Collection: Read past coverage of Tucson Unified School District's desegregation case

At age 84, Barbara Lewis clearly remembers Dunbar School — a once segregated school for Tucson’s Black children in grades first to eighth from 1918 to 1951.

She clearly remembers going to the school at 325 W. Second St. and not having a library, auditorium, cafeteria or gymnasium. “Our auditorium was a large hallway. Our cafeteria was three-burners in an area downstairs,” said Lewis.

In 1951, under a change in Arizona law, the forerunner to Tucson Unified School District no longer mandated Black children to attend segregated schools. John Spring then became a school for Black, Mexican-American and Asian students until it was closed in 1978 after TUSD was court-ordered to desegregate its schools. It was one of three schools the district closed.

Today, Lewis is among board members of the nonprofit Dunbar Coalition that has worked to turn the Dunbar Pavilion, which encompasses the old historic Dunbar School and what became John Spring Junior High School into an educational, cultural, social and business center embracing and celebrating African descent. There also are plans for an African-American museum. Presently it houses office spaces, areas for community meetings and activities, and the Tucson Idea School, an independent, nonprofit K-8 school.

Lewis and fellow board member Chyrl Hill Lander and coalition chairman Sam Brown are among those rejoicing with the news that the nonprofit Dunbar Coalition was awarded over $1.1 million in federal money to continue needed renovations on the three-acre property that houses 51,758 square feet of repurposed buildings that are on the National Register of Historic Places.

U.S. Reps. Raúl Grijalva and Ann Kirkpatrick requested the funds, and the Appropriations Committee granted the award, said Grijalva. He said because Dunbar “was built on a philosophy of divisiveness and ignorance, we seek to reverse the effect of segregation by keeping the building open to all and creating a hub to learn about Black history and culture in Tucson and Southern Arizona.”

“The key to history is the truth,” said Grijalva. “Trying to rewrite, erase or ignore history is a mistake. Knowing the true history of our communities and the nation is a positive. This is part of this nation’s history that should not be forgotten. We condemn the act of segregation and the truth needs to be told and we learn much more from it,” he said.

Lewis said she remembers when the coalition purchased the old Dunbar building in 1995 for $25 from TUSD when the district was discussing demolishing it. “Everything was so dilapidated. The ceiling was coming down, there were broken windows and animals were living inside the building,” recalled Lewis. “We wanted the property for the love of the school itself. We knew it was a lot of work, and we are more than halfway done with renovations now. I think it has been wonderful to watch the progress.”

Much of the major work has been completed, said Lewis, including the electrical wiring, plumbing, roofing and much of the heating and cooling. “I am hoping it is all completed in my lifetime. The thought of that keeps me waking up every morning and going,” she said, reminiscing to the days Principal Morgan Maxwell Sr. invited Marian Anderson, an American contralto who performed opera to spirituals, to perform at the school. It was 1942 and she was in Tucson to perform at the University of Arizona and Anderson took time to sing to Dunbar students and eat lunch with them.

Lewis also remembers Langston Hughes, a poet, novelist and fiction writer, who came to talk to students. “He was the reason we got swamp coolers in our old school,” said Lewis. “It was hot. After he spoke to us, he made a fuss and went to the superintendent and had a fit, and we got swamp coolers,” she said. “There also were Black baseball players that came to Tucson for spring training, and they stayed in the homes of people. They came and spoke to us, too,” she said. “The good things for us individually, outweighed the bad things at Dunbar,” Lewis said.

Lander joined the coalition board after the death of her husband, Cressworth Lander, a Dunbar alum and retired top administrator in housing and economic development programs for the city. He died in 2015. “Cress was very involved in this project, serving as chair of the coalition for more than a decade, and I want to do my part to make sure the renovations are completed. Dunbar is a meaningful legacy to the history of Tucson. Because of the country’s ‘separate but equal’ mandate, it was the only school Black children living in Tucson could attend, no matter where they lived in the city. It was the only public school where Black educators could teach,” said Lander.

“I feel great about this latest round of funding and the renovations it will support,” Lander said. “This is a great infusion of cash because since COVID everything shut down. This infusion of money will help us get work going again. The coalition has remained faithful to a master plan that specifies historically appropriate renovations to bring the facility back to its condition in the 1940s,” explained Lander.

About $6 million has been used on renovations at the pavilion since 1995 up to last year, she said. The funding has come from federal allocations, city and county community development block grants, foundations, private donations and fundraising. “We are grateful for the financial support from Dunbar alumni, family, friends, businesses, houses of worship, national and local organizations and Tucson’s elected officials,” said Lander, a former reporter and copy editor for the Arizona Daily Star and former TUSD spokeswoman.

In addition to construction of an amphitheater on the south side of the building, the latest $1.1 million will go toward restoration of upstairs classrooms and the basement, fencing around the property, landscaping, signage and furniture. The coalition also was awarded $125,000 from Arizona State Historic Preservation Office for an African-American museum.

The coalition needs to write grants and fundraise another $2 million to have all the work completed, Lander said. The cost summary of work to be done was prepared by the architectural firm Poster Mirto McDonald, which has supervised all renovations, Lander said.

Coalition Chairman Sam Brown, a former TUSD legal counsel who is chief civil deputy with the Pima County Attorney’s Office, said the coalition has been working to set policy and structure to take Dunbar to the next level. “We are ready to be the best Black cultural, community and arts center in the nation. We want to create something truly unique and special. We are collaborating with the Catalina Rotary Club of Tucson to build a five-year comprehensive campaign to raise $5 million, and we expect to kickoff the campaign late this year or early next year.

