The TUSD Superintendent’s job is still at risk, although discussion of it was absent from Tuesday night’s board meeting.

The crowd of more than a hundred people cheered at the beginning of Tucson Unified School District’s regular board meeting when the controversial item was removed from the agenda. For an hour and a half, one after the other, community members stood at the podium to thank Superintendent H.T. Sánchez and commend the work he’s doing with the district.

Nonetheless, a special meeting has been called for Tuesday, Feb. 21, where the question of Sánchez’s job will be back on the agenda, according to Rachael Sedgwick, the board’s newest member.

At the Feb. 14 meeting, 20 people spoke in support of the superintendent and three in opposition.
Community member Brian Flagg said Sánchez is present at school events and people like him.

“He brings his family, he hangs out, and he talks to people until the last person leaves—and he does it in Spanish,” he said. “I think the guy’s got real popular support.”

On Tuesday, the board received more than 75 emails in support of the superintendent and two in opposition, according to Board members Adelita Grijalva and Kristel Foster. Supporters of Sánchez include Michael Varney, President of the Tucson Metro Chamber, and Mayor Jonathan Rothschild.
Sedgwick, who put the item on the agenda, would like to see Sánchez make some changes but says it’s apparent he’s not open to working with her.

“It’s really not about firing H.T.,” she said. “It's really is about exploring the different opportunities and giving him a choice.”

She would like to see the board create a performance plan to assess progress the superintendent makes with the district. In particular, Sedgwick is concerned with enrollment numbers, standardized testing scores, AP scores, graduation rates and drop-out rates.

Sedgwick also thinks Sánchez spends too much time at the Arizona Legislature.

“The superintendent’s job is really not to be lobbying the legislators in Phoenix,” she said. “I believe the superintendent does not visit the schools very often and that it means that we, as a district, have sort of lost sight about the reasons that TUSD exists.”

Sánchez could not be reached for a response.

Sedgwick says she has the backing of Board member Mark Stegeman and that Board President Michael Hicks is open to discussion.

Other board members think bringing the superintendent’s job into question right now distracts the board from more important things and opens them up to possible legal problems.

“What we’re doing here is a side-show circus,” Grijalva said. “If I’m a parent of a kindergartner or someone who’s coming from a charter school and looking for a middle or high school for my child, why would I pick TUSD? Because all I see in the headlines is this drama.”

Foster says terminating the superintendent with no backup plan is a dangerous decision, and putting that option suddenly on the agenda is not the way to solve a problem.

“We’re, right now, in the middle of a legislative session, trying to advocate on behalf of public education,” Foster said. “This shows absolutely no understanding of what we do as public officials that represent a school district.”

The agenda for TUSD's Tuesday board meeting included an action item to look at firing Superintendent H.T. Sanchez and General Counsel Todd Jaeger. The item was pulled from the agenda. No action. Nothing to see here folks. But this isn't the last time we'll witness an attempt to oust Sanchez. It was a preview of coming events.

I'm only going to indulge in a general discussion of the situation. There's so much heat and so little light on both sides of this battle, it's impossible for me to sort out fact from fiction or determine the difference between cause-and-effect and random incidents. The fighting is fierce, filled with leaks, rumors, accusations and strange bedfellows.

So, just a few comments.

I think Sanchez should stay. [Open The Comments Floodgates!] He's done a decent job as superintendent—admirable in some instances, less admirable in others. Based on my 30 year-plus career as a public school teacher and a student of education around the country, I have no reason to think another superintendent will do a significantly better job steering this difficult district filled with the kinds of problems facing most large, ethnically diverse urban areas. More likely, the district's loss of continuity would do more harm than good.

The agenda for Tuesday night's TUSD Board meeting includes this "Action Item" requested by new board member Rachael Sedgwick:

Discussion/Consideration/Action re Employment, Assignment, Appointment, Promotion, Demotion, Dismissal, Salaries, Disciplining or Resignation of a Public Officer:
- Superintendent
- General Counsel

The Superintendent is H.T. Sanchez. The General Counsel is Todd Jaeger.

Consider this post a heads up, not a discussion, because there too many questions and moving parts here for me to address them at this point. There could be far more to talk about Wednesday. If you recall, one of the major questions raised during the 2016 board election campaign was whether or not H.T. Sanchez was doing a competent job running the district, and if not, whether he should be fired. Sedgwick's action item addresses the question head on.

The public part of the meeting will begin around 5:30pm in the Multipurpose Room, Duffy Community Center, 5145 E. 5th Street, though Sedgwick's action item may be taken up considerably later in the meeting. You can watch a livestream of the meeting here.

Lost in the uproar over our new Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos is another education-related appointment that needs no Senate confirmation. Trump plans to make Jerry Falwell Jr. head of his task force to deregulate higher education.

