Francisco Peña contemplates a math problem at an AIMS workshop at Pueblo High Magnet School.

After many years as a political observer and erstwhile practitioner, I usually understand why what I think is sensible policy doesn’t get enacted.

Often, there is some interest group opposed. In our political system, intensity matters. An organized group that cares a lot can usually carry the day against policies whose benefits are diffuse.

Our political system also is set up to make big reforms difficult. Incremental change at the margins is more the norm. And usually, that’s a good thing.

And not at all infrequently, my views are in the minority, and not infrequently a very small minority at that.

Nevertheless, the failure of policy to move in the direction I think sensible about a high school graduation test in Arizona perplexes me. It doesn’t disadvantage any organized interest group. It’s not that big of a reform. And I think most people would agree with me, although I might be wrong about that.

Nevertheless, Arizona’s high school graduation test remains stuck in a place that makes no sense, and reform efforts, to the extent they are gaining traction, move in the wrong direction.

Arizona has a high school graduation test, AIMS, that all students must pass to receive their diploma (ignoring the temporizing fudging mechanisms the Legislature has adopted and extended).

However, the test doesn’t really determine whether a student knows what a high school graduate is expected to know. Instead, it is set at a 10th grade level.

So, Arizona can be relatively confident that its high school graduates know what a sophomore in high school should know. Wouldn’t it make more sense to determine if they know what a high school graduate should know?

I think Arizona should have a high school exit exam that actually tests what high school graduates should know. If passage were made a graduation requirement, however, the failure rate would be, at least at first, politically unacceptably high.

So, I’ve proposed a two-tier diploma: a certificate of achievement, representing passage of the test; and a certificate of completion, representing passage of all other graduation requirements but failure to pass the exit exam.

No one would be denied graduation because of the test. But employers and universities could place appropriately differential value on the two diplomas.

An AIMS Task Force formed by the Legislature recently released its recommendations. It said, much to my surprise, that AIMS should remain a 10th grade test and should remain a graduation requirement. However, it should be supplemented by two “college and career readiness” tests in the freshman and junior years.

Now, that would mean that there would still be no way of knowing whether an Arizona high school graduate actually knows what a high school graduate should know.

The desire for new “college and career readiness” tests issues from two growing fallacies.

First, that all students should graduate high school ready for college. Second, that what is necessary to prepare for college is the same thing as is necessary for jobs that don’t require a college degree.

If college is to be what it should be, and not just the new high school, then it should require cognitive abilities and a keen interest in hard academic work that just isn’t universal. And the math skills that an aspiring plumber or carpenter needs just aren’t the same as for an aspiring physicist or economist.

This is an overreaction to the commendable desire not to prematurely track kids, and particularly to avoid lower expectations for low-income and minority students.

But there are plenty of college readiness tests that already exist, and the entry requirements for Arizona universities are not opaque. Avoiding low-expectations is a matter of exhortation, not new tests.

Arizona does, however, need a high school graduation test that actually tests high school graduate knowledge.

Getting one shouldn’t be this difficult.

Robert Robb, an Arizona Republic columnist, writes about public policy and politics in Arizona. E-mail: robert.robb@arizonarepublic.com

Sari Horwitz, Tucson Citizen High School Student Achievement Award recipient in 1975, holds the plaque inscribed with decades' worth of winners' names, including hers. BELOW LEFT: The guitar-playing 17-year-old Horwitz in a photograph accompanying a story announcing her winning the award. She said she was thinking about pursuing a career in political journalism. Boy, did she ever. BELOW RIGHT: She accepts the award from Citizen executives.

In 1957, when the Tucson Citizen set out to pick the top high school student in the city that year, the editors may have thought it was possible to choose just one teenager who was the very best.

What this project has proved through more than half a century is that local schools are filled with caring, intelligent, thoughtful young people who have been, and will continue to be, fabulous leaders and contributors to our world.

Many past winners have gone into law or medical professions. Some have taken jobs that help the underprivileged.

Sari Horwitz, the 1975 Student Achievement Award winner and an investigative reporter at The Washington Post, has won three Pulitzer Prizes, the most recent just last year. She was nominated for one this year, as well.

The nomination was for a 13-part series with another reporter on the murder of Federal Bureau of Prisons intern Chandra Levy. The series prompted Washington, D.C., police last fall to reopen the7-year-old case. In early March, they arrested a man the stories had focused on.

The top journalism prize last year went to the 11-member Washington Post team Horwitz was on that covered the Virginia Tech shootings, the deadliest campus massacre in U.S. history.

In 2002, she won a Pulitzer for a series uncovering the District of Columbia government’s role in the deaths of children placed in protective care. In 1999, her first Pulitzer, the Pulitzer board’s Gold Medal for public service, went to Horwitz and four colleagues at the Post for a five-part series on the high rate of police shootings in the District of Columbia.

Winning such big awards hasn’t kept her from remembering the one she received from the Citizen almost 34 years ago.

As a senior at Tucson High, it was the biggest award she had ever won.

In 1975 she was a teenager who had never been back East and was more than a little nervous to know that in a few months she would be on her way to Bryn Mawr College near Philadelphia.

