Civil Rights Office investigations of TUSD

by David Safier

I haven't written about this, simply because I don't understand it very well. The summary is, the U.S. Department of Ed is looking into allegations of discrimination at TUSD. Apparently, this relates to events at School Board meetings. Here's a statement from the Dept. of Ed.

 “Our Office for Civil Rights is currently investigating allegations that the Tucson Unified School District discriminated against Latinos on the basis of national origin by attempting to limit their participation at school board meetings of particular interest to the Latino community. And, that the district discriminated against national origin minority individuals on the basis of their limited English proficiency by failing to provide them with meaningful access to district board meetings, the district's Web site and board policies that are available to non-limited English proficiency individuals.”

Are they investigating because there have been serious civil rights violations or because complaints has been filed and they investigate complaints? I honestly don't know. However, the Pima County Democratic Party takes it seriously enough to send out this email:

Here are the two links on the email:

Letter from US Dept. of Education, Office for Civil Rights
Press Release from Civil Rights Center, Inc. on announcement of investigations

And here is a HuffPo piece by Jeff Biggers, who has written nationally about the MAS controversy.

I'll remain agnostic on this one for awhile until I get a sense of how legit the grievances are.