David Safier

by David Safier

Since 2008 the Bill Gates Foundation has spent $2 billion funding education research and intiatives. That kind of money buys a whole lot of influence. Having people who used to work for the Gates Foundation working in the U.S. Department of Ed and education think tanks across the country multiplies his influence. Most of Gates' efforts fit into the conservative "education reform" agenda which is heavily funded by other members of the Billionaire Boys Club, a group of rich people who are sure they know more about education than educators.

Gates made billions rolling the dice on a few high tech ideas. Since a good number of his rolls came up sevens and elevens, he assumes he can come up with winning ideas in any field, including education. It's a ridiculous assumption. Education isn't a profit-loss business. The classroom isn't the board room. But Gates believes in himself, and he's got the billions to put his ideas into practice.

Which brings us to inBloom, an enterprise funded by $100 million in Gates Foundation money. The basic idea behind inBloom is, create a gigantic national database with as much information about students as you can gather from school districts: everything from names, addresses and social security numbers to illnesses, learning disabilities and disciplinary problems. If it's data and it's about students, it's fair game. Then let the database be watched over by the education division of Rupert Murdoch's News Corp and stored on Amazon's computers. Private education companies can tap into the data to tailor educational software to individual students.

by David Safier

When I put my recent post, Stegeman proposal: Close a TUSD high school, reopen it as the new University High campus, on Facebook, it generated a long comment stream. Much of it was a back-and-forth between a few people, including me, Mark Stegeman and Ann-Eve Pedersen. In Ann-Eve's comments, she stated in so many words that Stegeman's actions on the board helped chase away the last two superintendents, Elizabeth Celania-Fagen and John Pedicone, and could result in a similarly short tenure for current superintendent H.T. Sanchez. I've heard similar statements from other sources.

I don't know a great deal about the inner workings of TUSD, so I can't verify what Ann-Eve says. But I've worked with her closely on our cable access show, "Education: The Rest of the Story," and I have found her assertions to be both well researched and accurate, so I take what she says very seriously.

Here are some excerpts from Facebook comments she made under my blog post.

"[Stegeman's] dysfunctional behavior helped drive out TUSD's past two superintendents; we need to make sure he doesn't do the same to Dr. Sanchez. If he does, our children will be the big losers."

"Stegeman gets into power struggles with sitting superintendents – that is his modus operandi. It is toxic for the district."

[In response to another commenter saying Elizabeth Celania-Fagen left TUSD because she is a "climber"]. "Liz Fagen had just moved her family here, where she was closer to her mother. She did not leave because she was a climber. She would have preferred to stay. She left, in large part, because she had a problem board member who continues to operate as a solo player and create divisions where they need not exist."

[Commenter Luci Messing backed up Ann-Eve's statement: "Ann-Eve is correct. I know that is what Fagen actually said."]

by David Safier

I wrote a post yesterday about a proposal that will be brought up at Tuesday's TUSD board meeting which suggests a high school should be closed down and University High should be moved to that location. The post led to a long comment string on Facebook which included some information I didn't know. I want to add it here for the sake of completeness.

The resolution which will be brought up Tuesday was first raised at the December 20, 2012, board meeting. According to the minutes (item 15), the proposal was raised by Mark Stegeman, and its purpose was to have the Superintendent "work with UHS staff and site council to develop" the plan in the proposal and bring it to the board no later than November, 2013 — in other words, this month. The board voted for the proposal 4-1 with Adelita Grijalva the only no vote. (Two of the people voting yes are no longer on the board.) That's why the proposal is on the agenda.

That additional information doesn't change anything in my earlier post. It's still true Stegeman proposed the change in December, 2012, and I still disagree with it.

by David Safier

This isn't a new idea. It's a revival of an idea TUSD board member Mark Stegeman proposed during the whole school closure debate in 2012. It's on the agenda again (Item 10) for the upcoming board meeting Tuesday, November 12.

You can read the proposal here. The basic idea: Shut down a TUSD high school, send all of its kids to other schools and reopen it as a new, larger University High School (UHS). I assume this would mean shutting down the current UHS at Rincon High, though that isn't spelled out in the proposal. The purpose is to expand UHS, both to accomodate a larger number of TUSD students as mandated by the desegregation plan, and to continue to make space for students from neighboring districts to enroll in the school.

I think this is a terrible idea, not because I oppose the expansion of UHS — I think it's a good, and probably a necessary, idea — but because I oppose the way Stegeman wants to go about it. He's putting TUSD back into that nasty, divisive school closure territory once again, this time at the high school level. His proposal would mean displacing an entire high school student body and sending the students elsewhere. An all-inclusive high school would be closed, which would have a negative impact on the neighborhood. I haven't seen any specific recommendations from Stegeman about which school he's targeting — I imagine he has one or two possibilities in mind — so I don't know what school would be emptied of its current students.

Stegeman's plan has an elegance to it because of its simplicity. Any other solution to the overcrowding problem at UHS would be more complex, and possibly more expensive. But if a simple idea is a bad idea, as this one is, the district needs to do something it hasn't done for ages: think outside the box, look for creative solutions which, if not entirely win/win, are at least win/don't-lose-very-much-with-ways-to-mitigate-the-losses.