Analysis of TUSD-USP deseg plan

7/30/2019 Analysis of TUSD-USP deseg plan

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The Parties

Imagine a guilty defendant, after being found guilty ofracist treatment of Latino and Black children in a court oflaw, being able to set the terms of their own punishment,or having a veto vote over whatever is decided.

This happens almost never. Imagine Jared Loughnertelling the judge that he disagrees with his sentence, butinstead of having to appeal to a higher court, his

disagreement is actually taken into account and the judgehas to compromise with the guilty party.As ridiculous as this sounds, this is situation that our

great American Justice system has in store for the racisttreatment against Latino and Black schoolchildren today.The guilty party gets to set the terms of their punishment,and they are also in charge of fixing their own racism.

You can see the problems that will, and that havearisen, in such a silly system of justice for victims ofsegregation in the school system.

Tucson Unified School District (TUSD), the largestschool district in Tucson, Arizona that is a minority-majority district with over 60% Latino students, has beenunder a desegregation order since 1978. This was theresult of two lawsuits filed in 1974, almost four decadesago, and the saga continues today. It may have to do withthe power of the guilty party having to fix the problemthey perpetuate.

The Fisher Plaintiffs, the Mendoza Plaintiffs, the United States

(collectively, the Plaintiffs), and the Tucson Unified School District

No. 1 (TUSD, or the District) (collectively, the Parties) enter

into this Consent Order (Order) to resolve the longstanding

desegregation case against the District. This Order consists of theUnitary Status Plan jointly proposed by the Parties, reached after

months of negotiations.

In this federal desegregation, Judge David Bury has


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allowed the guilty defendant to be one of the parties thatis allowed write their own punishment. Even worse, allthey need is one of the parties to go along with them and

they can veto the other remaining parties.This fact will become very important especially when

you consider the unequal distribution of power in thesenegotiations. As of Day 40 for this school year, thedemographics of TUSD, which has 51,550 students are23.2% White (11,971), 5.5% Black (2,832), and 62.4%Hispanic (32,181).

The leaders of TUSD do not represent thedemographics of the student population. This has to dowith all voters within TUSD, whether or not they havestudents in the school district, being able to vote for theschool board, and thus indirectly choose the type ofsuperintendent, who then chooses his or heradministration to lead the district.

The white voters get a disproportionate amount ofpower through the vote over an educational system thatLatinos remain in while their students increasingly favorcharter schools. And to solidify that power over the62.4%, deals can be made to get the other plaintiff to sidewith them on issues they may not have care about asmuch as the Latino plaintiffs.

For example, while some problems affect allminorities and thus there may be unity there, other issues,such as bilingual education, may be an issue that hasonly one advocate in this local threesome which includesthe guilty defendant.

Historic Timeline

Starting the PlanIn May 1974, the NAACP sued TUSD on behalf of the

African American students are their party is known as theFisher Plaintiffs.


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Later that year in October, MALDEF filed a later-consolidated lawsuit containing similar allegations onbehalf of Latino students and this party is known as the

Mendoza Plantiffs.In 1976 the United States intervened and the case was

tried in federal court in January 1977.Finally, in August 1978 a settlement was reached and

a comprehensive desegregation plan was put forwardwhich is an official Court Order dated August 31, 1978.

Getting off the Plan (temporarily)On January, 2005, TUSD tried to get off of thedesegregation order and enter what is known as UnitaryStatus. In April 2008, the federal court ended its oversightof TUSD by accepting a Post-Unitary Status Plan.

On December 18, 2009, the court approved the PUSPwhich was approved by the TUSD board by a 4-1 vote.

The dissenting vote came from Mark Stegeman who wasopposed to the clear support and expansion of MexicanAmerican Studies as laid out in the PUSP.

From what I understand, the federal courts did not somuch lift the oversight over TUSD because they fixed theproblems, but because this order was about threedecades old and still on the courts desk, and thus the

judge wanted TUSD to fix the problem via the PUSP andmove on.

Unfortunately, what the federal judge in Tucson didnot understand was just how bad the racism andsegregation in Tucson are, and that the District for themost part was just ignoring the Court Order and yet it gotto spend the $63 million it received every year in desegmonies. TUSD was like a parent that for every dollar it

received in child support, only spent a penny on the childand the rest on itself. The budget for MAS was less than$600,000, which is less than 1% of deseg funds.