“The big award from my hometown newspaper and the front-page story about me sent me off with confidence,” she said.

Horwitz, who graduated from Bryn Mawr and then from Oxford, said she is sad to see the end of the Tucson Citizen, and the end of the Student Achievement Award.

“In these hard economic times, especially in the newspaper business, it’s wonderful to see that the hometown newspaper continued to give out these awards. It’s a big honor for the recipients and their families,” she said.

The Citizen used to give winners watches. For a brief time, it changed to gift certificates, and, in the last few years, $500 scholarships.

It rarely was easy to choose who would get that scholarship.

By the time we got to the handful of finalists who would come in for interviews, we were overwhelmed by the breadth of knowledge and experiences one young person could cram into four years of high school. In 2000, 2003 and 2005, the Citizen chose two winners each.

In just the last few years, we have had winners who have started organizations, been to Africa to teach children English, and had to flee a hostile homeland for speaking out against political injustice.

We expect that among our winners, we may have a future chairman of the Tohono O’odham Nation, and maybe even a president of Iraq.

Super families

Throughout the past 51 years, a handful of families have been great producers of students nominated for the award. Two pairs of siblings have won the award. And four times one family has had a winner (or winners) and a finalist.

Duoc Ngoc and Nga Thuy Duoug, both high school teachers in Vietnam, and their children fled that war-torn country and came to Tucson just before the fall of Saigon in 1975.

Daughters Thuy Ngoc and Thu Mai won in 1988 and 1990, respectively, and son Quang was a finalist in 1989.

T. Herman and Teddy K. Moore raised two winners, Julia in 1980 and Eric in 1984. Gabriela and Frank Konarski’s son John was one of two winners in 2000 and daughter Patricia was a finalist in 1998.

When we were interviewing Jessica (Miller) Hartley in 2007, 10 years after she won the award, her sister, Rebecca Miller was one of our finalists. Their parents are Dane and Mary Miller.

Another Vietnamese family, headed by Ho Cam Thai and Canh Thi Phan, had a daughter, Hong Anh, who won in 1996 and a son, Hai Anh, who was finalist in 1993.

Early on, before we named finalists, the Rev. John and Hazel Coatsworth had three children nominated: David in 1966, Wendy in 1972 and Cindy in 1977. David won the award.

Super schools

Catalina Magnet High has had the most winners, 11, from the second contest in 1958, won by Robert Kirk Young, to the 2004 winner, Mariana Gramajo-Sherman.

Tucson High had the second-most winners at seven: The first winner from THS was Emma Gee; its most recent winner was Katherine “Kata” Pettit in 2003.

Desert Christian High School, whose students rank extremely high in volunteerism, had two winners in the past three years: Carina Groves and Ali Rawaf.

The contest is the longest project the newspaper has had in its more than 138 years of publication.

In 1964, Jon Hoffman said he wanted to become a dentist. He did, practicing here for 31 years before retiring in 2005.

The award “made me feel very good about myself. I had worked very hard to earn it.” And 45 years later, “I still have the watch the Citizen gave me. It’s had a lot of wear, but I can still read the inscription.”

Some who didn’t win have lived up to the promise we saw in them as nominees. Hundreds of them, we’re sure. We’ve heard from a few.

Lauren Johnston Lowe, a 1998 nominee, guards children’s rights as a lawyer in the Child and Family Protective Service division of the state Attorney General’s Office.

Jack Gillum, a 2002 nominee, is database editor for USA TODAY, the nation’s largest newspaper, with a daily readership of more than 3.5 million.

We thank all the nominees through the years who showed us what teens really are like and how they planned to make our world better. We’re sad we cannot bring you many more years of examples.

Citizen file photo

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Year: Recipient, School

1957: Emma Gee, Tucson High

1958: Robert Kirk Young, Catalina

1959: Russell Sidney Nielsen, Sunnyside

1960: Margaret Ann King, Salpointe Catholic

1961: John Moffatt, Catalina

1962: James R. Davis, Catalina

1963: Joel M. Vavich, Tucson High

1964: Jon A. Hoffman, Catalina

1965: Diana Lee Baum, Flowing Wells

1966: David R. Coatsworth, Pueblo

1967: Jennie Tom, Flowing Wells

1968: Douglas Barry Wilson, Rincon

1969: James Wood, Salpointe Catholic

1970: May Gin, Flowing Wells

1971: Carol Gilman, Catalina

1972: David Galligan, Catalina

1973: David W. Quinto, Canyon del Oro

1974: Douglas R. Linkhart, Palo Verde

1975: Sari Horwitz, Tucson High

1976: Mark Barker, Amphitheater

1977: Thomas R. Harrell, Tucson High

1978: Wayne E. Yehling, Tucson High

1979: Bari Weick, Tucson High

1980: Julia Elise Moore, Amphitheater

1981: Heidi Van Voris, Sabino

1982: Lynn Marcus, Catalina

1983: Daryl Clarke Johnson, Arizona State Schools for the Deaf and the Blind

1984: Eric J. Moore, Amphitheater

1985: Fong Sau Tom, Palo Verde

1986: Tinamarie Federico, Pueblo

1987: Flint Callaway, Sahuarita

1988: Thuy Ngoc Duong, Santa Rita

1989: Brad Alan Chvatal, Sahuaro

1990: Thu Mai Duong, Santa Rita

1991: Ross Crowley, Flowing Wells

1992: Shannon Clark, Catalina

1993: Wendelyn Julien, Amphitheater

1994: Francisco Manuel Hernandez, Arizona State Schools for the Deaf and the Blind

