Superintendent of Public Instruction Diane Douglas is visiting Tucson this week for two forums, where constituents can tell her what they think about the "AZ Kids Can't Afford to Wait!" plan she unveiled early in October.

In the 156-page plan, Douglas put forward several proposals—including demanding the state to invest $400 million on teachers and gutting Common Core, among other solutions to the problems she sees in the state's education system. 

The plan was created after the statewide "We Are Listening Tour." Douglas traveled to several cities throughout Arizona, hearing "concerns and suggestions" of parents, students and educators. After a total of 14 meetings, Douglas then compiled all of those comments, as well as suggestions made on the Arizona Department of Education website, and developed the proposals in the plan. 

The "We Heard You" tour began in October, and will be wrapping up in Tucson on Thursday, Nov. 19.

Douglas' first forum in the nearby area is on Wednesday, Nov. 18, at Canyon del Oro High School's auditorium, 25 W. Calle Concordia, from 6 p.m. to 7 p.m. The following day, she'll be at Catalina Magnet High School's auditorium, 3645 E. Pima Street, from 6 p.m. to 7 p.m.

Read the entire "AZ Kids Can't Afford to Wait!" plan here. 

Several Tucson Unified School District campuses may be enlarged to create room for more students in more grade levels in the approaching academic years. A total of five proposals were put to a vote by the TUSD governing board on Tuesday night, with four of the actions passing unanimously.

The proposed expansion to Sabino High School was a contentious 3-2 vote in favor, however all the decisions are pending Department of Justice approval to make sure the district complies with the more than 40-year-old desegregation court case.

The Sabino proposal would allow seventh and eighth graders who would normally go to Magee Middle School to attend Sabino instead. The proposal was originally attached to the expansion of Fruchtendler and Collier elementary schools to include sixth graders, which normally feed into Sabino. Although the proposal was later fractured, the development of the two aforementioned elementary campuses passed unanimously during the governing board vote.

The protest of the expansion comes from both the plaintiffs and the desegregation expert appointed to oversee the ongoing court case, Special Master Willis Hawley. The worry is that Magee Middle School will drop in student population and begin to serve specifically lower income, minority students. This would be due to more higher income families choosing to go to Sabino as higher income families have more access to transportation to get their children to school everyday.

Attempts to alleviate these concerns in the proposal include express buses from ethnically concentrated areas to Sabino. It was noted at the meeting that express buses would be an extra expenditure and that efforts to promote express have been lackluster in the past.   

In early October, Arizona Superintendent of Public Instruction, Diane Douglas rolled out an 156-page plan entitled “AZ Kids Can’t Afford to Wait” which details her plan to immediately take $400 million from the state’s general fund in order to revitalize education in Arizona.

Although this plan is mostly platformed around ridding Arizona of Common Core standards and raising teacher salaries, there is a section about revitalizing career and technical education, which was one of the areas hit hardest by state education budget cuts last year.

“The 2016-17 budget cuts of $29 million to career tech education across the state will effectively kill these programs across the state,” said Alan Storm, Pima County Joint Technical Education District Superintendent/CEO. Joint Technical Education Districts provide the network for students to be able to receive career education that they want. The plan set forth by Douglas to improve CTE is paved with good intention, but is mostly just a symbolic gesture, Storm said.

“In the past [Douglas] has not shown that she was a great supporter of career and technical education,” said Kathy Prather, Director of CTE in Sunnyside Unified School District. “I find it a little suspect and I’m not sure I trust her intentions.”

Without the extra funding proposed in “AZ Kids Can’t Afford to Wait,” JTED’s will be almost non-existent in Arizona, officials say. According to the plan itself, projected funding for CTE is set at $41 million statewide. In the 2010-2011 educational year, funding was $94 million. Funding cuts to JTED's have been widely viewed a bad move by Tucson City Council and other education officials.

“We’re good for next year, but we will run into a financial crisis the year after,” said Jill Ranucci, CTE Director for Catalina Foothills Unified School District. The individual schools are already trying to streamline programs so that they might be able to offer some programs in the following years, according to Ranucci.

“Currently we’re barely able to keep the programs afloat,” Prather said. “We are going to do our best with whatever funding we receive, but it’s going to be difficult to take a 50 to 60 percent hit and keep everything and deliver the quality programs that we are barely able to deliver right now.”

