The TUSD Governing Board voted to close schools last night in an emotional meeting that was lightly attended. The District’s administration raced to conclude the action before the end of the year and new Board members took office.
Superintendent Pedicone said that “no one is happy about closing schools,” and proceeded to recommend the closure of 14 neighborhood schools.
Fort Lowell/Townsend K-8; Carson Middle School; Hohokam Middle School; Corbett Elementary; Lyons Elementary; Schumaker Elementary; Howenstine High School; Maxwell Middle School; Brichta Elementary; Menlo Park Elementary and Wakefield Middle School will close.
The Board spared Sewell, Manzo, and Cragin schools. The Board said they hoped Manzo would become a district charter school.
Board member Michael Hicks abstained from all of the closure votes, saying that while he understood the district would have to make some closures the process has been flawed from the very beginning. He had asked for a rationale for each school closure; however the administration did not comply with his request.
Hicks said, “We as a community are faced with a very complicated process with many factors to reduce district expenditures. With TUSD experiencing continuing enrollment declines, we as a district simply cannot continue to maintain our current number of aging schools and still remain fiscally sound.”
However Hicks said that with declining enrollment due “competition from charter schools and adjoining school districts and private/eligious Schools, and poor academic results from TUSD,” the district should begin the process “improving the ‘product’ which I believe is providing our students the academic rigor and relevance to compete in the global job market or higher education.”
Hicks said that he “would support keeping open a school that is expensive to operate but has high academic achievement,” but said that the District is closing performing schools and keeping failing schools off the chopping block.
While districts across the state are holding steady or expanding, TUSD is in decline. Michael Hicks abstained from voting rather than endorse the process.
Miguel Cuevas said that his life was hard growing up and he didn’t want children to go through what he did so he was voting to close the schools as recommended.
Only during this meeting did TUSD planner Bryant Nodine admit that the proposed closure of Townsend was a result of the desire by TMC to purchase the valuable property as was long rumored to be the case.
Many of the students at Townsend have already experienced a school closure when neighboring schools were closed. As a result of the last consolidation, the District spent millions of dollars on renovating Townsend the past three years.
For over thrity years the Fisher plaintiffs have fought against the discrimination of low expectations. The district has consistently failed to place high quality teachers in the lower socio-economic schools, despite receiving millions of dollars to do so. Lillain Fox, a former teacher at Cholla, routinely comes before the Board to point out to them that rather than recruit and hire highly skilled teachers at Cholla High School, the district has mostly substitute teachers teaching math and science there. Instead the desegregation funds have gone to employ administrators and lawyers.
Cuevas said, “My inner Judy Burns is saying we should oppose this for the social aspects of it. We haven’t closed a high school yet to make this move happen, but I will support this because it supports my ideology, and what I do know is that the parents of University high will keep pushing this.”
Rincon or Palo Verde are the schools most likely be the school sacrificed to accommodate University High. Only two years ago, the late Board member Judy Burns, when discussing to conduct a lucrative “turnaround” on Palo Verde said, “Can we take the money they give us for the turnaround and then close it?” The proposal to explore the expasnsion of University high passed 4-1.