1995: Julie Martin, Desert View

1996: Hong Anh Thai, Catalina

1997: Jessica Miller, Flowing Wells

1998: Clair Donovan, Catalina

1999: Heather Ayn Davis, Immaculate Heart

2000: John Konarski, Desert View; Alia Gecobe Peera, Santa Rita

2001: Jennifer Musty, Salpointe Catholic

2002: Marcella Marie Acosta, Santa Rita

2003: Christopher Courneen, Pueblo High; Katherine “Kata” Pettit, Tucson High

2004: Mariana Gramajo-Sherman, Catalina

2005: Annalyn Rose Censky, Salpointe Catholic High; Kevin Joseph Lopez, Ha:Sañ Preparatory and Leadership School

2006: Carina Groves, Desert Christian High

2007: Amber Rose Horvath, St. Gregory College Preparatory School

2008: Ali Rawaf, Desert Christian High

Arizona’s decision to defer payments of $300 million to school districts expecting the money by Friday means the districts will have to take out loans to meet payrolls.

Tucson-area districts are worried about losing capital funds saved for new schools and other improvements. The loans, registered warrants, come from the county treasurer’s office and districts pay interest on them.

The budget deal, signed by Gov. Jan Brewer on Thursday, closes a $650 million budget deficit for the current fiscal year by taking $400 million from the school districts and universities and using $250 million in federal stimulus funding.

It pushes $100 million of state aid for universities and $300 million of state payments to school districts into next fiscal year.

Sunnyside was expecting $6.4 million Friday, spokeswoman Monique Soria said, “and now we won’t get it until next fiscal year.”

Another wrinkle: Districts that have saved money exceeding 4 percent of their maintenance and operations budgets, which is the state cap, will not get the money at all because the plan requires districts to pay back their share of the $300 million from the excess funds.

The Tucson Unified School District, which had expected $32 million Friday, doesn’t have carryover money the state can “sweep,” spokeswoman Chyrl Hill Lander said.

Neither does Marana Unified, said Chief Financial Officer Dan Contorno. Still, he’s worried, based on the wording of the legislation, that other funds may be at risk.

Marana has about $3 million in carry-forward funds in unrestricted and soft capital: money being saved for things like new schools, textbooks and replacing buses that break down.

“I think the Legislature intended to protect the 4 percent in M&O (maintenance and operation) plus any balances in unrestricted and soft capital, but that’s not the way it’s worded,” Contorno said.

Amphi’s Todd Jaeger, associate to the superintendent regarding legal counsel, had similar concerns.

“This could impact our programs and our schools that have wisely and appropriately accrued capital funds over time to enable them to make large purchases,” he said.

As for the University of Arizona, roughly $40 million in state aid will be held back until the fiscal year that begins July 1. Johnny Cruz, director of media relations, said UA will have to rely on cash reserves maintained by some of its self-sustaining operations such as the bookstore, residence halls and the Student Union.

Citizen Staff Writer Eric Sagara contributed to this article.

Parents and other citizens are often frustrated by certain policies in public schools.

Arizona, for example, for several years has required students to pass Arizona’s Instrument to Measure Standards in order to receive a high school diploma.

An exception, called “augmentation,” allows students who fail the test to get a diploma, provided their grades are good and they take remedial courses in math, English or both.

The problem has been that students, parents and even teachers have not always known about this important exception or how students can take advantage of it. Confusion results.

The Center on Education Policy, an independent Washington, D.C., advocacy and research organization, studied policies for at-risk students and English-language learners in Arizona during the 2006-07 school year.

Researchers conducted 364 interviews with students, teachers, administrators and parents at five high schools in southern Arizona.

Three Arizona policies in particular were the focus: AIMS and augmentation, the Arizona English Language Learner Assessment and the written. individualized compensatory plan (a learning plan for English-language learners who have been classified as “fluent” in English but are not making progress).

Serious problems were found with understanding and implementing all three policies.

In addition to the confusion about the augmentation policy, many teachers believed English-language learners passing AZELLA were not necessarily ready for mainstream classrooms, let alone passing high school exit exams.

Once students pass AZELLA, in principle, they are not qualified to receive any language service; AZELLA becomes a legitimate excuse to deprive students of desperately needed services.

Under such circumstances, it is natural that some schools create their own rules of classification and manage to subsidize programs without funding from the state.

Legal arguments, such as Flores v. Arizona, should not be surprising, because the state’s identification, classification and funding system is simply not working for students, teachers and schools.

Another problem area is Arizona’s written individualized compensatory plan. Teachers are to specify learning goals for struggling students to help with their academic progress.

This is a really good idea when a couple of students in each class need such service. But when a school has to write individual plans for more than 700 students, as in some of the schools reported in the study, this well-intended policy turns out to be unrealistic.