MAS was free for TUSD, completely paid for with less


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than 1% of the money the District was getting to fix itssegregation problem. Instead, TUSD would do otherthings with the money, such as pay for a new million-

dollar football field for Tucson HS, pay for $625,000 incameras to be installed on buses to help with suspendingLatino children, and all that security you have at TUSDschool board meetings, including the new bullet-proofcounter that can be used as a shield against protestorsoutside or in the board room.

Ninth Circuit overrules Tucsons Judge BuryNeedless to say, the Plaintiffs appealed the lifting offederal oversight on TUSD and on July 19, 2011 (yes, justlast summer), under Superintendent John Pedicones andTUSD governing board President Mark Stegemans watch,the Ninth Circuit Appeals Court overruled theconservative federal judge in Tucson and slapped Tucson

back under a desegregation order.

Special Master appointedOn September 14, 2011, the court ordered the

appointment of a Special Master to develop the UnitaryStatus Plan (USP) for TUSD. From what I understand, theSpecial Master acts with the power of just-below a federal

judge. While the power is ultimately with the judge (Buryin this case), the Special Master is who Bury trusts to takecare of things so that he can sign off on them.

The Special Master also has special power with theDistrict, able to demand data and ask questions ofanyone, from administration to the school board, and getthose questions answered as soon as possible.

This would be important for a study that would be

conducted by the University of Arizonas College ofEducation, where Pedicone was a professor before takingover TUSD. This study would use data that the SpecialMaster was able to ask for and get from TUSD that would


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be important in a study that concluded that MAS wasindeed successful. The Cabrera study was made publicNovember 2012 and was yet another vindication of the

most successful program to close the achievement gap forLatino students in the nation.

On January 6th, 2012, Special Master Willis Hawleywas appointed. Until the new USP is written andapproved, the PUSP remains in effect. This did notprevent TUSD from continuing in their ignoring of federalcourt orders when they killed the MAS program on

January 10th, 2012. Unfortunately Hawley was just barelyappointed on the winter holiday of the Epiphany, winterbreak still in effect across the country, and during his firstwinter weekend could not prevent what Michael Hickswould propose and TUSD would approve the followingTuesday.

It was just too soon.

USP Draft releasedThis brings us to November 2012. Just three days after

Election Day where a new pro-MAS majority waselected to the TUSD school board, the Special MastersUnitary Status Plan was made public.

It is important to note that this is a Unitary Status Plan

and NOT a POST-Unitary Status Plan. In other words, thisis the plan to get TUSD into Unitary Status and it keepsTUSD under federal court oversight, but this time with anofficial person in charge of that supervision, namely theSpecial Master. In about 4-5 years, the plan will berevisited and rewritten either to further fix what problemsTUSD perpetuates, or to move on to a PUSP with thefederal court supervision lifted.

As an analogy, TUSD is on probation for the next 5years, but as one of the Parties it gets to write the terms ofprobation on itself, the guilty defendant.


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General and State Superintendent in Arizona.The year of 2011 was spent trying to fight the new law,

and 2012 started off with the official ban of Mexican

American Studies by the TUSD school board. However,they took it further than necessary, according to AttorneyGeneral Tom Horne, and started banning books fromLatino and Native American authors and required oneteacher to take down a poster of the Aztec calendar in herclassroom.

520 years, the first decade of 52-year cycle, after

1492, the Calendario was banned in the 520. Culturalgenocide was still alive and well in Tucson.

This was part of a movement that began earlier, orperhaps we should note that it is part or a more recentwave (since racism and xenophobia have always existed

in this country) of anti-Mexican legislation.In 1998, California passed Prop 227, the English inPublic Schools initiative which was sponsored byRepublican Ron Unz who failed in his bid for governor.This was in an era of other anti-Mexican bills inCalifornia, including the infamous Prop 187 from 1994and Prop 209 from 1996.

After implementation of these bills loopholes mayhave been found in clever ways that worked against thesponsors real goal of attacking Mexicans, so people likeRon Unz would try it again, with all the loopholes fixed,next-door in the state of Arizona. It is in Arizona that theoriginal anti-Mexican waves of the Pete Wilson era metwith the South and the Tanton Network to form a wholenew legal form of racism.