“This will pay for building construction and staff because we want to expand health and wellness at the center, build a family resource center, and open it up to more community organizations and family activities. We want to bring in more businesses, and create a venue for comedy shows, concerts, plays and economic activities,” said Brown.

Tucson Mayor Regina Romero said she supports the Dunbar Pavilion as part of the city’s Arts & Culture Revitalization Initiative with the city backing investment in areas that pertain to arts, history, culture and heritage in Tucson. “I want Dunbar Pavilion to be part of our investment in our strategy moving forward,” said Romero.

The following column is the opinion and analysis of the writer:

After almost 44 years, Federal Judge David C. Bury states that the Tucson Unified School District has “eliminated vestiges of segregation to the extent practicable.”

In 1974, TUSD was rightfully sued for a having a systemic segregated school structure and “intentionally and knowingly” discriminating against students based on race and ethnicity.

Under this federal desegregation court order, decades of work have gone into resolving this malpractice. In 2010, the district earned “unitary status,” but the Ninth Circuit Federal Court of Appeals quickly reversed that decision.

The Court appointed Dr. Bill Hawley to serve as a “Special Master” to oversee the development of a USP, or Unitary Status Plan. An academic expert in the area of desegregation in American public schools, Dr. Hawley has stated that this plan is the most comprehensive and ambitious USP he’s ever seen.

In 2018, TUSD was granted partial unitary status, and after finalizing documents are submitted, TUSD will be out from under supervision by the federal courts, and granted complete unitary status in May 2021.

Over the last 19 years as a TUSD board member, one of the most contentious and controversial issues has been this court case and court oversight. The USP has forced TUSD to make fundamental changes to procedures and processes that would likely not have occurred without the court order.

I would classify most of this work as needed improvements that have positively impacted our students. Unfortunately, there have also been significant drawbacks, mostly concerning the incredible cost for legal fees.

The district has had to maintain a much larger administrative budget to comply with this order, and directors and principals have had to spend great amounts of time writing and submitting reports to the court, instead of focusing on the everyday duties of our children’s education.

The TUSD Governing Board and nine superintendents (especially over the last eight years) could not make significant changes to curriculum, staffing, job descriptions or grade configurations without court approval, a process that requires so much time and too many tax payer dollars.

When this court case began, Mexican American and African American children were minorities in TUSD. Today, our students in TUSD are now predominantly children of color.

Our educational landscape has changed dramatically over the last four decades. School choice, open enrollment, growing suburban districts, charter schools and vouchers have resulted in “white flight” from many urban core school districts.

Throughout these demographic shifts, TUSD stood alone, baring the responsibility to unify and integrate Arizona’s second largest public school district. Charters, neighboring districts and private schools shared none of this responsibility.

In closing, I am proud of this work and what we have accomplished working so closely with the plaintiff representatives, Dr. Hawley and the court. Unitary status is great news for our community!

The five duly elected school board members will now have the responsibility and privilege of making the decisions that you elected us to make. And as this governing body moves forward, it is our community’s responsibility to elect members who will respect, value and fight for equity and racial harmony.

TUSD will no longer be beholden to a court, but rather to our community, and I think that’s a great step in the right direction.

After more than 40 years, the Tucson Unified School District is being released from court oversight for its decades-old desegregation case, put in place to eliminate vestiges of past discrimination.

The federal judge in the 43-year-old case granted TUSD full unitary status under the condition that it submits a plan, by May 19, to continue the work of racial equity throughout the district.

“It is time for the district to be released from judicial oversight and held accountable by the community,” Judge David C. Bury, for the U.S. District of Arizona, wrote in the April 19 court order.

Oversight of the post unitary status plan would fall to the governing board, instead of the court.

The case stemmed from two class-action lawsuits filed in 1974 by Black American and Mexican American students alleging segregation in TUSD, and was consolidated a year later. In 1978, the court found that discriminatory segregation existed in TUSD.

Under the federal court order, however, TUSD was required to focus on more than racial integration. The case called for addressing not only quality of education, but student discipline disparities, facilities and technology, transportation and community engagement, among other issues.

The new post unitary plan must include benchmark events that are still to come, continued posting of the district’s annual report for a reasonable period of time to facilitate public transparency and new academic achievement measures for the current school year

TUSD Superintendent Gabriel Trujillo said this is a proud moment for the district, which serves around 42,000 students — 64% of whom are Hispanic and 6% of whom are Black.

“This unitary status plan touches every single classroom, every single locker room facility, every single playing field, every bus route,” he said during an April 4 press briefing. “Therefore, its success is wholly due to the hard working educators and staff members of the Tucson District as a whole. ... We’ve been committed to the foundational principles of the Unitary Status Plan that position this district to be a national leader in culturally-responsive and -relevant instruction and responsiveness to students, as well as equity and opportunity for all students in all of our schools.”

Sylvia Campoy, representative for the Latino plaintiffs in the case, says that monitoring is critical in contending with issues of race and inequity.

“We live in an era during which the reality of institutionalized and structural racism is finally being recognized throughout mainstream America, much due to the viewing of murders by police officers, such as the murder of George Floyd,” she said in an email.

Campoy says TUSD’s most recent data indicates disparity for African American and Latino students in academic achievement as demonstrated in low test scores, low participation in advanced learning programs, a disparity of disciplinary action to African American students, and other critical areas.

