Tucson Unified School District is prepping for a possible strike by Sun Link workers that could affect a couple thousands district students.

If Sun Link and the transit union do not wind up with a contract, the union could vote for a strike, limiting service from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. during the weekdays, and limiting the routes to 3, 8, 11, 16 and 18, according to an article by the Arizona Daily Star.

Negotiations are happening as we speak, facing an 11:59 p.m. deadline today for a final agreement. Discussion between Sun Link and the transit union began June 17, and last week they agreed on a five-day contract extension to continue talks, according to the Star.

TUSD's first day of school is tomorrow, so the district has arranged for additional morning and afternoon routes to accommodate the roughly 2,000 students who rely on Sun Tran to and from school. TUSD buses will not be using the Sun Tran stops, a TUSD press release says. (You can find a list of routes on the TUSD website.) 

Here's more detail on what could be happening tomorrow, according to the press release:

TUSD buses for Sun Tran riders will arrive earlier and depart later than normal. 

The district added 16 mourning buses in case of a strike. The buses should arrive at 6:45 to 6:55 a.m. to the specific schools. 

Afternoon buses are scheduled to arrive at 4:30 to 4:45 p.m, or a little later. 

TUSD will send a message via the ParentLink phone system to families affected by the possible strike by 5 a.m. tomorrow, and will keep them updated throughout. 

For more info, here's the TUSD bus hotline: 225-4800

Camp Cooper successfully completed a crowdfunding campaign last week, raising $20,001 to support staff and operations for the 2015-2016 school year. 

The more than 50-year-old environmental learning center has been facing a crippling budget, which sparked embarking on some grassroots fundraising to maintain its programs—something Cooper hadn't had to rely on in the past.

Tucson Unified School District owns the land where the center stands, and that support isn't going anywhere any time soon. But the University of Arizona's College of Education streams Cooper money for its operations budget—the hiring and maintenance of staff—and that revenue depends on how many people enroll in the college. 

"There is lower enrollment in the College of Education, probably tied to the overall climate of education both nationally and in our state. There are fewer students coming into our program and that leads to having less funding for a place like Cooper," Cooper Center Director Colin Waite told the Tucson Weekly in May (read more on Cooper in my article "Natural Selection"). When a student enrolls in the UA's elementary education program, for instance, the fees that come from that are some of Cooper's life support system. With this fundraising campaign, which was launched around April, the goal was to star heading in a route where Cooper would become self-sufficient, so they no longer rely on entities like the UA, which constantly have to absorb budget cuts from the state. 

The crowdfunding that wrapped up last week attracted more than 100 donors from around the U.S.

In three months, Cooper has raised $80,000 toward its goal of between $100,000 and $120,000 for its operations budget, including a $40,000 grant from the Marshall Foundation, a $10,000 gift from Southwestern Foundation, more than $30,000 in small contributions from other supporters, and recently the $20,000. Also, TUSD Superintendent H.T. Sanchez contributed $7,700 from his performance bonus, according to a Camp Cooper media release. 

“Our Southern Arizona community has spoken, and they value the work that we’re doing at Cooper," Waite says in a statement. "We’ve always known that the support was here, but we’ve never had to ask for financial help at such a high level. Our future is bright, knowing that there are so many Friends of Camp Cooper out there.”

If you are interested in donating to Camp Cooper, visit its crowdfunding site.

When I was looking up enrollment figures for Tucson-area districts for my last post, I got to wondering, how many students has TUSD lost over the years? I found that the TUSD website supplied me with all the information I needed. It has a page, School Enrollment by Gender & Ethnicity on Any Day, where you can find the enrollment for the district or for individual schools for any day from 1996 on. It was just a matter of plugging in dates and days, then looking up the information.

I looked at three different points in the school year for every year since 2000 to see which yielded the most reliable data: the 20th day—about a month in, time enough for the beginning-of-the-year enrollment to settle down—the 100th day—that's the magic day the state uses to determine a district's yearly enrollment—and the 175th day—basically the end of the school year. Of the three, I found the 175th day to be the most reliable, with the fewest random ups and downs to distort the data. The bar chart I created with the data is below. The number of students the district lost each year is at the top of the corresponding bar.

You can look over the chart yourself, but let me summarize what I gleaned from the information.

Ever feel as though your future is truly written in the stars? Not in the sense of destiny or fate, but rather that the stars are actually your future? For those seeking real life experience in the field of astronomy or any nature related career, the Kit Pitt Observatory is offering a worthwhile volunteer experience.