Pueblo Magnet High School and Robison Elementary School are at risk of losing magnet status if Tucson Unified School District doesn't comply with a new to-do list filed by the parties involved in the decades-long desegregation lawsuit. They are the two latest schools added to a list of six others facing the same problem.

In September, Willis Hawley—the special master appointed by the federal court to oversee the district's progress— said elementary schools Bonillas and Ochoa; Safford K-8; Utterback Middle School and Cholla High School could lose their status because they were not integrated. The court order says that Hispanics, or any ethnicity, cannot make up more than 70 percent of the student body. At first, Pueblo was left out of that list, even though 90 percent of students are Hispanic (70 percent are enrolled in magnet programs, so according to Hawley, the school met the criteria). Holladay Elementary School was later added to the list, for a grand total of eight schools that could lose their magnet status.

According to Sylvia Campoy—who's been involved in the deseg lawsuit since the beginning and is the representative for the Mendoza plaintiffs (Fisher & Mendoza v. Tucson Unified School District)—the district has had since 2013 to fix the issues pointed out by the court. (That year they had to draft a new magnet plan.) Most recently, the court issued another order: Magnet schools had eight months to develop plans to meet the goals required by the court. On the 40th school day, Hawley was supposed to review the schools, which were ordered to be integrated by 2016 and have met academic criteria demands by the 2016-2017 school year. According to Campoy, some magnet school administrators reached out saying they didn't even have a copy of the court order.

"The situation cannot be a surprise to anyone paying attention, the court order handed down eight months ago was unambiguous, throughout the development of the magnet plans this spring, most, if not all of these schools were identified as being vulnerable to losing their magnet status," Hawley wrote in his September report.

While TUSD board members, and a group of parents and students, argue the district was not given enough time to implement its magnet plan, Campoy and other critics say the district has neglected its magnet schools for years, so the ultimatum should have been expected. 

She says the district is in the situation that it's in because it's ignored feedback from the plaintiffs and the special master, and it has financially "starved" its magnet schools, she says. What's unfortunate, according to Campoy, is that TUSD's leadership is providing families with inaccurate information and portraying Hawley as a boogie man—with the purpose to defund schools and watch them burn, when that's not the case. It is on the district's shoulders, she told the Weekly last month. 

"You have got some magnet schools that have been sitting there neglected for 15 years, they are racially concentrated, what else could you expect?" Campoy says.

Current Arizona State Treasurer Jeff DeWit thinks it's unwise to draw down the principle of the Arizona State Land Trust to increase education funding. Former State Treasurer Dean Martin, who spoke against the plan during the last week's legislative special session, agrees. So, according to DeWit, does former treasurer Carol Springer.

To be fair, former State Treasurer and current Governor Doug Ducey likes the plan just fine. And it's not fair to say he's outnumbered three to one. He is, but that doesn't really matter. What matters is, some people who have looked after Arizona's money, all Republicans, think this is a very bad idea.

But in Ducey's favor, the Koch Brothers like both him and his plan. And that's much, much more important than having three former treasurers disagree. The Koch Brothers have a hell of a lot of money (They're number 5 and 6 on the Forbes 400 list. Combine their net worths and they're Number 1, $6 billion above Bill Gates), and they're big Ducey supporters, so he has their money to help him sell—literally—his ideas.

Take, for instance, the Center for the Study of Economic Liberty at ASU. The libertarian think tank got its start courtesy of a $3.5 million gift from the Charles Koch Foundation. Executive director Scott Beaulier says the Center is not at all influenced by the Koch Brothers. Nevertheless, on October 7, a little over three weeks ago, Beaulier published a policy report about what a great idea it is to spend down the trust fund. Which, of course, was absolutely unconnected to the wishes of Ducey or the Koch Brothers. Because Beaulier says so.

Typical of scholarly work, the report—Should the Permanent Fund Sit On Its Assets?—is long, detailed and technical, far beyond my ability to critique. But there's one passage I don't need economic expertise to follow, and I love it because it's so wacky and un-scholarly. It comes straight from the clever-precocious-adolescent school of libertarian thought.