The court rejected the plaintiffs’ requests that unitary status not be granted until the district had attained certain measures of equity in areas such as faculty diversity, access to Advanced Learning Experience programs, and narrowing the student achievement gap between white and Black American and Latino students.

In his order, Bury wrote that TUSD had made significant progress on its desegregation efforts over the last six years, putting best practices into place and monitoring their effectiveness.

“These operations over six years, from 2013 through now, have eliminated the vestiges of segregation to the extent practicable over this period of time,” Bury wrote, also noting that the actions during that timeframe show a “lasting commitment” to the efforts undertaken.

“The district has the commitment, the relevant data, technology, and the expertise to make program decisions, now and in the future, based on the effectiveness of strategies and programs to integrate its schools and afford equal access to educational opportunities and improve academic achievement for African America and Latino, including English-learner students,” he said.

THE PATH FORWARD

For decades, TUSD has accessed about $63 million annually from a tax levy to cover expenses in the desegregation effort. Trujillo says that will continue for the coming school year with the budget nearly finalized. Desegregation funding pays for student services like magnet, dual-language and gifted and talented programs.

But going forward, the district will work with the desegregation expert who oversaw the case to figure out the price tag for the programs and structures that allowed the district to become more integrated and expand learning experiences to more students while also looking at what can be cut, such as legal fees.

“Our goal as an administration is to bring a modicum of relief to the homeowners and the taxpayers that have footed the $63 million bill for the last 40 years, but doing so responsibly, doing so collaboratively through structures of community oversight and transparency that allow us to maintain all of the great programming that promoted integration and access and opportunity,” Trujillo said.

In addition to developing a post unitary status plan, the district also has to respond to two outstanding requests for information, by May 3, from each of the plaintiffs.

One request is whether the strategies to open TUSD’s newest schools — Innovation Tech and Wakefield — promote integration and have been implemented with fidelity, and the other is responding to an inquiry that says the district is in violation of the court’s order by failing to include academic performance for Black and Latino students in its criteria for 2021 magnet school plans.

The district is also responsible for filing a report by May 31 on shuttle bus routes running to University High School to support racial integration in advanced learning experiences.

With those final items, Trujillo hopes to have the case closed by May 31, though he recognizes the plaintiffs could appeal the judge’s decision, as they successfully did after the court granted TUSD unitary status in 2009.

TUSD is seeking to be released from court supervision in its 41-year-old desegregation case, according to a petition for unitary status filed on Dec. 31.

Tucson Unified School District Superintendent Gabriel Trujillo said he’s confident the U.S. District Court will agree that TUSD is no longer segregated.

“This is not a segregated district,” he said. “You have 50% of the students in this district that are either in a fully integrated school or in a highly diverse school.”

Trujillo said 30 of the district’s 86 schools are fully integrated, although a racial achievement gap still exists, which is true throughout the state. However, TUSD doesn’t need a court order to “take the achievement gap seriously,” Trujillo said.

“This is no longer a desegregation case,” he said. “This is an academic achievement case.”

Under the federal court order, however, TUSD is required to focus on more than racial integration. The case calls for addressing not only quality of education, but student discipline disparities, facilities and technology, transportation and community engagement, among other issues.

TUSD entered into the case in 1978 when the Mendoza and Fisher plaintiff families filed suit against the district for running a de facto segregated school system.

Sylvia Campoy, a representative for the Mendoza plaintiffs, said TUSD has not complied with the desegregation court order. There is a continued racial disparity in student discipline and the district hasn’t properly implemented a plan specific to Mexican American Student Services, she said.

“The academic achievement of Mexican American/Latino students continues to be of monumental concern to the Mendoza plaintiffs,” Campoy wrote in an email. “The seemingly casual abandonment of these type of academic services manifests the district’s ongoing lack of good faith effort in implementing important elements of its desegregation court order.

“Since the inception of its desegregation court order some 40 years ago, TUSD has denied any wrongdoing and has consistently argued its full compliance.”

The district receives more than $60 million annually from a tax levy to cover expenses in the desegregation effort.

Once the case is closed, TUSD will still have the funds available to them for a time, but Trujillo said the district will only ask the taxpayers for the funds necessary to keep successful student programs.

Desegregation funding pays for student services like magnet, dual-language, and gifted and talented programs. Once the case is closed, TUSD would cut funding for items such as administrative and legal fees, Trujillo said.

TUSD expects a ruling by August. Receiving full unitary status means the district would be released completely from court supervision. The courts granted the district partial unitary status in September 2018, on 25 out of 50 provisions.

“I think we’re very much a model for integration now,” Trujillo said. “More than we’ve ever been in the past.”

Four Tucson Unified School District schools struggling with academic achievement and integration will retain their magnet statuses and the desegregation funding that comes with them, according to a recent filing in the district’s decades-long desegregation case.

U.S. District Court Judge David C. Bury ruled that Roskruge Bilingual K-8, Booth-Fickett K-8, Drachman Montessori K-8 and Borton Elementary will retain their magnet statuses for the time being.

The four schools, along with Holladay Elementary, have been at risk of losing their magnets since November because they weren’t meeting academic achievement and/or integration standards set by the TUSD’s Unitary Status Plan, according to a filing by Special Master Willis Hawley, a desegregation expert appointed by the court to oversee the district’s efforts.

