About 50 students at a Southwest Side middle school are hoping the Tucson Unified School District will deliver them a math teacher on Friday — or at least give them word of when one will arrive.
After months of going without a permanent mathematics teacher, the Valencia Middle School students walked out of class Tuesday morning to bring attention to their needs and frustrations, said Ross Sheard, a principal supervisor with TUSD.
"This particular group of kids has suffered from a lack of consistency all year," Sheard said. "They haven't had their own math teacher. Instead, they've had a number of long-term and daily substitute teachers."
Sheard said he would meet with the students on Friday, in person, to update them on how close the district is to hiring a permanent math teacher for their class.
The extra urgency to find that teacher wasn't prompted only by the protest, he said, but also by the math portion of the statewide AIMS exam, which will be administered in about five weeks.
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"You wish you had people lining up to be teachers, but it's just hard," Sheard said. "It's something we've been dealing with all year."
As of Tuesday, 93 TUSD classrooms were without permanent teachers, said Karen Bynum, a district spokeswoman.
That number is down from Jan. 25, when 117 classrooms were without permanent teachers, she said, adding that TUSD has more than 3,500 total classrooms.
"There's a teaching shortage," Sheard said. "All of our schools face it, but it's especially exaggerated when you go to the Southwest Side schools."
He couldn't say why schools in that area have been especially difficult to staff.
The shortage is affecting other districts in the Tucson area, though not as hard as at TUSD, which enrolls about 60,000 students.
The Sunnyside Unified School District has about 17,000 students, and it started the school year down 20 teachers. As of Jan. 7, Sunnyside's most recent data, the district had five classes without permanent teachers, Sunnyside spokeswoman Monique Soria said.
The teacher shortage is fueled by a number of reasons, Sheard said, such as relatively low pay and not enough college graduates wanting to teach or stay in the profession.
Despite this, the Valencia students who demonstrated Tuesday did all the right things, Sheard said.
"They were polite, they were respectful, and they simply were asking for their own math teacher and a good education," Sheard said. "That's not an unreasonable request."
As the eighth-graders protested, they held handmade posters that said "It's our right" and "We deserve math."
The students demonstrated near the Valencia Middle School sign, which read "Committed to quality education for all children."
The students left class around 9 a.m. and went to the front of the campus at 4400 W. Irvington Road, near South Camino de Oeste, Bynum said.
They didn't leave the school grounds, and by 9:45 a.m., most were back in class, she said.
The students will not be punished for walking out of class.
"These kids were respectful and they were passionate," Sheard said. "They told me they want to be ready for high school and they want to be ready for the AIMS test, and they even asked if they could share the math teacher the other half of the eighth-graders they have."
Imelda Mendiaz was dropping her daughter off at Valencia as the protest took place.
"I read the signs, and they said 'We need math,' and I told my daughter to get on out there with them," Mendiaz said. "It's important we listen to our kids, and they're crying out saying they need our help and they need their teachers."
Mendiaz's daughter, seventh-grader Celeste Mendiaz, said she was inspired to see students stand up for a better education.
"I tried to go out there with the eighth-graders, but the teachers and counselors made us stay in class," she said. "The whole school was talking about it, and we'd probably do the same thing now if we didn't have a teacher."
Don Hernandez has a son in eighth grade at Valencia. He said his son is lucky to be among the half of the students with a permanent math teacher.
"The students have the right to walk out, and honestly they should have had a teacher already," Hernandez said.
"If you're not following a coherent plan and you're dealing with a new person every couple days, then it's like starting over every time, and it's a lot harder to succeed in conditions like that."
"This particular group of kids has suffered from a lack of consistency all year. They haven't had their own math teacher. Instead, they've had a number of long-term and daily substitute teachers."
Ross Sheard, principal supervisor, Tucson Unified School District