The Obama administration made some significant advances in draining the for-profit university swamp. Think Corinthian Colleges and ITT Tech, both of which went into bankruptcy when the Feds exposed them for the educational scams they were. Think University of Phoenix, which lost students and profitability when it was forced to mend its predatory recruiting practices. Trump and Falwell hope to fill the swamp back up, using federal dollars to fatten the alligators who profit by putting students into debt while giving them little in the way of education in return. "The goal," Falwell said, "is to pare [Obama-administration initiatives] back and give colleges and their accrediting agencies more leeway in governing their affairs."

Falwell is president of Liberty University. It's a nonprofit educational institution with a 14,000 student enrollment, so the brick-and-mortar university wasn't affected by Obama's crackdown on for-profits. But Liberty U. also has 65,000 online students, making it the second largest online college after University of Phoenix. Its online education is very profitable.

Most colleges now have a mix of residential and online students, but it’s almost unheard-of to have four times as many online students as residential students.

Because internet courses are cheap to deliver at scale, the online division is a big revenue driver for Liberty, which brought in $591 million in tuition in 2013, against $470 million in expenses. Liberty is essentially a medium-size nonprofit college that owns a huge for-profit college.

Putting Falwell in charge of deregulating the for-profit college sector is kind of like, oh, say, putting Goldman Sachs executives in charge of deregulating the financial sector. Meaning Trump deserves some credit, for being consistent. Henhouse, meet fox.

Remember that statewide vote Arizona held on vouchers? No? I didn't think so, because no such vote ever took place. There's a reason for that. Every time voters in other states have been asked the question, they've voted against vouchers. Our Republican-led legislature created our two voucher-like programs on its own. The first program was the tax credit for donating to a School Tuition Organization, which then gives out money to pay for private school tuition. The more recent was the vouchers-on-steroids program, called Empowerment Scholarship Accounts in Arizona but usually referred to as Education Savings Accounts. Bit by bit, year by year, the lege has added more students to the ESA program. This year they're fast-tracking a bill that would make the vouchers available to every student in the state.

Remember the evidence showing that vouchers improve student achievement? No? I didn't think so, since most studies have concluded there is little measurable difference between the achievement of similar students in district schools, charter schools or private schools. And on a country-to-country comparison, voucher programs appear to have harmed the overall quality of education.

The most glaring difference between the public education and voucher models of education is a comparison of Finland and Sweden. In the 1970s, Finland put together a comprehensive program to improve its public education system. Today, Finland has the best scores on international tests in Europe, scores that rival Asian countries which get the most attention for their high scores. In the 1990s, Sweden began a voucher system. Its scores on the international tests have fallen significantly since then.

I recently came across an ABC News video by Eliza Murphy of a fifth grade English teacher in North Carolina who completes personalized handshakes with each of his students before they enter his classroom. The teacher, Barry White Jr., and his obvious connection to his students prompted me to consider how influential of a role teachers play in children's lives growing up, and how too many of them are under appreciated.



I've always thought it was a shame that teachers don't get paid as much as they're worth. Many of the teachers and professors I've had so far have been integral in shaping my character, my interests and my education. They teach so much more than math, writing and science. They often have to take on the many roles of a mentor, counselor and personal cheerleader for their students.

The most significant conclusion I came to after seeing this video, however, is that I wish videos such as this one didn't have to be newsworthy. I wish all teachers cared as deeply for their students' futures as much as White clearly does. Most of all, I wish this country as a whole would start to appreciate teachers as much as they deserve. I give kudos to White and his dedication to his students, but the fact of the matter is that there are teachers all across the country who feel the same way about their classes, yet their efforts often go unrecognized. Students of all ages and all backgrounds need to be told and shown someone believes in them and wants them to succeed. After all, our future presidents, surgeon generals, district attorneys, farmers and yes, future teachers, are being molded every day.

Can we make thanking our teachers an everyday practice now?

President Trump's recent immigration and refugee executive order has sparked passionate discussions on both sides of the spectrum of human rights and freedom of religion versus national security safeguards. Whether you want to support or reject this executive order, it's important to be informed on what exactly this order states, and the implications of those statements for Americans as well as the people from the seven countries banned in the order: Iraq, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen.

Tucsonians can come to the Muslim Community Center of Tucson for an open forum on Saturday, Feb. 4 at 10 a.m. to hear lawyers who specialize in these areas discuss this executive order and what legal changes Americans could expect to see within the next four years. Isabel Garcia will make the opening remarks and moderate the discussion, Tarik Sultan will be leading the conversation on "immigration law in the Trump era," Thabet Khalidi in "Civil Rights and Wrongs," and Jose Vasquez in the "Use and misuse of criminal law against targeted minorities."