Bury said Booth-Fickett, Drachman and Borton should keep their magnets because the district has taken “concrete steps” to improve the areas in which each school struggles over the last couple of months.

Bury has also allowed Roskruge to retain its magnet and magnet coordinator, but leaves the decision of whether to keep it up to the TUSD, which hopes to transition the K-8 school from a bilingual magnet into an open enrollment-only, two-way, dual-language program, according to the TUSD Superintendent Gabriel Trujillo.

MAKING IMPROVEMENTS

The court supported retaining magnet status at four of the five magnet schools put on the chopping block last November for a variety of reasons.

The TUSD has shown it is committed to improving student academics at Drachman by adding computer education curriculum and by stiffening admission requirements at the middle school level, Bury wrote.

At Borton, the TUSD hired a reading instructional coach and plans to bring on a math equivalent soon — so the school can provide more one-on-one interventions for kids who are struggling. Those kids often come from the Borton neighborhood boundary, which is mostly lower income, Hawley noted in a filing last month.

Bury cleared Booth-Fickett because the TUSD provided the school with staff and administrative support that will likely lead to academic improvements, he wrote. The school has also partnered with Amplify, a technology curriculum provider, that will strengthen its STEM magnet theme.

The court has not ruled on whether Holladay Elementary, the fifth vulnerable magnet school, should keep its status because the special master hasn’t yet weighed in on its situation, Bury wrote.

THE FUTURE OF ROSKRUGE

Roskruge was the only school the special master said should lose its magnet status because the school — whose student body is 79 percent Latino — would likely never become integrated, per USP standards.

The district allotted roughly $1.2 million to Roskruge in desegregation funding this fiscal year, according to the TUSD spokesperson Leslie Lenhart. The school works under two key sections of the USP: as a magnet school and as a dual-language school.

“Our proposal is to move (Roskruge) from one side of the USP to the other,” Trujillo said at a recent press briefing. “It will simply not be referred to as a magnet.”

If Roskruge makes the transition, it won’t lose any of the desegregation money it currently receives as a bilingual magnet, Trujillo added. It could receive additional desegregation funding because the two-way, dual-language program will likely cost more than the magnet program.

The curriculum programs used at two-way, dual-language schools are more expensive than the ones Roskruge currently uses. The TUSD would also have to pay teachers incentive stipends for two-way, dual-language retention and recruitment, Trujillo said.

And, if Roskruge drops its attendance boundary, the district may have to spend more money on transportation to bus students in from farther distances, Trujillo explained.

“There is a possibility (desegregation funding) could be a little more,” he said. “But there are no guarantees.”

The TUSD believes dropping Roskruge’s attendance boundary and transitioning away from the magnet will promote better integration long term, Trujillo added. The model integrated Davis Bilingual K-5, another bilingual magnet school, and “highly” diversified Bloom Elementary’s student body.

“We believe that that could be the recipe over at Roskruge to really further integrate the school without any major changes,” Trujillo said.

Roskruge will still be held to a high standard for reducing student achievement gaps and boosting integration if it drops its magnet status, Trujillo said.

INTEGRATION IMPLICATIONS

While Trujillo has pledged to work to boost integration at Roskruge, under the USP, only magnet schools face consequences — like losing their magnet and the desegregation funding for transportation, programming and teacher stipends that comes with it — if they fail to sufficiently integrate or meet certain academic achievement requirements.

The plan never explicitly addresses the consequences of failed integration at two-way, dual-language schools. It only mandates the district to “build and expand” them so more TUSD students have access to them.

The district has been framing Roskruge’s “transition” to a two-way, dual-language model as a huge change, according to Sylvia Campoy, the representative for the desegregation case’s Latino plaintiffs. In reality, Roskruge has been offering dual-language education for years. As far as Campoy is concerned, the move to demagnetize Roskruge shows the district doesn’t want to work at fully integrating the school.

“The magnet schools are monitored at a much more intense level than any of the other schools. Each of those schools have a specific magnet plan ... other schools do not have those plans,” Campoy said. “So right there you see a significant difference. ... (Roskruge) will not be held to the same standard.”

MOVING FORWARD

The TUSD’s transition proposal for Roskruge is still making rounds through district study committees and will eventually need to be approved by the governing board if it’s ever going to become reality.

Just because the four schools have been pulled out of “the danger zone” does not mean everything is fine, Trujillo said.

The TUSD plans to continue monitoring academic and integrative progress at Roskruge, Borton, Drachman and Booth-Fickett, according to Trujillo.

School improvement efforts are also underway at Holladay, a D-rated school, even though the special master hasn’t yet weighed in on its improvement plan.

The TUSD has generated a “school improvement addendum” for Holladay that will focus on shrinking racial achievement gaps through math and English-language arts interventions, Trujillo said at a recent press briefing.

“It’s our responsibility to close achievement gaps here to move every school forward academically and to show gains with integration as we’ve had in the last three years,” Trujillo said.

Katrina Lujan’s 13-or-so seventh-graders appeared lively last Friday afternoon as they laughed and joked with one another during a class break at Challenger Middle School.

While most of the students spoke to each other in English — very loudly — a few more subdued students opted to chat softly in their native tongue, Spanish. The walls surrounding the students were plastered with motivational posters and a hefty amount of plaid wrapping paper.

“Because they had AZELLA testing,” Lujan said.

The Arizona English Language Learner Assessment, she clarified. Lujan’s students, who have been identified as intermediate English-language learners based on their AZELLA scores, take the test yearly to track their mastery of English, their second language.