A new school funding plan was passed by the legislature and signed by Doug Ducey. Emphasis on the word "plan." There's no guarantee schools will get any more money than they're getting now. The plan is to let voters decide whether or not to increase school budgets. Still, Ducey and his legislative buddies are risking injury by repeatedly patting themselves on the back for their generosity. "Landmark deal!" they proclaim. "We'll lead the nation in the amount we're increasing school funding!"  "We support our children!" "We support our teachers!" "We support our schools!"

Um, no. No congratulations are due. The people who have illegally underfunded our schools all these years deserve blame and shame, not congratulations.

I like to use analogies to explain things, and my favorite on the education funding issue is to compare Arizona Republicans to deadbeat dads and moms. I like it because it's not really an analogy. It's a statement of fact. They've refused to spend $330 million a year in educational child support that's required by law. According to the judge, they're already more than a billion dollars behind on their child support payments, and counting.

Here's what they're congratulating themselves for. If the voters give them they go-ahead, they're willing to pay 70 cents on the dollar of what they owe, and 60 percent of it will come out of the kids' trust fund.

"This is our offer, take it or leave it," they're saying. "We'll grab 42 cents of what we owe you from the trust fund we set up for the kids' future, kick in 28 cents from our own pocket, and keep the rest of what we owe, 30 cents, for ourselves."

"Oh, and there's this," they add. "If times get tough, we'll stop payments, and maybe even ask for some of our money back."

So I say to each of you deadbeat legislators and Governor Ducey: This deal doesn't make you a great guy or a great gal. It doesn't mean you're supporting your kids. It just makes you less of an asshole than you were before.

And here's the sad part. There's a good chance people will take the deal, because they know it could be the last chance to get any more money out of those stingy sons of bitches.

Next: Damning the School Funding Plan With Faint Praise, Part Two: In 600 Years, We'll Laugh About All That Money We're Taking From the Trust Fund.

I've written over the past few days (here and here) about the incident at a South Carolina high school where a school resource officer slammed a sophomore girl to the ground because of her failure to obey an order to stop texting, then to leave the room. My focus has been on the problem of criminalizing student behavior. I haven't brought up the fact that the girl is black. I'm bringing it up now.

Was race a factor in the level of violence the resource officer used in arresting the girl? There's no way of knowing for sure. But it's worth while for each of us to do a gut check. How would we have reacted to the video if the girl had been white? Betts Putnam-Hidalgo, in a comment on my previous post, took the question one step further.

"I wonder what you all would be saying if the policeman were black and the student were white—-such transgressions of societal expectations were cause for lynching and hanging at one time in South Carolina."

I had to look away after the tenth time I saw the video clip on the news. I listened to the discussion without watching the screen. It was just too painful to see over and over. But to be perfectly honest, I think the scene would have sparked a higher level of visceral outrage in me if it was a black officer slamming a white girl to the ground. I'm not proud of that. It shows an ingrained prejudice on my part. But much as I try to fight against the worst parts of my acculturation, if I pretend my prejudices don't exist—if I say, in the words of the right wing character Stephen Colbert played on his Comedy Central show, "I don't see color"—that makes me a party to the myth that we don't live in a society whose racism is widespread on both personal and institutional levels.

This year, a study was published called Black Girls Matter: Pushed Out, Overpoliced and Underprotected. One of its main findings is the disproportionate number of black girls who are disciplined, suspended and expelled in our schools. We tend to focus on black (or Hispanic) males as being targets of excessive punishment in schools and the outside world, but as this study makes clear, we shouldn't forget that black girls are targets of similar discrimination.

There's this from the Department of Education.

Data released by the Department of Education for the 2011–2012 school year reveal that while Black males were suspended more than three times as often as their white counterparts, Black girls were suspended six times as often.

The Black Girls Matter study looks at statistics on discipline, suspensions and expulsions in Boston and New York schools. Here are some of the findings for Boston schools.

• Black girls are disciplined at rate about six times higher than white girls (Black girls make up 28 percent of the schools' females and 61 percent of the girls disciplined. White girls make up 15 percent of the females and 5 percent of the girls disciplined.)
• Black boys are disciplined at a rate between four and five times higher than white boys.
• Black girls are suspended at rate a bit more than six times higher than white girls.
• Black boys are suspended at a rate about three times higher than white boys.
• No white girls were expelled, so it's impossible to make a comparison. (The study doesn't state the number of black girls expelled, but a bit of extrapolation puts that number at about 10.)
• Black boys are expelled at a rate a little under three times higher than white boys.