It began with in 2000 with the Unz initiative known asProp 203, which banned bilingual education in Arizona.The initiative from the liberal Democratic State ofCalifornia got a big boost from the liberal Democratic


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State of New York in a misleading front-page story thatsaid Prop 227 had been a success, whereas now weknow from studies a decade later that it was a huge

mistake.It was during the late 1990s that another unknown

figure would begin to arise, a man named John Pediconewho was just appointed as superintendent of FlowingWells School District in Tucson and he would only toogladly implement the new Unz initiative as an opponentof all the multiculturalism nonsense that he would tell his

Education grad students at the University of Arizona toget out of their minds.

The return of MAS?Is it possible for the Mexican American Studies

program, just banned earlier this year in January of 2012,to begin instruction again for the Fall 2013 semester?

The answer is a resounding YES!However, there is a lot that needs to occur beforethen, but there is a clear path with federal protectionagainst state intervention that leads to a return of MASclassrooms, perhaps under a different name.

First we begin with the classes which are laid outSection V.C.6.a.ii of the Unitary Status Plan DRAFT (draftis the key word here):

By the beginning of the 2013-2014 school year, the District shall

develop and implement culturally relevant courses of instruction

designed to reflect the history, experiences, and culture of African

American and Latino communities. Core courses of instruction shall

be developed in social studies and literature and shall be offered at all

feasible grade levels in all high schools across the District, subject to

the District's minimum enrollment guidelines. All courses shall be

developed using the District's curricular review process and shallmeet District and state standards for academic rigor. The core

curriculum described in this section shall be offered commencing in

the fall term of the 2013-2014 school year. The District shall pilot the


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expansion of such core or elective courses to sixth through eighth

graders in the 2014-2015 school year, and shall explore similar

expansions throughout the K-12 curriculum in the 2015-2016 school

year.The new educational buzzword appears to be

culturally relevant but if you read the description it isclear that what is being referred to here are MAS-likecourses even though that word is not used, especially ifyou know the history of attempts to attack MAS fromwithin TUSD during the year of 2011 with the so-called

Stegeman resolution.Before being banned by the TUSD board, MAS classeshad two descriptors that are important to understandbefore continuing:

1) Core which refers to the classes satisfyinggraduation requirements in that field, such as socialstudies or literature.

2) Elective refers to the classes not being required ormandatory by the student, but just one option thatstudents can elect to take, just as they can currentlytake European History to satisfy American Historycredit.

One controversy has already arisen over the wordelective in that it can also refers to what is commonlycalled elective classes, which include courses such as

Band, Theater, Art, etc. The use of the word elective inthe Post Unitary-Status Plan and here refers to the classesnot being mandatory by any student, but an availableoption.

The available option is clear as you can see with thedeclaration that these core classes be offered at ALL highschools starting during the Fall of 2013, and then to be

expanding to middle school in the following year, andthen expansions throughout all the K-12 curriculum inthe following year.

This also expands the requirement for not just


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culturally relevant courses for Latinos, but for learningabout the African American community as well.

It is in this little paragraph out of many pages that the

only reference to what could be a return of MAS classesis made. If the community demands it and the SpecialMaster agrees, the call for the MAS program as existedbefore with that name can be made, but I have a feelingDr. Hawley will stick to this more vague description sinceit allows for flexibility by the district and the coordinator.

Another very important note at this point is that theTUSD Plaintiffs, the guilty defendants, are officiallyobjecting to this section. This means that the DeconciniLaw Firm, with the approval of the current TUSD schoolboard, is working against any return or creation ofculturally relevant core classes for African American andLatino communities.

The return of the MAS director wrongfully fired in2012?

Skipping the long history of the MAS struggle, and the

night of April 10th, 2012, where hundreds of peoplegathered at the TUSD headquarters, the first meeting afterthe famous Michael Rosa Clark Hicks interview on theDaily Show where the aptly named Hicks blamed thesuccess of the students in the MAS program to magicalburritos.