Her students took the writing, reading and grammar portions last week, but still had their oral proficiency test coming up. So she covered the instructional posters on the wall. No cheating.

A loud iPhone timer sounded — Lujan’s cue to get the first part of the students’ highly structured, two-hour English language development block started. The students quieted down almost immediately.

They would start the day with an hour of writing and reading comprehension and end it with an hour of grammar, Lujan said. Today, they would edit and peer-review reading summaries they had written in a prior class.

“OK, ready?” Lujan asked her students. Yes, they replied, more or less in unison. They got to work.

Arizona has required students like Lujan’s, known as ELLs, to spend hours of their school day, every day, segregated from the rest of the student body in what has come to be known as the English-only language development block.

Lujan’s intermediate ELL students spend two hours a day in the English immersion block, while beginner ELL students stay there for four — the majority of their school day.

The state has mandated English immersion blocks for ELL instruction since the late 2000s, despite arguments by public school educators and researchers that the model doesn’t work.

Last Thursday, however, Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey signed a bill that eliminates the four-hour block model and gives districts far more autonomy in how they instruct ELL students in Arizona’s public schools.

Under the new law, kids in grades kindergarten through 6 are required to spend 120 minutes per day, 500 minutes per week or 300 hours per year in English immersion. Students in grades 7 through 12 have to spend 100 minutes per day, 500 minutes per week or 300 hours per year in immersion.

The law also allows school districts and charter schools to utilize structured English immersion and “alternative English instruction” models of their choosing, as long as they are research-based and approved by the State Board of Education.

The Legislature attempted to pass similar legislation last year, but Senate President Steve Yarbrough shot it down in a Senate Rules Committee hearing.

THE PATH FORWARD

Local school districts and educators who spoke with the Arizona Daily Star voiced support for the new English language development requirements and the slashing of the four-hour block.

“I kind of have to pinch myself because we’ve waited for this so long,” said Patricia Sandoval-Taylor, the director of language acquisition services in the Tucson Unified School District, the city’s largest.

Roughly 5,000 of TUSD’s 45,000 students are classified as ELLs, Sandoval-Taylor said, and the district has been fighting for autonomy in the way it teaches them for years.

Quashing the four-hour block, specifically, has been a top lobbying priority for TUSD in the last few years, Sandoval-Taylor said, because the block severely hindered high school ELL students’ ability to achieve academically and graduate on time.

With the new law, TUSD hopes to restructure its curriculum so ELL high school students can earn credits toward graduation in content areas like history or science while also fulfilling English language development requirements.

Under the previous block model, students could not earn content credit and would end up failing or dropping out of school because they were so far behind on credits.

TUSD is also considering ways to get ELL students involved in more dual-language curriculum programs — a possibility that had previously been off the table since 2000, when the voter-initiated Proposition 203 banned bilingual education for students who weren’t already fluent in English.

The new requirements don’t explicitly address dual-language education for ELL students — they only mandate English immersion for the set number of minutes every day, week or year.

But given the new curriculum flexibility, Sandoval-Taylor hopes there is room for school districts to incorporate dual-language aspects into the alternate English language development models they will submit to the state for approval.

“We’re hoping (the new law) will allow more (ELL) students to have access to dual-language programs and still meet the requirements that the state has in place,” Sandoval-Taylor said. “Our (dual-language) programs have lots of research to back up student achievement.”

Dual-language curriculums often lead to better English acquisition for English-language learners down the line, said Mary Carol Combs, a professor at the University of Arizona’s College of Education.

“Research has consistently shown that if you teach a child in his or her first language and develop literacy abilities, those abilities transfer into English,” Combs said. “What that essentially means is the more instruction a school provides in Spanish, the more English it will yield down the road.”

The Sunnyside Unified School District, a district whose student body is almost 13 percent English-language learning, also hopes to give ELL students some degree of dual-language education.

Sunnyside used to offer rich two-way dual-language programs for ELL and English-proficient students, but had to “slowly abandon them” after Proposition 203 banned ELLs from participating in them, according to district Superintendent Steve Holmes.

The district had to ditch the programs because there weren’t enough students who could enroll in them, after losing that critical base of Spanish-speaking ELL students.

“In an ideal setting, we would have the flexibility we would need for students or parents that want to take advantage of a structured English immersion model, but we would also have equal flexibility for students that want to have accessibility to a dual-language program,” Holmes said.

Holmes hopes to decrease segregation of ELLs under whatever model Sunnyside ends up proposing to the state, he said.

The isolating aspect of ELL segregation affects students negatively emotionally and socially, he said.

“I do believe it has created a stigma for students,” Holmes said. “That lack of exposure into other settings also creates a potential social barrier for students who aren’t going to feel comfortable because they don’t interact with other students in the other (non-block) parts of the day.”

CULTURAL IMPACT

Tucson ELL teachers hope to see districts take advantage of the flexibility the new requirements provide.

Miriam Romero, an ELL resource teacher at Carrillo K-5 and Arizona’s English Language Teacher of the Year, said she is glad the four-hour block has been mitigated, but thinks of it more as a “good first step” than a final destination.

“I’m glad we’re moving away from (the block) and I hope we can have a more inclusive way of teaching English in our schools because it’s the right thing to do,” Romero said. “It’s the necessary thing to do. In the real world, (students) are all going to be together, so they should in school.”