This program was abandoned by some schools because they did not have sufficient staff, resources or knowledge to put it into practice.

Policy design is not just theory; this individualized plan program is an object lesson in how idealistic design can contribute to impractical implementation.

The lesson from our work in Arizona couldn’t be clearer: State policies may not only fail in achieving their goals, but also may bring unexpected consequences to students and schools.

CEP’s report captures this reality during 2006-07 and describes a wide range of reactions among teachers and school staff.

We hope, for the students, parents, teachers and other citizens of Arizona, the situation has improved.

But the broader lesson is that the state government and local school boards should make sure their policies make sense when implemented together and don’t conflict with one another.

They should also be sure that teachers and local administrators have the capacity to carry out those policies.

Otherwise, there will be confusion in the public and frustration in the schools.

Arizona is not alone in having school policies that do not fit well together and in requiring policies when there is little or no capability to carry them out.

But not being alone should not be an excuse. Policymakers must make sense out of what we ask our schools to do.

Jack Jennings is president and CEO of the Center on Education Policy. Ying Zhang is a CEP research associate.

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More online

To read the full report, Conflicts Between State Policy and School Practice: Learning from Arizona’s Experience with High School Exam Policies, go http://www.cep-dc.org and look under High School Exit Exams.

PHOENIX — School-choice backers are proposing new state income tax credits to replace private school voucher programs that a court ruled were unconstitutional. And they want Gov. Jan Brewer to call lawmakers into special session to get that done in time for the next school year.

Chandler Republican Rep. Steve Yarbrough says the proposed legislation would create new individual and corporate tax credits for donations for tuition grants for disabled and foster children attending private schools.

Yarbrough says the proposal is a reaction to a March Arizona Supreme Court ruling that overturned voucher programs for disabled and foster children. The court previously upheld an existing state individual income tax credit.

A Brewer spokesman did not immediately return a call for comment.

Board members and administrators of Tucson Unified School District have made a valuable discovery: When you ask for ideas on how to save money, people can be very creative.

And there is another lesson: One size definitely does not fit all. What is best for one school is not right for another – and the only way to know that is to ask people closest to the students.

Faced with the likelihood of having to make massive budget cuts, TUSD Superintendent Elizabeth Celania-Fagen tried something very different. Instead of working with the TUSD board and her top aides to make the cuts, Fagen turned the responsibility over to individual schools.

Site councils – consisting of parents, teachers, principals and staff – were asked to propose ways of dealing with cuts of 10 percent and 18 percent. Because the Legislature is dawdling on adopting a state budget, it is not yet known how deep the education cuts will be.

There is no easy way to deal with the “smaller” cuts of “only” 10 percent. But the site councils came up with a range of ideas that show those working closest to the schools have a deep understanding of what can be eliminated if worst comes to worst.

Two schools that now share a principal with two other schools, decided they didn’t need a principal at all. The site councils at Holladay Intermediate Magnet and Richey Elementary schools decided the best way for them to cut costs was to let lower-paid assistant principals be in charge.

Other schools had other priorities. Alice Vail Middle School opted to make deep cuts to its supply budget. Counselors, librarians and monitors were endangered at all schools – yet some schools felt it was important to keep them and others did not.

Many high schools said they would do away with campus monitors and funding for fine arts.

Some cuts are troubling, such as the possible elimination of arts classes. But as long as site councils are representative of all parents and the cuts don’t eliminate programs required by the state, individual schools should be given as much latitude as possible to best meet the needs of their students.

This marks the first time that site councils have been able to make budget decisions for their own schools. And even though most of the decisions will be grim, those choices are better made by the people in the trenches, not by administrators at 1010 E. 10th St.

We hope legislators will come to their collective senses and find ways to mitigate the cuts to schools. Education must be in the top echelon of state spending responsibilities – and that can happen if lawmakers are willing to get as creative as the site councils did.

Fagen took a risk in turning such critical budget decisions over to site councils. But her confidence in those parents and teachers has been rewarded with laudable creativity.

QUEEN CREEK – Nine-year-old Gunner DeBesk, who has autism, attends Walker Butte Elementary, a public school that integrates students with special needs in physical education classes and lunch period.

Betsy Custard’s 12-year-old Cammie attends ASCEND Academy, a private school in Prescott for children with autism.

In March, the Arizona Supreme Court ruled that a voucher system used by nearly 500 families across the state to help pay tuition at private schools was unconstitutional. That figure included about 300 families of children with special needs; the rest are families with foster children.

While some families benefiting from the vouchers say private schools are the best place for their children, others say that public schools can and do work effectively with special-needs children.

Amanda DeBesk said that Walker Butte has helped her son develop in ways that she didn’t think possible just five years ago.

Most of Gunner’s day is spent on motor skills – on exercises such as wiggling his toes in a bin of rice or jumping into a pile of foam padding. He works with a speech therapist once a week.

“They’ve really worked well with him. On top of the autism, he’s also very shy,” she said. “They took his shyness into account, and now he’s coming around and interacting with the other students and adults.”