Though the numbers are a bit different in New York, they're similar.

Girls are disciplined, suspended and expelled less frequently than boys, but when it happens, the disproportion between black and white girls is higher than between black and white boys.

With a quickie special session coming to a close, the education-funding package that settles a major education-funding lawsuit is passing out of the Senate today, giving Gov. Doug Ducey a big victory in delivering $3.5 billion in additional dollars to schools over the next decade.

The deal—which will have to be approved by voters next May—is fairly complex, but the most troubling element is how much of the state land trust dollars will be diverted to ongoing education expenses.

That element had both legislative Democrats and Republican such as state Treasurer Jeff DeWit and former state treasurer Dean Martin complaining that the plan busts the state trust in a significant manner. And they’re right: Never before have state leaders moved to get such short-term gain over long-term growth with the state land trust dollars.

The state land trust now basically pays out the interest that is earned from the trust, which grows as state land is sold or leased and the proceeds are deposited in the trust. (It’s more complicated than that, but that’s the gist.) The idea, which dates back to statehood, is that the land trust would grow in perpetuity while providing annual payouts for the schools.

Right now, the trust pays out a steady 2.5 percent of its value to the schools every year. The plan increases that to 6.9 percent annually for the next decade.

Today, the trust is worth about $6 billion. In 10 years, if you leave the current rules in place, it’ll be worth about $9 billion and will generate about $180 million a year for schools. If you go forward with Ducey’s plan, in 10 years the trust will be worth a little more than it’s worth today—and will only generate $100 million a year for schools. (All of those numbers are estimates that depend on how much land is sold over the next decade, what happens with the stock market, etc.)

From the moment the resource officer was involved, it was an arrest. When a sophomore girl in a South Carolina high school refused to stop using her cell phone, then refused to leave the room as her teacher ordered, the school resource officer arrested her. As part of the arrest, he slammed her to the ground while she was still sitting in her desk. He also arrested another girl who stood up in outrage and shouted at the officer because of what he was doing. The charge for both girls: Disturbing schools.

Both she and another student who verbally challenged the officer's actions during the arrest still face misdemeanor charges of disturbing schools, punishable by up to a $1,000 fine or 90 days in jail, Lott said, although in most cases, judges impose alternative sentences that keep students out of jail.

Until I read about this incident, I had no idea how many hardened criminals I had in my classes during my thirty-plus years as a public high school teacher. I always thought when students disturbed the school or disturbed my classroom, they were behavior problems. Times have changed. School discipline issues, even with no violence of threat of violence involved, can now be cause for arrest, fines and possible jail time. Mouth off in class, refuse to obey a teacher's order to put away your cell phone, and you may take a ride on the school-to-prison pipeline.

Let's assign some blame here. At the very top of the list is the culture of criminalizing student behavior. But let's look at the individuals first.

Many of you have already watched the videos of a South Carolina high school resource officer knocking a female student out of her chair and dragging her across the classroom. From what we know, the student was texting on her cell phone and refused to stop when the teacher told her to, then refused the teacher's order to leave the room. The vice principal was called in, and the resource officer either came with him or followed soon after. The girl didn't move from her desk or appear to be a physical threat to anyone when she was slammed to the ground. She was arrested, along with another student who stood up and loudly protested the officer's actions from across the room.

Unless there was some kind of physical threat we don't know about, the officer's actions were totally unacceptable. Most people agree, including the mayor as well as representatives of the school district and the police force. But one part of the story hasn't been addressed adequately, and it demands more attention. The officer was called into the room to act as a "bouncer," probably by the vice principal, and he and the teacher stood by and watched as the officer assaulted the girl.

Blame the officer, absolutely. Fire him, absolutely. Then take a very close look at the teacher, the vice principal and the disciplinary culture of the school. The moment captured on tape and the arrests that followed are classic examples of the criminalization of our schools. A relatively minor disciplinary offense—a student disobeying an order from her teacher—escalated into a violent confrontation with a police officer and an encounter with the criminal justice system. Two students were unnecessarily thrown into the school-to-prison pipeline. And while the officer was wildly out of line, I put the primary blame on the vice principal and possibly (though not necessarily) the teacher. It was their school. They had a responsibility to protect their students from harm whenever possible, and they failed to do so.