Romero said she was never a fan of the four-hour block because of the segregative and achievement-related consequences, but she also loathed it on a more personal level.

The idea of segregating ELLs into classrooms isolated from the general student population reminded her of stories her grandparents told her about their days in school as non-native English speakers — where they too were segregated from the mainstream student population, even if they could speak, read and write in English.

“At that time, it was if you had a last name that sounded Hispanic, they would ask you questions very quickly in English,” Romero said. “They wouldn’t translate it. Nothing. And if the kid didn’t answer everything in English or was shy, they would be put into these separate classes.”

Romero said she never wanted her students to feel like her grandparents did, that Spanish was lesser in some way and that English was the only “academic” language. That’s why she is happy the English language development model is changing.

Like Holmes and Sandoval-Taylor, Romero said she hopes the state will consider allowing dual-language education for ELL students.

“With that flexibility, I hope it’s not just minutes — I hope its flexibility to maybe bring in kids’ native language into the classroom, as well,” Romero said. “And then maybe even cutting the two hours.”

WHY NOW?

There is a lingering question following the state’s push to change ELL requirements: Why now?

Why are legislators listening to school districts, educators and researchers after decades of seemingly sticking their heads in the sand?

“I think there’s a will now,” Holmes said. “Demographically, you’re seeing shifts across districts where (ELL education) used to be the problem of only a few districts.”

Legislators are also realizing the breadth of the issue, Holmes said, because of hard AZMerit, AZELLA, high school dropout and graduation data showing Arizona’s ELL students are struggling and have been for decades.

Francesca Lopez, an associate dean at the UA’s College of Education who researches ELL student achievement, concurs with Holmes. A prime example, Lopez said, is Arizona’s ELL student graduation rate.

Only 18 percent of Arizona’s ELLs graduate from high school. That’s the worst rate in the country, Lopez said.

Data from the National Assessment of Educational Progress also shows the failings of ELL education in Arizona under the four-hour block system.

When you look at NAEP scores from fourth-grade ELL students in Arizona, California and Texas — similar states with similar ELL populations — you can see Arizona’s students consistently perform the worst, Lopez said.

In California, students scored slightly better, on average. The state, like Arizona, mandates English-only instruction for ELLs, but allows waivers for bilingual education if parents want it.

In Texas, scores far exceeded those in California or Arizona. That’s because Texas mandates bilingual education for ELLs, Lopez said.

“Bilingual children outperformed monolingual children,” Lopez said. “We know through research that speaking two languages, learning two languages is very advantageous to our cognitive abilities. And it’s not seen immediately, but it’s seen over time.”

THE END OF THE DAY

As Katrina Lujan’s fifth period with her ELL students came to a close, they wrote a brief about what work they need to do on their reading summaries at the start of next period.

“What happened with your body (paragraph) yesterday?” Lujan asked a girl wearing a pink hoodie.

“I didn’t put it in order?” the girl responded with hesitation.

“You didn’t put it in order!” Lujan said with a smile, apparently happy to see the dots connecting for one of her students.

The iPhone alarm blared again.

“All right, three-minute break!” Lujan said with a raised voice. “Don’t be late!”

The students ran out the door in a frenzy, save for a few who stayed back and worked more on their briefs, confused expressions plastered on their faces.

A federal court ordered Tucson Unified School District to desegregate its schools more than 40 years ago, but only in the past year has the district changed its attitude and shown a willingness to comply, according to the federal judge overseeing the case.

U.S. District Judge David Bury said TUSD has made impressive gains in the past year and deserves to be declared in partial compliance with the court order, moving the district a significant step closer to ending its longstanding desegregation case.

But representative and lawyers for the plaintiffs argue that while the writing on the wall is clear — after 40 years, everyone wants to end court supervision in the case — the court and its special master may be rushing to judgment and could end up letting go of the case without making any significant improvement in the lives of black and Latino students.

On Wednesday, Bury issued a ruling declaring the district partially compliant in most subcategories of its longstanding court orders and outlined steps to get the district fully out from under court supervision by as early as next year.

Rubin Salter, attorney for the African-American plaintiffs, said he was unsurprised by the judge’s ruling and agrees that the case needs to conclude.

But he noted that after 40 years and billions of dollars spent to improve the education of minority students, black students in many respects are no better off than they were before the case started.

“The district over 30 years (of receiving desegregation funding), spent almost $2 billion, and black kids started out at the bottom — from an achievement and discipline standpoint — and they’re still there. That spoke volumes to us. That shows something else needs to be done,” he said.

And Sylvia Campoy, a representative for the Latino plaintiffs, called a one-year completion goal “overly ambitious.”

“It’s taken them 40 years to get to where they are today, it’s overly ambitious to say that the remaining areas of noncompliance will be resolved in one year’s time,” she said.

“That’s the disappointing thing about this partial unitary status ruling. … The judge says, this is the only year I’ve really seen a flurry of activity, and he applauds. But what happened the other 39 years?” she said.

Campoy and Salter both said they had only limited time to skim the 152-page court ruling and would have a more thorough analysis after having time to digest the document. But both said they weren’t surprised — it closely follows recommendations made by the court-appointed “special master” charged with overseeing TUSD’s progress in the case, back in March.

TUSD Superintendent Gabriel Trujillo did not return calls for comment. But two TUSD Governing Board members hailed the court’s decision as a major step forward.