The big topic of the evening was the firing of the MASdirector Sean Arce, who has stood up for the teachers, thestudents, and the classes until the very end against JohnPedicone. Despite all the evidence of success, all theawards and audits that vindicated the program, Sean Arcewas becoming a Thorn of Truth on the side of JohnPedicones trajectory for the mostly-Latino school district.Arce already knew about Pedicones educational


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philosophy by taking a class of his at the University ofArizona where Pedicone told his students to get over themulticultural paradigm; students must assimilate in a way

that would make Ron Unz proud.Is it possible for Sean Arce to return to TUSD in a role

that he is specially qualified for?The answer to this question is also a resounded YES!

Just a few lines before the excerpt mentioned in theprevious section regarding culturally relevant courseswe have the following Personnel description under

Section V.C.4.c:Coordinator of Culturally Relevant Pedagogy and Instruction

("CRPI Coordinator"). The District shall hire or designate an

individual who shall supervise the implementation of courses of

instruction that focus on the cultural and historical experiences and

perspectives of African American and Latino communities. The

CRPI coordinator shall also supervise, develop and implement a

professional development plan for administrators, certificated staff,

and paraprofessionals, as appropriate, on how best to deliver these

courses of instruction and to engage African American and Latino

students. The CRPI coordinator shall have experience developing

and teaching curriculum focused on the African American and/or

Latino social, cultural, and historical experience at the secondary

level.

Anyone who has been following the MAS story over

the past few months and years can see right away whatthe Special Master is referring too. The former MASdirector job description is basically what is now the newCRPI Coordinator, with the expanded role of not justhaving MAS classes, but classes for African Americanexperience also.

A little below the above description under Section V.C.

5.a: By July 1, 2013, the CRPI coordinator shall coordinate hiring ordesignating individuals, as necessary, who can assist him/her in

providing ongoing support and training to administrators, certificated


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staff, and paraprofessionals.

With these two excerpts, the only excerpts in the USPthat refer to the CRPI Coordinator, it could not be any

more clear that this job is made for Sean Arce and thereturn of the MAS teachers.

It is also clear that due to the vagueness of thelanguage used to describe culturally relevant that it willbe up to the Coordinator to determine the trajectory ofwhat TUSD determines is the rightful implementation ofthis section.

There is only one group of teachers that is shovelready with the curriculum already created to haveclasses going at all high schools by Fall 2013, and that isthe former MAS teachers. If this is the path that TUSD andthe Person-Who-Hires (Pedicone) want to take, then SeanArce will be hired, and MAS classes, though not with thatname, can return in 2013 and be expanded to all K-12

levels, and new classes for African American Studies canbe created, although not with that name either.This is as close to a return of MAS and righting all the

racist wrongs of 2012 that the Special Master canprovide.

The other path is for the Person-Who-Hires tocontinue ignoring the Latino community as JohnPedicone did in Spring of 2011 with his decision to placeDr. Lupita Garcia in charge of supervising MAS. Garciawas a known opponent of MAS and publicly announcedthat racism based on skin color no longer exists. And yetthis is who Pedicone believes is the best person to helprun a program created by and protected by a federaldesegregation order?

Pedicones appointment of Garcia was like Bushsappointment of John Bolton, a known critic of the UnitedNations, as the US ambassador to the UN. It is nosurprise that a few months later Sean Arce would fired


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(On a side note, on November 20th, TUSD held anillegal meeting that was in violation of the Open

Meetings law and voted to close down several schools,and this November 27th, during one of the public USPforums, TUSD is having another meeting to close evenmore schools, but also demonstrating what they think ofthe Special Master forums, which they did not evenschedule in the TUSD school district but in Sunnyside!)

Now to lay out my reasoning, which I must admitmight be completely wrong, but due to the gag order it isall we have to know what happened, and Im prettyconfident Im close to right on this.

Before the gag order, I met with Mendoza party andthe Special Master, and Hawley let me know about thedesegregation case in San Francisco where Bilingual

Education was allowed to return despite the state law,because federal court orders trump racist state laws (thislast part is my wording, but the feds do trump the state.)

From my meetings with them, and from others whomet with them, I was willing to bet, and I wrote about itmultiple times on ThreeSonorans.com, that BilingualEducation would be revived in TUSD.

But it was not.Which implies that despite strong support before thegag order, during the negotiations at least two partiesobjected to the return of Bilingual Education.