The observatory is currently recruiting volunteers for their docent training class, starting this October. The class will prep volunteers for hosting guided tours and serving guests of the observatory. Docents play an important role in the observatory’s educational goals are will share their knowledge with guests. Facilitating hands-on demonstrations, creating informative exhibits and hosting school groups are just a few things volunteers will be responsible for.

This opportunity is open to all and no prior astronomy experience is required. Applicants will need to meet their basic physical requirements and be able to work on their feet for long periods of time at a heightened elevation of 7,000 feet.

While this is an unpaid volunteer opportunity, transportation to the observatory and lunch will be provided for free. Other perks include a 15 percent discount at the gift store, free admittance to the Nightly Observing Program and access to guest speakers. Official vests and hats will be available at cost to those who complete the training program.

The training program will last seven weeks and will require participants to meet two to three times each week. This is a long term commitment and volunteers will be required to work at least three days a month for two years after the training course.

Each volunteer shift will last six hours from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Participants will be able to select which days they would like to work up on the mountain but are asked to have some flexibility in their schedule.

Volunteers must be Kitt Pitt members or become members after their training to retain an active status.

The observatory is located on Kitt Peak, which is 56 miles southwest of central Tucson, and has no street address. If using GPS, you can enter in "intersection of Arizona State Route 86 and Arizona State Route 386.” Directions are available on their website.

If you see you stars aligning through sharing astronomy with others, engaging with the community and gaining valuable education in the astronomy field, registration is open now.

To apply, visit www.noao.edu/kpvc/Volunteer and download their application. For more information, email Robert Martino, Program Coordinator at [email protected]. 

Seven people applied for the vacant position in Pima Community College's Governing Board's District 5, according to a post on Blog for Arizona by Carolyn Classen. The deadline to apply was Friday at 5 p.m.

The seat has been vacant since June, after long-time board member Marty Cortez—who was first elected to the board in 1994—announced her resignation citing personal reasons. 

“I have full confidence that (PCC) Chancellor (Lee) Lambert has and will, with the support of the board and dedicated college employees, continue to move the college forward in providing educational opportunity for thousands of individuals as well as contributing to the business and economic growth of the community. It has been an honor to have served as a Pima Community College board member over the years," she said in a statement at the time. 

Cortez's current term would have expired in 2018. The person selected to fill in Cortez's seat will serve through 2016 and will be up for election in November of next year. 

Arizona law requires Pima County Superintendent of Schools Linda Arzoumanian to choose Cortez's replacement. 

Lambert says a selection committee will assist Arzoumanian in her decision-making. The committee will include two community members who live in District 5, a local business leader, faculty, staff and student representatives and the superintendent of a local school district, according to an article by the Arizona Daily Star. 

The applicants are: Cecilia Cruz, Martha Durkin, deputy city manager for the city of Tucson, Richard Fridena, an educator who ran for a seat in the PCC board in 2012, Luiz Gonzales, James Mielke, Jim Murphy and Francis Saitta, who has previously run for the PCC board and ran for the Tucson Unified School District board last year.

We learned last week that Arizona colleges have a lousy graduation rate. Except it turns out our state colleges' graduation rates rank pretty well nationwide, but our for-profits, like the huge Huckster U University of Phoenix, drag down the average. This week we learn that TUSD needs lots more teachers—tons more!—than other Tucson area districts, which gives people one more reason to cluck their tongues at the district lots of people are sure is failing compared to other local districts. Except that the raw numbers only tell part of the story.

The Star has a good, long, thoughtful article about Arizona teacher shortages, local and statewide, including one of those fun, informative interactive data pages online. The story gives teacher shortage numbers for all the local districts. TUSD needs a whopping 116 teachers while Marana needs 16.5, Sahuarita needs 16, Catalina Foothills needs 3. Even Sunnyside only needs 40. It looks like the Tucson district is in the deepest of teacher shortage doo-doo compared to its neighbors. But the article leaves out one essential bit of information: the student enrollment for each district. And it leaves out another less essential but important bit of information: each district's state grade. So let's put that information into the mix and see what we find.