Custard, a special education teacher in the Prescott Unified School District, uses a voucher to send Cammie to ASCEND. She said Cammie went to public school in the Humboldt Unified School District for three years, but she moved her to ASCEND because an aide assigned to look after her daughter and other students couldn’t provide the attention she needed.

“If ASCEND isn’t here, I’d have to consider whether or not I would send her to school,” Custard said.

Chris Thomas, director of legal services for the Arizona School Boards Association, said that private schools aren’t necessarily the answer for parents of children with special needs.

“It’s the school’s responsibility to educate these children, and if they can’t do it themselves they make other accommodations,” he said. “They (parents) just don’t have the absolute right to say they want to go to a different school.”

Thomas said that for each special-needs student, a group including three or four teachers, therapists and the parents develops an individualized education plan that sometimes calls for private school if that works better for a certain child.

“We’re not going back to the dark ages here,” Thomas said. “The vouchers came into place in 2006; we’ve been educating these kids for over 100 years.”

School may be out soon, but free meals will still be in for Sunnyside Unified School District.

Starting June 1 and running through July 24, free breakfast and lunch will be served to kids 18 and younger who live within the district’s boundaries, according to a district news release.

Breakfast will be from 7:30 to 8:30 a.m. and lunch served from 11 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. at the the following locations:

• Billy Lane Lauffer Middle School, 5385 E. Littletown Road

• Challenger Middle School, 100 E. Elvira Road

• Craycroft Elementary School, 5455 E. Littletown Road

• Gallego Basic Elementary School, 6200 S. Hemisphere Place

• Liberty Elementary School, 5495 S. Liberty Ave.

• Santa Clara Elementary School, 6910 S. Santa Clara Ave.

• Sierra Middle School, 5801 S. Del Moral Blvd.

• Sunnyside High School, 1725 E. Bilby Road

• San Xavier Indian Community Education Center, 1960 Wa:k Lane

Nine students from southern Arizona high schools are headed to the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair – and most of them share a single teacher.

Margaret Wilch, a science teacher at Tucson High Magnet School, will have six of her students at the fair: Angela Schlegel, Mahwish Khalid, Negin Nematollahi, Michael Wallace, Emily Derks and Alice Glasser.

Also attending this week’s fair in Reno, Nev., are Ebaa Al-Obeidi from Canyon del Oro High School, and Martin Lopez and Mario Valdez, both from Rio Rico High School.

The nine students are the most to ever represent southern Arizona in the world’s largest precollege science contest.

Congratulations to all of them. They are among those who will lead us into the next generation of scientific exploration.

Two chief academic officers whose jobs were being eliminated in a reorganization at Tucson Unified School District were hired for next year as assistant superintendents.

Maggie Shafer will be assistant superintendent for elementaries; Jim Fish, assistant superintendent for middle schools.

The newly created jobs, which will pay between $95,000 and $120,000 annually with a possible $10,000 performance bonus, will include more responsibilities than chief academic officers had, said Superintendent Elizabeth Celania-Fagen.

The governing board on Tuesday night voted unanimously for these two appointments, and for three principals:

• Joe, Hermann, acting principal at Banks Elementary, 3200 S. Lead Flower, will become its permanent principal next year.

• Santa Rita High Assistant Principal Frank Armenta will be Cholla High Magnet principal;

• Paul De Weerdt, Pueblo Magnet High assistant principal will become Mansfeld Middle School principal.

In other action the board voted 4-0, with member Adelita Grijalva out of the room, to allow the possibility of a reduction in salaries if Legislative cuts are “substantially” more than the expected worst-case cut of $45 million for 2009-10.

Also, the board majority rejected by a 4-1 vote, a plan by member Bruce Burke to cut the 3.2-person governing board office staff by one full-time employee and one part-time one.

Trimming that office also was a recommendation of auditors the board hire last year.

Burke, who said he wasn’t “making this decision lightly,” said the cuts would bring the board staff in line with comparable staffs in Arizona and across the nation and would save the district $75,000,.

But member Miguel Cuevas said the board should go along with a 12.8 percent cut for $33,000 proposed by the district director of staff services. That cut is being done by decreasing overtime and supplies and discontinuing dues to the National School Boards Association. “I think Mr. Burke is incorrect and missing the bus completely,” Cuevas said. “It’s the employees that make this district.”

But Burke said the board should “set an example” and make the staff cuts plus the reduction in overtime, supplies and dues. “We’d save $100,000.”

Board President Judy Burns said comparison’s can’t be made between TUSD’s board staff and others because TUSD’s takes on more responsibilities. “We’ve already given up one full-timer,” she said. “Our staff archives everything that happens here. No other district does that.”

Clerk Mark Stegeman said the board office also works collaboratively with union groups. He said Burke’s plan “contains merit, but is premature.”

Teri Melendez, principal at Borton Primary Magnet and Holladay Intermediate Magnet, will be at Borton four days a week. The fifth day she'll be at Holladay, where an assistant principal will be in charge most of the time, said Chief Academic Officer Maggie Shafer.

Two schools in Tucson Unified School District will go without principals next year, opting for less costly assistant principals so they will have more money for things like school supplies and staff members.

