TUSD’s new desegregation plan
by David Safier
TUSD has a new desegregation plan on its plate. It's a continuation of the 30 year old deseg case to improve educational opportunities and outcomes for Hispanic and African American students. The plan is big — 84 pages long — complex and potentially very significant for the District. I've held off writing about it for a few days until I learned more. The Star did some passable reporting on the plan, and Mari Herreras has a very good explanation and analysis in the Weekly. I decided to wait until I had a chance to sit down with Richard Martinez, the lawyer who is representing students in their lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of HB2281, the law used to dismantle the Mexican American Studies program, before I wrote anything. I knew Martinez had more knowledge of TUSD history than I ever will and could translate the plan's legalese into something I could understand. He's definitely a partisan in the fight, but he's also an honest, intelligent man who knows how to separate fact from opinion and make it clear which is which.
Having read over the plan and talked with Martinez, here's my quick take on its most important parts, which, by the way, have not yet been approved. Feel free to use the Comments section to discuss the plan further — in a civil manner please (forceful, if you wish, but civil), no matter where you stand on the issue. I'll be happy to join in the discussion.
It's important to understand the implementation of this plan will take place with the same Superintendent, John Pedicone, but a very different Board. Two of the Board members who voted to dismantle the MAS curriculum will be gone at the end of the year, replaced by Kristel Foster and Cam Juarez, both of whom expressed strong support of MAS during their campaigns. The two of them join Adelita Grijalva, the only Board member who voted against dismantling MAS. That means 3 of the 5 Board members are supporters of the program, and Mark Stegeman joins Michael Hicks in the minority on the MAS issue, and probably on other issues as well. The Board's balance of power has shifted dramatically.
The new plan is likely to bring back courses similar to those that made up the dismantled MAS curriculum. Not exactly the same, necessarily, but they must be "culturally relevant courses of instruction designed to reflect the history, experiences and culture of African American and Latino communities." The plan specifies these are to be "core courses" at the high school level — meaning they will fulfill history and literature requirements rather than being electives — and can be electives in middle schools. The curriculum is supposed to make it into elementary classes in some form as well. All this is supposed to happen very quickly: fall term, 2013, for the high schools; 2014 for the middle schools; and 2015 at the elementary grades.
TUSD has objected to the use of the words "core" and "elective" in this part of the plan. Take those words out, and all the classes could be electives, which would effectively gut the program. I'm guessing the words "core" and "elective" will remain in the final version.