Governing Board member Mark Stegeman said he was pleased that the ruling “explicitly recognizes the progress TUSD has made, especially over the last two years” and said the ruling is a “significant step toward full release” from court oversight.

Governing Board member Kristel Foster said the ruling shows the district has been following through on its desegregation plan, and she was happy the judge acknowledged “that TUSD has been a vanguard in culturally relevant courses to close the achievement gap, first with our former (Mexican American Studies) program and continuing with our (culturally relevant curriculum) department.”

Bury said that in many of the areas where the district did not attain compliance, there is minimal work remaining.

But for now, the court will retain oversight and enforcement authority over the district, even in the subcategories where the district is deemed in compliance, to ensure TUSD doesn’t backslide, Bury noted in the order.

That, at least, was welcome news for the plaintiffs, who argue that continued oversight will be crucial to ensure the district follows through on its plans.

Still, Bury found the district was still lacking in meeting requirements in many categories of its desegregation plan, which covers nine general areas, including student assignment, transportation, administrators and certified staff, quality of education, discipline, family and community engagement, extracurricular activities, facilities and technology, and accountability and transparency.

At the heart of the issue is racial segregation at schools.

While Bury argued that the district has made great strides toward decreasing the number of “racially concentrated” or segregated schools, it has faltered on ensuring its magnet schools aren’t racially concentrated.

Magnet schools, designed to attract diverse student bodies, are the “most effective and primary integration strategy” the court noted, but TUSD has shown “limited interest in strengthening magnet schools, much less expanding its magnet options.”

As a result, many of its magnet schools remain academically weak and the overall magnet program is stunted, Bury wrote.

For example, of the district’s 13 magnet schools, only five achieved letter grades of B from the state school grading system. None received an A, although per the desegregation plan, all are supposed to be A- or B-ranked schools.

“The district cannot move forward by ignoring the elephant in the room: An academically ‘failing’ magnet school or program,” Bury wrote.

The court demanded the district file a three-year comprehensive magnet plan to outline how TUSD will improve and grow its magnet program by the end of this school year.

Both Campoy and Salter said they were glad Bury didn’t let the district off the hook in that area and agreed TUSD has much more work to do before it should be considered compliant with the court order.

Besides ensuring schools aren’t racially concentrated, another major goal of the district’s desegregation plan is to ensure that minority students receive the same access to quality education and advanced learning experiences as their white counterparts, including access to honors classes, Advanced Placement classes and dual-enrollment college classes.

On that front, the court argued that there are still some stark disparities in access to advanced-learning classes.

The court recommended TUSD be declared partially compliant, warning that based on the information provided by the district, “It is impossible to determine which strategies planned by the district to increase access and success in (advanced-learning classes) are effective and which the district intends to maintain going forward.”

The court ordered the district to complete a lengthy list of goals, including drafting plans and policies, to address how it will expand and improve those advanced-learning classes before it can apply for full compliance status next year.

Salter said the judge laid down marching orders for the district, and if the district complies, there may be some improvement in the ability of minority students to access those advanced classes.

“They’ve got a long way to go in my opinion, but if (TUSD) follows what the special master and the judge said, maybe, maybe it will be the beginning for real progress in closing the achievement gap,” he said.

But in one key area, the court denied the district even partially compliant status.

From its inception, the case has challenged the district’s disciplinary policies and practices as having a disparate effect on minority students, especially African-American students, Bury wrote.

And still today, African-American students are twice as likely to be suspended as white students, Bury noted.

Bury argued that the court has received no evidence that disproportionate level of discipline is waning. In fact, some of the progress that had been achieved in recent years was reversed — a fact that was obscured after TUSD changed the definitions of disciplinary actions, he noted.

Salter agreed, saying the disciplinary disparities are starker than the district admits.

“I think they played with the numbers a little bit. You’ll note the district wasn’t counting in-house suspensions, and of course a suspension is a suspension,” he said.

Bury offered a detailed plan for better training of staff, and the better reporting of incidents, and warned that the district shall make completing the discipline plan a “top priority.”

Luis Gonzales still remembers the smell of ammonia and the feeling of humiliation on his first day of school in the Tucson Unified School District in the 1950s.

At Richey Elementary, where the student body was purely Mexican or Native American, students were forced to line up in front of wash basins while the school nurse scrubbed their heads with lice medicine, put a stocking on their heads and sent them off to class.

If students spoke Spanish or Yaqui in class, even translating in whispers for another student, they were paddled relentlessly, he recalls.

Then there were the 1-C classes — essentially remedial first grade — where students, regardless of their age, were sent if they didn’t know English. Gonzales spoke a fair amount of English , but was still sent to 1-C, like many of his peers. Because of the 1-C class, he didn’t graduate from high school until he was 19 — or an “old man” as he saw it then.

There wasn’t a single white kid at his school.

When schools were forced to integrate, Richey Elementary merged with John Spring Junior High, formerly the segregated African-American Dunbar School.

“The integration was basically integrate blacks with Mexican-Americans and Native Americans. … They called it integration, but you didn’t see them busing white kids there,” Gonzales said.

So when Gonzales, who went on to become a state senator and Pima Community College Governing Board member, read the latest court filing in TUSD’s long-standing desegregation case, he was outraged.

In it, the district demands the “immediate and complete” termination of the case brought by the Hispanic plaintiffs. The district argues — for the first time in the 40-year history of the case — that it should be released from court supervision with respect to the Mexican-American students’ case because the district didn’t operate a segregated “dual school system” for Latinos, as it did for African-American students.

