Next Morning Ruminations about the TUSD Board Meeting

by David Safier

I got off one shot before my camera went bad. It was a Tucson Media Circus out there last night.

Here are a few bits and pieces I didn’t have time to write about, including some thoughts about the whole process from Mark Stegeman, who is running for School Board.

• The Board’s decision to leave all the schools open was not a deal struck ahead of time. It happened on the spot. Someone in the district administration told me they had been talking about this all day, handicapping the chances for each of the schools. And listening to the tone of the Board members, it was clear the situation was evolving until everyone realized that they couldn’t get a majority to vote for closure.

Odds were that Ochoa would stay open, and Wrightstown was most likely to close. Tedski was right when he commented yesterday on Rum, Romanism and Rebellion that the might of the Eckstrom political arm put Ochoa out of harm’s way.

• I happened to sit next to Peter Ochoa and the Ochoa family during the meeting. Peter is the great grandson of Don Estevan Ochoa, who was Mayor of Tucson in 1875 and gave the city the land to build Ochoa school. He commented that there is probably an historic document about the gift, and if it specified that the land must be used for a school, the district might be called to legal task for closing it. But he was just talking, I think. He showed me an old history of Tucson published in the 1940s with a chapter dedicated to Don Estevan.

• Sitting on the other side of me was Aaron Moreno, who is running for School Board. He’s a Pima Community College student, a personable young man. He’s majoring in communications, a skill he said the Board could stand to work on. Point well taken.

• After the meeting, I had a longish chat with Mark Stegeman, who teaches Econ at UA and is also running for school board. He was pleased with the decision not to close the schools. He said the process was so flawed and created so much ill will that it could cause parents to pull their kids from TUSD schools and put them in charters or in neighboring districts. The potential cost savings would be wiped out by the exodus.

I asked him, “If you’re elected to the school board, do you think you’ll see school closings next year?” He thought for a moment, then replied, if he were a betting man, he would put odds that some schools might be closed. But he said he would make sure the process involved the community, so there would be more buy-in to any decision made. He would enter the process with no preconceptions — that is, he would not be for or against closures. He wanted the discussion and research to move toward its own conclusions. And he did not think the discussion should or would be limited to the four schools on the block this session. He imagined a wider discussion, that could include more than elementary schools. (Follow-up: Mark has a letter in today’s Citizen that explains why he was against this round of school closures.)