valuable, the two questions raised by the article are: (1) Should Sanchez have consulted others more? and (2) Is he putting the district in hock with his expensive new programs? The answer to the first is probably Yes, he should consult with administrators more, at the district and school levels. The answer to the second is, we don't know if he's spending the district into debt. Awwad made that sound possible in the analysis he sent to Michael Hicks, but we haven't seen the figures beyond Awwad's early-in-the-school-year predictions.

That's really not a whole lot to wrap a lengthy, front page article around.

It promises to be a hot time in the ol' district Tuesday night, at least for TUSD junkies. At the Tuesday night board meeting, the financial report for the 2013-14 school year will be presented. According to Mark Stegeman's constituent newsletter, the cash reserves — the amount left over to give the district some room to deal with unforeseen expenses — were about $10 million at the end of that school year, down from $14 million in cash reserves left by previous superintendent John Pedicone at the end of the 2012-13 school year. You can expect CFO Karla Soto to report that the cash reserves were significantly higher than Stegeman's estimate.

You can take a look at the Annual Financial Report for the 2013-14 school year here. It's way above my pay grade, so I won't try to interpret it too closely. Any brave souls or CPAs out there, feel free to dig in.

The question is, if there's a serious disagreement in the numbers, who should you believe, Mark Stegeman or H.T. Sanchez? The answer is, this isn't about belief. Budgets aren't religious documents. Let's see what the numbers show and try to make a reasonably objective assessment of what they mean. Remember, it's election season, and the spinmeisters are out in force on all sides. (I was planning to dress up as a spinmeister for Halloween, but I don't know what they wear.)

PUBLIC EDUCATION NATION from Schoolhouse Live on Vimeo.

The public face of progressive education these days is author and education historian Diane Ravitch ("The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education," "Reign of Error: The Hoax of the Privatization Movement and the Danger to Americas Public Schools"). She's one of the founders of the Network for Public Education (NPE) which has brought together educators, parents and community members around the country, using lots of hard work and very little money to get its message out. The NPE is at the forefront of the pro-public schools, anti-privatization/corporatization/"education reform" push in the country. Tucson's own Robin Hiller is NPE's Executive Director.

Saturday, NPE's first "PUBLIC Education Nation" event will be webcast live at Schoolhouselive.org starting at 9am Arizona time.

For years, reformers have talked down to students, parents and teachers. Now it's time for us talk back! Join Diane Ravitch, Anthony Cody and Leonie Haimson as they take on Common Core, charters and school closures, and other threats to public education, October 11, 2014, 12-5 PM (EST), for the first ever Public Education Nation webcast, on schoolhouselive.org. Featured panelists include some of the most innovative voices in public education: Carol Burris, Brian Jones Takeima Bunche-Smith, Rose River-McCutchen, Alan Aja, Xian Barrett, Hiram Rivera, Yohuru Williams, Jeff Bryant, Gary Rubinstein, Karran Harper Royal, Wendy Lecker, Robin Hiller, Phyllis Tashlik, Greg Anrig, and in conversation with Diane Ravitch, Jitu Brown.

Here are three good reasons not to vote for Republicans Michael Hicks and Debe Campos-Fleenor for the TUSD board. First, the two candidates bring a conservative mindset to a district that needs to be progressive and forward-looking. Second, neither is a strong candidate. Hicks has shown himself to be marginally qualified at best, and Campos-Fleenor hasn’t demonstrated any interest in learning about the intricacies of TUSD and public education, making her a blank slate for someone else to write on. Third, and probably most important, if both of them end up on the board, it would lead to a major shift in the 3-2 majority on close, controversial votes. Together, they would create a new majority with Mark Stegeman at its head, to the great detriment of the district. [Full disclosure: I'm a Democrat, in case there was any question about that, and I've already written about my support Adelita Grijalva and Jen Darland.]

Let’s start with the last point, the shift in the 3-2 majority if both Republicans are elected.

When partisans on both sides of the aisle look at the U.S. Senate races, they worry far less about which specific candidates are elected than about reaching the magic number of senators needed to give their party the majority. For Republicans, it’s all about picking up enough seats to reach 51. Democrats just need to hold onto 50 seats since Joe Biden can break the tie on close votes. The individual winners and losers are secondary to winning that one seat that puts your party on top.