One of the parties is obvious, which makes youwonder why the guilty defendant has a say in all of this tobegin with. According to former teachers at FlowingWells, including one that will soon be on the TUSDschool board, the superintendent at the turn of thecentury was only too happy to enforce the ban onbilingual education at Flowing Wells. For his work in
http://threesonorans.com/http://threesonorans.com/


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upholding state law, however racist, with zeal, JohnPedicone was awarded Superintendent of the Year inArizona, which should have been a warning, not a

recommendation. The same person would also work withfull fervor in killing MAS and once again taking it a stepfurther than the racist state law required by also banningbooks and having censorship monitors harass the studentsand teachers for the rest of the semester.

And considering that the current majority of the boardis the same that killed MAS in January, and that is

objecting to the culturally relevant core classes in theUSP, it should not be hard to conclude that TUSD is oneof the parties opposed to the return of BilingualEducation.

The other party opposed is where this reasoning mayget controversial, but I will stay truthful to what I know,but once again stress that NO ONE but the parties

involved knows what really happened, and Im not on thereceiving end of what one of the TUSD board members isleaking despite a gag order.

It is important to note that while the NAACP was whofiled the original Fisher lawsuit in 1974, the current Fisherrepresentative is not an MLK or MLK-like in anyway.Without going into all the details, suffice it to say that theFisher representative enjoys a cozy friendship with someanti-MAS forces, and while she was on the school boardshe made her anti-Latino stance well known. How shebecame the current Fisher representative is beyond me,but also suffice it to say that Pedicone is a master ofpitting Black against Brown.

While the culturally relevant courses call for bothAfrican American and Latino classes to be taught, on the

surface it seems that there is no reason for the Fisherrepresentative to advocate for Bilingual education, andbased on experiences before the gag order, it would notbe folly to conclude that the Fisher party was also


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opposed to the return of Bilingual Education. Thus, 5people on the school board, or rather a majority of thosefive people, along with a representative of 5% of the

student population got to overrule a party thatrepresented over 60% of the student population and whatI believe the Special Master wanted also.

But this is just for the Draft.It would be very unfortunate for the Fisher

representative, who does not meet regularly with hercommunity and there is no evidence she even meets with

the Fishers themselves, to ignore the fact that about onein ten of the African American students need BilingualEducation. This would require an acknowledgement thatAfrican refugees and immigrants are also considered asAfrican Americans, and thus their needs should also beconsidered, but in the end the data shows that BilingualEducation is what works.

Worse of all is that under the current system whichwas put into place by Tom Horne, the ELL classesFORCIBLY segregate students for 4 hours a day, andTUSD uses desegregation funds to pay for this forcedsegregation! This is why it was so ironic to hear TomHornes continued lies about how MAS segregatesstudents, which it does not do since students themselveselect to take them, when it is his own ELL program that issegregating Latinos on a massive scale!

This is why the public input period is so important.The Special Master needs to hear and see the 60% of thestudent population that the Mendoza Party represents,and he needs to hear from the community itself why

Bilingual Education and MAS should be returned toTUSD. In the end, the final USP will be what he decides,and community input, which has not taken place so far,may be the deciding factor to bring to TUSD what the


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guilty defendant and other parties could not.

One thing is for sure and that is that TUSD is entering

a new era. There is a lot that this article is not coveringthat is mentioned in the Unitary Status Plan that arepositive changes that are coming. My focus here was juston the ones that need immediate attention.

The other big change that is coming is that the SpecialMaster will remain to ensure the implementation of theUSP, which is in contrast to the original deseg order that

went ignored for three decades. The desegregation moneymust also now be accounted for, and it is no coincidencethat Pedicones false fiscal emergency coincides with theaccountability in deseg monies that can no longer beraided.

In conclusion, the new Unitary Status Plan, thecontinued oversight by the Special Master, and a new

majority on the school board promise to bring hugechanges to the future of TUSD.Then again, never underestimate the power of SALC,

John Pedicone, and the Dennis Deconcini lawfirm, allDemocratic-related entities which have huge influenceover the Democratic majority on the TUSD school board.Remember it was in a Democratic-run county and cityand school board that this whole desmadre took place,and continues to take place.

Analysis of TUSD-USP deseg plan

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