Suggestions to the Star’s editorial writers, whoever they may be

by David Safier

Today's Star editorial slams the $92,000 TUSD plans to spend on a "marketing campaign to attract Anglo students to three Tucson schools." I don't have an opinion about the wisdom of the marketing move. But I want to point out a few problems with the editorial.

First, the editorial left out an important point of comparison. Charter schools are very agressive marketers. They buy ads on TV, radio, possibly even in the Star. Last year, one charter school even rented a store space in an Arizona mall to attract parents to sign up their kids.

All that advertising costs money. Since charters are public, government-funded schools, that's the state's money paying for their ads, money that could otherwise be spent on their students. If you figured out how much charter schools spend on a per student basis on marketing versus what TUSD spends per student, I'll bet TUSD, with all its students, spends less. I don't know, of course, but it feels like a pretty safe bet.

And in this case, the $92K TUSD is spending is actually a separate grant from the Feds, so it's not coming out of the district's education budget. Not a penny of it can be spent in the classroom.

The editorial complains the $92K in Fed money is a problem because of the federal deficit. Really? $92K is a problem? $92K doesn't even qualify as a rounding error in the Fed's multi-trillion dollar deficits.

I'm going to make what AZ Blue Meanie calls a Wild-Ass Guess here. I'm going to guess Josh Brodesky had a major hand in this editorial. He's listed as one of the Star's editorial writers, and the leaps of logic in this thing sound like his handiwork. Here's the end of the editorial. Realize that not a penny of the money could go into classrooms as you follow the weirdly non-logical logic.

Surely that $92,000 would be better spent in the classroom at these three schools. Or kept in the pocket of federal taxpayers.

The TUSD school board should give taxpayers a break and tell the federal Department of Education that it won't take the money.

TUSD, spend the money on the children! Or since you can't spend it on the children, send it back!

As Dan Gibson at the Range might put it: TUSD, I think you just got Brodeskyed.