Then there’s the U.S. Supreme Court. If the current court had one less conservative and one more liberal, crucial 5-4 decisions would have gone the other way, and the country would have taken a dramatically different direction on election financing, voter protections, health care and other issues.

Obviously, TUSD isn’t the Senate or the Supreme Court, so let's move a few links down the food chain to the Jefferson County school district, the second largest in Colorado. The district’s school board made national headlines recently when it voted to monitor instructional materials to assure they’re sufficiently patriotic.

[The board] would establish a committee to regularly review texts and course plans, starting with Advanced Placement history, to make sure materials "promote citizenship, patriotism, essentials and benefits of the free-market system, respect for authority and respect for individual rights" and don't "encourage or condone civil disorder, social strife or disregard of the law."

It was a 3-2 vote made possible by a new conservative majority. And — this may be the most important part of this cautionary tale — the new conservative majority rode into office with the help of Democrats. Here’s how it happened.

I posted an interview I did with Ana Charavin a few days ago, and here's an interview with Alec Moreno. I first heard both of them speak at an Education Accountability Session sponsored by the Pima County Interfaith Council and decided to invite them to the cable access program I host with Ann-Eve Pedersen, Education: The Rest of the Story.

Alec's story is uniquely his, but it's also similar to that of many young Tucsonans. He took advantage of educational opportunities at high school — he went to Tucson High — including classes he took through Pima Community College. He's now studying engineering at PCC and plans to continue on to UA when he earns his associate's degree.

As a retired classroom teacher, I relate more to stories like this than to administration/school board battles over budget and governance. Alec's education is where the rubber meets the road. It's the reason we have a system of public education. He found people who helped guide him toward an education suited to his particular talents and interests. Through his involvement with the Society of Hispanic Professional Engineers group at PCC, he's already connected with students at UA and has become a student representative to the PCC Board of Governors where he's learning life skills that go beyond his classroom learning. Whenever we focus on all the big-picture trials and tribulations of public education, we need to remember stories like Alec's, which you find duplicated at schools across the Tucson area and around the country.

Monday night, the Weekly hosted a debate, moderated by Jim Nintzel, for Legislative District 9 House candidates: Democrats Randy Friese and Victoria Steele; and Republican Ethan Orr. It was a revealing, informative session. While Steele and Friese mostly said what they meant clearly and plainly, Orr did his best to obscure his stands on issues like vouchers, gun regulation and women's reproductive rights, all of which mirror the positions of his fellow Republican legislators. Orr is trying desperately to run as a member of the Moderate Party, so he confuses and denies his views which align too closely with conservatives, views which are sometimes even to the right of old-school-conservative Jan Brewer. [Full disclosure: I'm a Democrat who supports Steele and Friese, in case there was any question about that.] [UPDATE: The entire debate has been posted on youtube.]

I'm going to focus on Orr's two minute answer to one question about education, because it crystallizes the way Orr ducks, dodges and obfuscates on issues when he wants to appear more progressive than he actually is. Nintzel asked,

"Do you support the expansion of the Education Savings Accounts, the voucher-like program that would allow public dollars to flow to private schools?"

Both Friese and Steele gave a clear, unequivocal "No" at the beginning of their answers and went on to explain their positions. Orr's answer was a flurry of disconnected points which may have sounded like they addressed the question but actually ranged over all kinds of unrelated, often deceptive, territory.

Orr focused on the one time he voted against a voucher bill, not mentioning that he voted for six other vouchers bills (there may be more), one of which he sponsored. Brewer vetoed two of them, including the one with Orr's name on it. Next he name-dropped a progressive educator even though she disagrees with him. In his explanation of his support for some of the voucher bills, he made a nonsense statement that left my mind boggled and my head shaking. And then, half way through his two minutes, when he ran out of things he was willing to say about vouchers, Orr had a Miss-America-contestant's-worst-answer-ever moment where he wandered off into talking about the relationship between charter schools and public schools, neither of which have any direct connection to vouchers, meandering around aimlessly and a bit desperately until his time was up.

I included the complete transcript of Orr's answer at the end of the post so you'll know I'm not making this up. It'll also allow his supporters to salvage some stray good moments from his answer and blame me for not being an objective reporter (Note: I'm not a reporter, I'm a blogger — that's kinda like a columnist — who uses facts to back up his analyses.)