Those decisions, at Holladay Intermediate Magnet and Richey Elementary, and hundreds more on cutting expenses were included in reports by school site councils in the last several weeks and turned into TUSD last month.

Superintendent Elizabeth Celania-Fagen had authorized schools this spring to make the cuts instead of having central administration do it. Site councils consist of parents and staff.

Obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request, the documents tell a bare-bones story for next year if potential cuts of up to 18 percent are realized. Schools had to turn in two plans – one for cuts of 10 percent, another for 18 percent. They should find out which level is needed in June.

The no-principal plan was one of many in which school communities tried to creatively deal with expected legislative cuts to TUSD’s budget of $20 million to $45 million for fiscal 2009-10, which starts July 1.

Spending for campus monitors dwindles or disappears at many high schools. So does funding for fine arts.

Reports from Utterback Middle Magnet School of the Arts, Hohokam Middle School and Booth-Fickett Math/Science Magnet appear to keep spending for supplies and some staff relatively the same at both the 10 percent and 18 percent levels, but have the number of teachers decrease.

Alice Vail Middle School’s biggest cut is in supplies. It’s allotting itself nearly $17,829 in main office and attendance office supplies under the 10 percent cut scenario, but only $1,114 if the cuts are at 18 percent. Teaching supply allocations there go from $11,143 at 10 percent to $6,686 at 18 percent.

At other middle and elementary schools, counselors, librarians and monitors are too costly to keep. But they kept their principals.

Richey and Holladay this year already have only half-time principals. Richey shares Ruben Diaz with Carrillo Magnet; Holladay shares Teri Melendez with Borton Primary Magnet.

But the schools chose to let Diaz be full time at Carrillo next year. Melendez will be at Borton four days a week. The fifth day she’ll be at Holladay, where an assistant principal will be in charge most of the time, said Chief Academic Officer Maggie Shafer.

Shafer said she has faith in the plans. At Richey the assistant principal will “continue the positive momentum created this year by Diaz . . . and at Holladay, the assistant principal will continue to make the school a more robust magnet.”

Other dual-principal schools took the opportunity for self-determination to change their circumstances.

Davis Bilingual Magnet Elementary and Roskruge, both an elementary and bilingual middle school, which shared a principal this year, will each have a full-time principal next year. Roskruge will lose an assistant principal.

Manzo and Rogers elementaries will go from a half-time to full-time principals next year. Bloom Elementary will go from a half-time principal to one four days a week, as will Sewell Elementary.

Marshall Elementary, at 18 percent cuts, will opt for a two-thirds-time principal.

Another Chief Academic Officer, Ross Sheard, said he worries there will be fewer chances to offer advanced classes next year and fewer people to supervise students – and employees.

Said Tucson Education Association President Steve Courter: There could be some real implications, especially for schools that don’t get any federal funding. “And still we are not hearing anything positive from the governor or the Legislature.”

If your school or organization can’t take your kids to Flandrau Science Center to see the stars, Flandrau can bring the stars to them.

Starting June 1, Flandrau will start sending traveling planetarium shows to schools and youth organizations.

The shows will display a virtual night sky, bringing the planetarium to the classroom.

“It’s unique because we’re using digital planetarium technology to enhance many of the shows with dynamic content and real space images, including data from University of Arizona research programs,” said Jennifer Fields, associate director for education at Flandrau.

“In general, with the decision by the administration to close the Flandrau facility on campus, we are moving to a stronger outreach presence in the community.”

The program is designed primarily for K-8 students, but can be used by day-care facilities and other organizations that have programs for kids, such as the YMCA.

“We just started offering and promoting these programs so we don’t know how many organizations will sign up, but we have already begun getting inquiries about the programs,” Fields said.

The Flandrau Center follows state science standards so its programs mesh with a teacher’s curriculum.

They are designed not merely as a teaching tool, but also as a way to get children excited about astronomy.

Matthew Wenger, a graduate associate at Flandrau, said there is no better place for children to learn about astronomy. He describes Tucson as the astronomy capital of the U.S. and maybe the world.

“Tucson has beautiful, dark skies compared to other cities its size,” Wenger said. “We also have so many clear nights that stargazing is an easy hobby to get into.”

There are five different shows: “Little Sky Show,” “There’s No Place Like Space: All About Our Solar System,” “Follow the Drinking Gourd,” “Constellations” and “Seasons.”

The first three, designed for younger children, are 20 minutes long. “Constellations” and “Seasons,” for older students up to eighth grade, are 50 minutes long.

Flandrau requires a minimum order of two shows. The shorter shows cost $100 for the first show and $50 for the second. The longer shows cost $175 for the first show and $75 for the second.

All shows are designed for about 15 to 20 students. The traveling planetarium system requires a 15-by-20-foot area and a minimum ceiling height of 10 feet.

If a classroom isn’t big enough or if the teacher wants to accommodate more students, the shows can be put on in a school’s auditorium.

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FOR MORE INFORMATION

• Call or e-mail astronomy coordinator Mike Terenzoni.