“Of course there were segregated schools. I went to one. That is just a preposterous argument,” Gonzales said.

Sylvia Campoy, a former educator and board member in the district who now volunteers as the representative for the Hispanic plaintiffs in the case, called the filing “the worst thing” she’s seen the district do, adding, “And a lot of what I’ve seen is really outrageous.”

“You cannot just erase history. And in three swift paragraphs, the district has said the (Hispanic) Mendoza plaintiffs have no standing in this case, ” she said.

But TUSD Superintendent Gabriel Trujillo said the district’s response is not the same as a motion to dismiss the plaintiffs on the grounds of standing, as they have interpreted it.

The court ordered TUSD to make its case about why it should be released from court supervision, and the lawyers made the best case they had, he said.

“(We argued that) we have complied successfully with the one area where we were originally assigned court supervision with regard to Mexican-American students. I think we have a right to do that. I don’t think that means we’re slapping them in the face. I agree it could be a slap in the face if we filed a specific motion to get them removed from the case,” he said.

A MEANS TO AN END

The filing comes as TUSD forges full speed ahead with attempts to put an end to the desegregation case, possibly as early as next year.

The district’s argument hinges on the fact that the court ruled in 1978 that TUSD operated a dual-school system for black students, but not for Mexican-American students. While many schools were segregated by race, like Richey, the district didn’t have “Mexican-American schools” like it had for black students.

Because of that, the district argues it has different requirements for ending court supervision on the African-American and Hispanic plaintiffs’ cases, even though the cases have been consolidated into one.

While the district is required to end specific discriminatory practices toward black students, prove it has provided equal access to educational opportunities and facilities for them, and prove good faith compliance with the desegregation plan, the district argues that’s not the case for Mexican-American students, for which it only needs to prove it ended identified discriminatory practices, which the court found it did in 1986.

But that ignores the fact that in 2013, the district signed onto a new desegregation plan that lists detailed and specific goals it would attain regarding Mexican-American students .

Trujillo said while he wasn’t around when the district agreed to the stipulations , they did so without knowing what standards they would be held to regarding the Mexican-American plaintiffs’ case.

And he said he has a responsibility to taxpayers to end the court case as quickly as possible, especially since the recent state budget pushed the district’s desegregation tax onto local taxpayers.

In contrast to past superintendents who have struck a more confrontational posture, Trujillo frequently refers to the plaintiffs as “our partners in desegregation” and speaks of working with them to ensure that the district is properly serving its black and Latino students .

But Campoy said the district’s court filing undercuts much of that progress.

“According to the district, one of their partners doesn’t exist. And without any fair notice, heads-up, without any discussion, without any diplomacy, without any etiquette, we have to read that in a court filing,” she said.

GOVERNING BOARD INPUT

Governing Board members, who ostensibly provide the district’s lawyers with direction on what arguments the district wants to make in court, said the filing was a surprise to them.

Board President Mark Stegeman said he didn’t know that TUSD would make that argument until the filing had already occurred. As board president, Stegeman said he stands behind the legal arguments, though he didn’t comment on whether he personally agreed with the merits.

But Stegeman emphasized that he saw it as a technical legal argument about standing that is being made in an attempt to put the district on the best possible footing to close the case, and not as an attack or slight to the plaintiffs. He said he values the Hispanic plaintiffs’ input in improving TUSD’s schools and has supported complying with the desegregation order.

Board Member Adelita Grijalva was more direct, calling the district’s legal argument “very concerning.” She also said the board never authorized the argument and was surprised to see it in court documents.

Board member Kristel Foster also said she hadn’t been briefed or consulted on the filing and didn’t agree with it. She said it sounded like the district was looking for technicalities to get off the hook, rather than proving it has made big strides in helping Mexican-American students, which she thinks it has.

“To get off on a technicality, that’s a slap in the face to all the work we’ve done,” Foster said.

She said the fact that the lawyers made the argument, apparently without Governing Board input, is especially concerning.

But Trujillo said he briefed the board during executive session on March 27, more than two weeks before the document was filed.

Said Campoy:

“The larger issue is the message that TUSD has just sent to this community: We don’t regard you. You don’t count. You have never counted since 1978. There was never any discrimination and there’s nothing to correct.”

Trujillo countered, saying that’s not what the district said, and it’s not what he as a Mexican-American believes.

“(The district’s legal position) is a far difference from saying discrimination has never taken place against Mexican-American students in this school district. In fact, acts of discrimination against Mexican-Americans in general continue today in schools across this nation,” he said.Campoy agrees, and said discrimination still happens against Mexican American students in TUSD every day.She said integration at the magnet schools, the primary tool for the school district to advance racial integration, has not been accomplished to the degree required and as established in goals set by the district. And she notes the district’s failure to comply with the desegregation plan resulted in six magnet schools losing their magnet status last year.And while the number of “racially concentrated” schools has declined in recent years to 30, there are only 25 racially integrated schools in the district and only 25 percent of students attend integrated schools, according to the court appointed overseer in the desegregation case.This year, 78 percent of first-year teachers taught at racially concentrated schools or schools performing below average, according to the Mendoza plaintiff’s analysis of school records.White teachers make up 68 percent of the workforce, while only making up less than 25 percent of the student body, according to the court.Vacancies for teachers that remain unfilled after the beginning of the school year are mostly at west side and south side schools with high minority populations, Campoy said.