In a nutshell: Despite earlier reports, a threat still remains to the return of Mexican-American Studies in Tucson.
As I reported last month, the Tucson Unified School District (TUSD) on December 11 voted to approve a plan designed to satisfy a 1978 federal desegregation order and ending the district’s dual system for white and minority students, giving supporters new hope for a return of the banned Mexican-American Studies (MAS) program. As of this writing, a federal court still has to approve the plan. If it is implemented, a revived MAS program could return in fall 2013.
What I did not report on was a bizarre turn of events that left the fate of MAS in doubt even after the December 11 vote to approve the desegregation plan. It seems that on the way to endorsing the desegregation plan, members of the TUSD had lodged an objection to the plan’s call for “culturally relevant courses of instruction designed to reflect the history, experiences, and culture of African American and Latino communities.” This objection, along with one or two others not related to ethnic studies, were included in a legal memorandum submitted on November 9 to David C. Bury, the federal judge assigned to rule on the final desegregation plan.
At the December 11 school board meeting, the objections included in the memorandum to Judge Bury were also on the agenda. Board member Mark Stegeman moved for a vote on both the desegregation plan and the objections. Board member Adelita Grijalva said that although she wanted to vote “Yes” on the desegregation plan, she did not want to vote “Yes” on the objection to culturally relevant courses. Board president Miguel Cuevas asked Stegeman if he would split his motion in two, first moving to approve the desegregation plan, then moving to approve the objection to culturally relevant courses. Stegeman agreed. The board voted 5-0 to approve the unitary status plan, then voted 3-2 to defeat the objection to culturally relevant courses. Stegeman was joined in his opposition to culturally relevant courses by board member Michael Hicks. Later, Stegeman brought the motion on the objections up for a revote, and the board voted unanimously against the objections. Apparently, the board wanted to present a unified front to Judge Bury.
But in fact, the whole matter of voting on the objections may have been irrelevant, since the objections were already included in the memorandum submitted to Judge Bury as part of the Proposed Unitary Status Plan, the consent decree negotiated to bring the TUSD into compliance with the 1978 desegregation order. At the next TUSD board meeting, on January 8, Adelita Grijalva, who was elected Governing Board President at this same meeting, called for another vote on culturally relevant courses. This time, however, the motion was cast specifically as a vote to remove the objection from the memorandum submitted to Judge Bury. The vote to remove the objection succeeded, with Grijalva being joined by two newly elected board members, Kristel Ann Foster and Cam Juarez. Stegeman and Hicks reaffirmed their support for the objection to culturally relevant courses, despite having changed their votes at the December 11 meeting.
It is not clear, however, that this January 8 vote will be any more effective than the December 11 vote in convincing Judge Bury to disregard the objection to culturally relevant courses when deciding whether to accept or reject the Proposed Unitary Status Plan, a.k.a. the consent decree designed to satisfy the 35 year-old federal desegregation order. The TUSD planned to file a supplemental pleading with the court, but it was not certain whether the court would accept it, since the deadline for submissions had passed and the November 9 memorandum continued to reflect the final consent decree. Nor is it known when the court will rule on the plan.