TUSD needs 116 teachers while Marana only needs 16.5. But TUSD has 49,000 students while Marana only has 12,500 students. If TUSD had the same student population as Marana, it would need 30 teachers. That's still almost twice as many teachers as Marana when the enrollments are evened out, but it no longer looks like there's a 7-to-1 gap between the districts. If TUSD were Foothills-sized, it would need 12 teachers. Foothills, however, only needs 4. And if TUSD were Sahuarita-sized, it would need 14 teachers. Sahuarita needs 16, so TUSD actually needs fewer teachers than Sahuarita when enrollments are considered.

I looked at districts' enrollment figures and the number of teachers they need, then figured out how many teachers each needed for every 1,000 students. There's still a significant difference. Vail needs .4 teachers per 1,000 students. Foothills needs .6. Both TUSD and Sunnyside need 2.4 teachers per 1,000 students, between four and six times more than Vail and Foothills.

Next I looked at each district's state grade. With the exception of Sahuarita, districts with the highest state grades need proportionately fewer teachers, and districts with lower state grades need more. It's not hard to figure out why. If you took a random group of people looking for teaching jobs in the Tucson area and asked where they'd most like to teach, districts like Vail and Catalina Foothills, where family income and student achievement are high, would come up more often than TUSD, where family income and student achievement are far lower. K-12 teaching is a tough job no matter where you are, but it's less stressful—and for many teachers, more rewarding—working in high rent districts, and there's a certain prestige value in saying, "Yes, I teach at (ahem) Catalina Foothills High." The high rent districts will always have an easier time finding teachers just because of who they are, not because they're doing something right and the low rent districts are doing something wrong. [Note: Flowing Wells is the exception to the rule, with its low income student population, high state grade and low number of teachers needed relative to its size.]

The table below has compiles the information for local districts.

Here are three interesting state-of-Arizona-education articles I've read this week.

Low marks for Arizona in education study. Howard Fischer, Capitol Media Services.

In a WalletHub report, Arizona ranked 48th overall in the quality of its schools. Like most WalletHub studies I've looked at, this one has a quick-and-dirty feel, but the criteria it uses to arrive at its conclusions are reasonable. The problem is, it doesn't take socioeconomic factors into account—family income, ELL students, etc. That's a huge omission.

Can you guess which sectors gained and lost the most jobs in Arizona since the recession? Eric Jay Toll, Phoenix Business Journal.

Construction lost the most jobs—no surprise there—followed by education. Hmm. The recession meant a big cutback n building, so we could have fewer construction workers with no loss of quality. But we're educating the same number of students as before the recession, so to keep quality up, we need as many people in education as before. Cuts in education are definitely going to hurt the children.

Phoenix moves up in Forbes' 'best places for business' list, but education drags down region. Eric Jay Toll, Phoenix Business Journal.

Phoenix moved up 12 positions in the Forbes "Best Places for Business and Careers" ranking, from 56 to 44, but it came in at 103 for education. "[E]ight of the top 10 metros in education all ranked in the top 50 for best places for business and career." Though it's not mentioned in the article, Tucson ranked #103 overall in the Forbes ranking—far lower than Phoenix—but #91 in education, a bit higher than Phoenix.

This is a follow up to yesterday's post where I discussed the AZ Republic coverage of Tuition Tax Credits. The Republic's anchor article for the series has a terrific interactive map showing private schools around the state and how much tax credit money each gets in the form of scholarships for students. You can move around the map and resize it to look at schools in any area in the state. The graphic at the top of this post is a screen shot of the map's Tucson area, with an example of the information given for one school. It's not the real thing. If you want to use the interactive map, go to the Republic article.

The color of each dot indicates how much money a school receives in tuition tax credit scholarships. I made a list of the top two categories. Schools with red dots get over $1 million. Schools with dark orange dots get between $300,000 and $1 million. Here are the five red dot schools in order of money received.

Salpointe Catholic High School: 3,092,476.63
Pusch Ridge Christian Academy: 2,119,947.33
San Miguel Catholic High School: 1,372,303.94
Desert Christian Schools: 1,130,907.33
St John the Evangelist School: 1,006,454.60

All of them are religiously affiliated. Among the 16 schools with dark orange dots, only two are nonsectarian. [Note: The Gregory School was named St. Gregory's until recently. It's always been nonsectarian and changed its name to avoid confusion.] [Correction: The Gregory School was connected with the Episcopal Church until it separated in 1987.]