•E-mail: miket@ns.arizona.edu

•Phone: 626-3646

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Show descriptions

“The Little Sky Show”

Age: Three years – first grade

Length: 20 minutes

Price: $100 for the first show, $50 for each additional show. Two-show minimum.

This show will teach through story and song about constellations, the sun and the moon.

“There’s No Place Like Space: All About Our Solar System”

Age: Three years – first grade

Length: 20 minutes

Price: $100 for the first show, $50 for each additional show. Two-show minimum.

Dr. Seuss’ rhymes in “There’s No Place Like Space,” teach children about space.

“Follow the Drinking Gourd”

Age: Kindergarten – fifth grade

Length: 20 minutes

Price: $100 for the first show, $50 for each additional show. Two-show minimum.

“Follow the Drinking Gourd” is a book about how slaves used the stars of the Big Dipper to find their way to freedom. Students will learn how to identify constellations like the Big Dipper.

“Constellations”

Age: Fourth grade – eighth grade

Length: 50 minutes

Price: $175 for the first show, $75 for each additional show. Two-show minimum.

Students learn how the night sky changes based on Earth’s motion. They will also make their own “star-finders” and practice using them.

“Seasons”

Age: Fifth grade – eighth grade

Length: 50 minutes

Price: $175 for the first show, $75 for each additional show. Two-show minimum.

This show provides a better understanding of the changing of the seasons based on Earth’s position and motion.

Lack of leadership is clearly apparent as educational funding gets sidetracked

ANDY MORALES

“We’re looking for a leader, someone walks among us and I hope he hears the call.”

- Neil Young

It’s as mysterious as Rio Nuevo and as elusive as a chupacabra. A responsible and fair state budget is nowhere to be seen, and there seems to be no leadership to get one done.

The conservatives who control our Legislature have taken a position of delay and political cowardice, knowing their budget will not be kind to public education or to poor families.

If you think the $140-per-year rental tax will hurt working-class Tucsonans, then wait till families lose full-day kindergarten.

Lawmakers’ inaction has forced governing boards and superintendents to do the right thing and plan for a shortfall.

How could they not? They are responsible to the taxpayers in their school districts, and they must do what’s right by their employees as stated in law.

They do not have the luxury of stalling to prevent political opposition.

The governing boards have faltered in their responsibility to their teachers in one major area, however.

They attempted to get legislation passed to extend the deadline to issue nonrenewal notices to June 15 instead of April 15 for new teachers. This earlier deadline was put in place to prevent inaction by governing boards – the kind now displayed by the Legislature.

The failure to move that deadline was a small victory for teachers. Many are now without jobs or waiting to be placed in other schools because there is no workable budget in place.

A little known clause gives three years’ recall rights to teachers who are let go due to the economy. That means a district cannot hire someone else for three years until they rehire those let go first if qualified for the jobs advertised – even if they get a job in another school district.

This is another provision in law that might be attacked by conservatives and governing boards.

But there would be fewer suspicious mass layoffs in the private sector, in the name of maintaining high profits, if this clause were in place for them.

Many of my colleagues have asked about the burden school administrators are carrying throughout all of this or, rather, the lack of it.

It’s a tricky question. Bad administrators are an easy target. Some of the grief they are receiving may not be fair. Then again, much of it is.

When districts say their administration has been cut, they are not talking about vice principals, principals or associate superintendents. They are talking about other budget items under “administration.”

Teachers know this. It’s time the public did, too.

If, by a long shot, a principal is let go, then he has immediate recall rights as a continuing teacher unless he gave up those rights in writing, which is highly unlikely.

They have more job security than teachers in good times and bad.

I applaud the decision by Vicki Balentine, superintendent of Amphitheater Public Schools, to take a five-day furlough without pay next year. It was an example of good leadership – the kind we have become accustomed to with her.

I also had the pleasure of exchanging e-mails recently with Elizabeth Celania-Fagen, superintendent of Tucson Unified School District. She is impressive and reachable.

The issue of the importance of administrators over teachers is always a topic superintendents like to stay away from.

The educational pay system tells us a person making as much as four times more than someone else signifies a degree of higher importance – though we all know classroom teachers work much harder.

Let’s face it: A teacher attempting to teach 25 to 30 6-year-olds how to read and write is a more difficult job day in and day out, but you will hardly find an administrator who would agree.

That’s why my exchange with Fagen was refreshing. She spelled out to me that teachers are of higher importance and severely underpaid. She became an administrator because she was frustrated with bad leadership.

But even though teachers are important, she added, leadership matters, too. And it does.

I only wish our legislators heard her call.

Andy Morales was born in Tucson, received a master’s degree in special education from the University of Arizona and has been teaching in Amphitheater for 20 years. E-mail: amoralesmytucson@yahoo.com

Arizona legislators who have been roundly criticized for slashing education spending, are striking back.

Unfortunately, truth was a casualty as at least one lawmaker threw unsubstantiated and inaccurate allegations at school officials, accusing them of “illegally and secretly stockpiling millions of dollars.”

It makes for a great press release. But little of it is true.

As they dig in the sofa cushions looking for every unsecured dime to balance the state budget, lawmakers have turned their eyes on school funds. That’s understandable because education represents the single largest area of state spending – as it should be.