Don't let ignorance be your compass to your political decisions. It's your right as an American to think, believe and say whatever you choose, but your voice will be much more effective if you make the time and effort to ensure it's an educated one.

Betsy DeVos, Trump's nominee for Secretary of Education, performed terribly at her confirmation hearings. She was poorly prepared, sometimes giving rambling answers without responding to the question, other times giving answers so wrong, it's clear she has made no serious attempt to learn about testing, curriculum or federal education law. And now it turns out, she plagiarized passages in her written responses to questions given to her by senators.

DeVos has few of the qualifications you'd expect of someone who wants to be in charge of education at the federal level. She earned her wealth the old fashioned way; she inherited it and married into it. She bought her way into Republican Party prominence by giving all kinds of money to candidates who supported her privatization/"education reform" agenda. She's never worked in a public school. She didn't attend public school and neither did her children. The only educational subjects she appears to know, or care, anything about are the use of tax dollars to pay for private school tuition and the reasons why charter schools are inherently better than "government" schools.

That's not a good start. But DeVos could have shown herself to be a serious individual by studying up on the subject matter before being grilled by senators, just like any student is expected to study before taking a test. But she didn't bother. Her implicit attitude was, "I'm white, I'm rich, I gave millions of dollars to the party. What else do you need to know?"

The person who hopes to preside over education in this country plagiarized on her take-home essay, then flunked her oral exam. For most people, that would earn them public embarrassment and a failing grade. For her, it's still probable it will earn her a corner office in the Department of Education Building in Washington, D.C.

What Governor Ducey said isn't a lie, exactly. It's classic bullshit, and it tells you all you need to know about the most important part of his education budget agenda.

It's in an article about how Arizona teachers' low salaries make them low hanging fruit for recruiters from nearby states where salaries are higher and benefits are better. That's one reason Arizona education advocates want Ducey to put most of his proposed $114 education budget hike into increasing salaries instead of the $13.6 million he allocated, to help retain current teachers and attract new ones. Here's Ducey's response.

The governor said he wants to see higher salaries for teachers. But he also wants full-day kindergarten, teacher debt forgiveness and broadband Internet in rural school districts, and he indicated that he’s unwilling to divert money from those priorities into more money for teacher salaries.

The best definition of bullshit is a misrepresentation which is intended to deceive. It doesn't have to be a lie to be bullshit. It can actually be substantially true so long as it serves its deceptive purpose. And Ducey's excuse for not putting more into teacher salaries is bullshit pure and simple.

Ducey's highest priority in his proposed education budget is what he calls "results-based funding." He wants $38 million for that program, close to three times what he designated for the salary boost. But he left that out of his "priorities" in the statement above.

Let's see how much the "priorities" he mentioned add up to. Full day kindergarten? He put $10 million into that pot. Teacher debt forgiveness? That comes to $250,000 — a quarter million — added to money already in the budget. Broadband internet for rural districts? That adds another $5 million. The total is fifteen-and-a-quarter million, less than half the $38 million in his "results-based funding" request. If you add all the "priorities" money to the $13.6 million he put into teacher raises, the increase goes from a dollar a day all the way up to two dollars.

These state education funding numbers bear repeating, again and again and again, lest we forget that funding for K-12 schools and universities in Arizona plummeted after 2009. Two stories in Friday's Star—both by Howard Fischer, one including the Star's Yoohyun Jung—remind us of that important fact. Lest we forget.

[Unsolicited MSM plug: Support your local mainstream media. If you can afford it, buy a subscription to the Star. No other news outlet in Tucson provides so much information about what's happening at the local, state and national levels. Read it critically, of course, don't accept everything at face value, but if you want to know what's going on, it's essential reading. We need a thriving print media sector now more than ever (cough, Trump, cough). End of plug.]

The first story is about National School Choice Week, a faux-holiday I choose not to celebrate. The article includes a chart showing state funding for K-12 education over the past ten years. The numbers, by the way, aren't adjusted for inflation.

State funding of K-12 education on per-student basis:
Year — amount
2007-08 — $4,949
2008-09 — $4,427
2009-10 — $4,216
2010-11 — $3,894
2011-12 — $3,816
2012-13 — $3,861
2013-14 — $4,108
2014-15 — $4,169
2015-16 — $4,459
2016-17 — $4,529

We cut the largest percentage of our already-low per-student funding in the nation during the recession, and now we're still $400 per student below where we were ten years ago. That amounts to a $400 million yearly cut before adjusting for inflation. (The numbers above, by the way, aren't the total amount Arizona spends per student. That's the amount the state contributes to the total, which is around $7,200, 49th in the nation.)