Santa Cruz Catholic School; 971,419.81
Tucson Hebrew Academy :876,273.80
The Gregory School: 845,407.76
St Ambrose Catholic School: 789,289.29
Our Mother of Sorrows Catholic School:723,504.59
Casas Christian School: 690,544.92
St Augustine Catholic High School: 652,422.21
Imago Dei Middle School: 637,396.00
Green Fields Country Day School: 627,263.59
St Elizabeth Ann Seton School: 589,792.63
St Cyril Catholic School: 475,511.09
St Michael's Parish Day School: 475,039.35
SS Peter & Paul Catholic School: 473,179.01
St Joseph Catholic School: 375,418.45
Calvary Chapel Christian School: 350,753.25
Immaculate Heart School: 316,679.88

The AZ Republic recently published at least six articles and columns about Arizona's Tuition Tax Credit program, and there may be more coming. Reporter Alia Beard Rau deserves credit for being at the forefront of the Republic's work on the issue. For anyone who wants to dig deeper into the issue, I link to the Republic pieces at the end of the post.

Tuition tax credits are sometimes referred to, accurately, as backdoor vouchers. An Arizona taxpayer "contributes" money to one of the state's private School Tuition Organizations which give out private school scholarships, then the taxpayer gets 100 percent of the "contribution" back in the form of a credit on income taxes. "Contribute" $1,000, pay $1,000 less in state taxes. The result is, the taxpayer foots the bill. It's a private school voucher program by another name. Like the more recent Education Savings Accounts, aka Empowerment Scholarship Accounts, aka Vouchers on Steroids, tuition tax credits are carefully crafted to get around the state constitution's prohibition against using state funds for religious education. If, unlike me, you like private school vouchers, you probably like the programs. If you think the tax credits are a good idea because they help poor kids go to private schools, well, they help rich kids go to private schools too. These programs continue to grow, with the goal, stated by many Republican legislators, of offering vouchers to every student in the state.

The longest and most comprehensive piece in the Republic is Arizona private-school families cash in on state's tax-credit program, which includes a great interactive map that shows every Arizona private school that receives the tax credit money and how much they get. The others focus on specific issues.

I could go on almost endlessly about tuition tax credits as I have in the past, mainly on Blog for Arizona when the topic was first spotlighted in 2009. I won't, especially since the Republic has done a good job exploring the topic. Instead, I'll focus on a few issues I think are especially interesting.

A Cronkite News story headline screams, "Arizona posts lowest college completion rate, highest default rate." An Associated Press headline is equally dire: "Report: Arizona tied for lowest college graduation rates nationwide." To give Cronkite News its due, after its headline grabs you with its partial truth, the article does a good job of breaking down the overall completion rate to show that our public universities graduate a higher percentage than the national average. The very short AP article, after listing the Arizona four year college completion rate at 29 percent, ends by saying "Education Secretary Arne Duncan said graduation rates are especially low, and default rates are especially high when it comes to for-profit schools." What does that sentence mean exactly? It doesn't say, no further explanation. Oh, and AP says the 29 percent figure represents students who graduate in four years. Wrong. It's the percentage of students who graduate within six years. Oops.

So let's go to the U.S. Department of Education report fact sheet that both articles draw their figures from and see how it breaks down college graduation and college loan default rates. Colleges are separated into three categories: Public, Private and For-profit. (Since it doesn't specify, I have to assume that "Private" means nonprofit, since "For-profit" colleges are also private, by definition.) Arizona's 29 percent, six-year graduation rate lumps all three types of colleges together, putting us at the bottom of the heap alongside Alaska. Looks like bad news for Arizona. But when we look at the public college graduation rate separately, it's 57 percent, just above the national average of 55 percent. Meanwhile, Arizona's for-profit college graduation rate is 23 percent, well below the 32 percent national average. You can attribute much of that rate to University of Phoenix, which has students from all over the country, yet all of them count here because they're attending an "Arizona college." The abysmal graduation rate of University of Phoenix's 213,000 students drags our numbers way, way down.

Then there's the student loan default rate. Arizona's is the highest in the nation at 18 percent. But not so fast. Our public college default rate is 9 percent, the national average for public colleges. Our for-profit default rate is 19 percent. That happens to be the national for-profit average, but since University of Phoenix is the largest for-profit college in the nation, its default rate has a larger-than-normal impact on Arizona's overall rate.

We have plenty to criticize about our public education system here in Arizona, but let's not criticize our public universities' graduation and student loan default rates by mixing them in with the results from Huckster U University of Phoenix.