But in trying to grab money from schools, lawmakers showed that they really don’t understand the complexities of education finance.

In a recent press release, state Sen. Pamela Gorman, a Republican from the Phoenix suburb of Anthem, claimed school districts had more than $2.3 billion “cash” in the bank.

“A relatively small portion of this cash balance could be used” to help balance the budget for fiscal 2010, Gorman claimed.

Then she started lobbing grenades, accusing schools of “blatant deception and hypocrisy”

“Districts have been violating state law and illegally amassing larger and larger cash balances while crying out that we at the Legislature are decimating public education,” Gorman said. “It is shameless!”

If Gorman has any evidence of illegal activity, let’s see it. Every school district is audited every year and no allegation of illegal cash hoarding has ever been raised before Gorman’s broadside.

It is true that Arizona school districts have money in the bank. To not do so would be incredibly poor financial management. The Legislature often has challenged school districts to act like businesses – and that is what they are doing.

Money is held in reserve for many reasons. Hundreds of millions of dollars come from the federal government for the school lunch program. Some are gifts or school tax credit money waiting to be spent.

Other money is held in self- insurance accounts to pay health and liability claims. And if school districts collect property taxes in excess of what they are allowed to legally spend, the money is used to reduce property taxes in the following year.

The Legislature does have a difficult task facing it as it struggles to balance the state budget. But stealing money from school districts, then trying to distract the public with wildly inaccurate allegations of illegal activity is not going to make the job any easier.

Legislators should balance the budget based on honest and transparent discussion. Gorman’s statements were neither.

Six from Tucson High Magnet

Ebaa Al-Obeidi

Margaret Wilch, a science teacher at Tucson High Magnet School, has reason to be especially proud this week.

Six out of nine area students going to the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair are hers.

They, along with three others, make up the largest entourage ever from here to go to the fair, the world’s largest precollege science contest. Each year more than 1,500 high school students from more than 50 countries exhibit their independent research and compete for nearly $4 million in scholarships and prizes. Doctoral-level scientists are judges.

“These kids are phenomenal. They really are our future for science and engineering in Pima County,” said Kathleen A. Bethel, director of the Southern Arizona Regional Science and Engineering Fair. “I think they’re all going to do great.”

Wilch agreed. “It’s amazing when you give a person an opportunity, what they’ll do. They’re incredibly dedicated and spend lots of time on their projects.”

She is accompanying her students to the fair, which started Sunday and runs through Friday in Reno, Nev.

“She’s just incredible,” Bethel said of Wilch. “Year after year she has at least one student going to Intel, and often they win.”

This is the 11th straight year that Wilch has had international competitors. And seven have come home with awards. Wilch’s students and their projects are:

• Angela Schlegel: “The identification of enzymes used in Salvia divinorum to produce salvinorin A”

• Mahwish Khalid: “The effect of male size of cytoplasmic incompatibility in the parasitic wasp Encarsia pergandiella”

• Negin Nematollahi: “Factors affecting bone strength during development in peri-pubertal girls”

• Michael Wallace: “Artificial selection for polystyrene degradation in bacterial communities”

• The team of Emily Derks and Alice Glasser: “A comparison of the effects of added urban stresses on native and non-native soil microbial communities.”

The other competitors are:

• Ebaa Al-Obeidi, from Canyon del Oro High: “Sonoran Solar Solution”

• Martin Lopez and Mario Valdez, from Rio Rico High: “Terminal Ballistics of Household Structures”

Wilch said her earlier education has molded how she prepares her students for success.

She specifically recalls two science teachers: Gary Benesh at George Washington High School in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, and David Lyon, Ph.D. at Cornell (Iowa) College.

In Lyon’s class, Wilch published a scientific paper as an undergraduate, a rarity.

“And I don’t ever remember having a textbook in Mr. Benesh’s class. I remember going out into the field, going to the zoo. He had us reading Scientific America magazine.”

Her students are getting a similar education. She has University of Arizona professionals as mentor to her students, who are actually doing research in UA science labs. And she has a UA graduate student working in her classroom, thanks to a National Science Foundation grant.

In addition to the nine competitors at internationals, four students, who also had first-place wins in either the Southern Arizona Regional Science and Engineering Fair in Tucson or the first-ever Arizona State Science and Engineering Fair in Phoenix earlier this year, will attend as observers.

“For observers, we look for kids who have a long-term commitment and who we think will learn what it takes to get to the next level,” Bethel said. “We’ve had a lot of observers who’ve come back and done well at regionals and internationals.”

CDO’s Al-Obeidi was an observer last year, Bethel said.

This year’s observers and their projects are:

• Ostin Zarse and Joshua Sloane, from Sonoran Science Academy: “Upping the Power: Can reflective materials be cost effective while increasing the output of photovoltaic cells?”

• Stanley Palase, also from Sonoran Science Academy: “Metabolic Comparison of Carbohydrates”

• Anna Guarino, from Salpointe Catholic High: “Microbial Contamination of Pens”

Emily Derks (left) and Alice Glasser compared the effects of added urban stresses on native and non-native soil microbial communities.

Angela Schlegel