Citizen Staff Writer
2 TUSD officials helped district advance
Re: the Monday article “3 TUSD officials on leave after bid-rigging probe”:
When TUSD was adopting technology and books for Language Arts, there was a lengthy process. Approximately 35 middle school teachers worked together to research the best books and technology for our students.
We spent hours with product representatives. We played with different types of white boards that would have worked for our classrooms. At no time was there an indication the decision was already made.
The teachers who looked at the technology looked at the different sizes of boards and the accompanying software options.
When I read that Ed Kowalczyk and Lisa Long are on administrative leave, I get very upset. Both are quality individuals who will bend over backward to make my job as a seventh-grade Language Arts teacher at Gridley Middle School easier.
When we did decide to go with Promethean, I also got to be a part of the trainings. When trainers would come from Promethean, they dug right in and helped in our trainings.
The whole process made integrating technology into an archaic district successful and satisfying. I am not clear on all of the specifics, but I know taking away the support we have in Ed and Lisa is a big mistake.
We need them to help TUSD succeed. I applaud all that they have implemented to advance our district.
Kimberlyn Hicks
Cost of crime higher than cost of prisons
Mark Kimble (Jan. 29 column, “There has to be a better way”) notes that incarceration is expensive. There are many myths about imprisonment in Arizona.
The truth is, we must find ways to fund our schools as well as our prisons. It is just as imperative to educate our young as it is to lock up criminals who endanger us.
The people who are in prison are just who you would expect: murderers, rapists, armed robbers, child molesters, repetitive career burglars, arsonists, car thieves, and those drunken drivers with multiple felony convictions.
Because the crime rate in the U.S. is significantly higher than in most developed nations, our prison population is inevitably larger. The rates of incarceration between the U.S. and other developed nations is remarkably similar, though.
It is important to keep in mind that a typical career offender turned loose in a community will engage in a one-person crime wave, causing damage 17 times as costly as imprisonment. Although the cost of building and maintaining prisons is high, the cost of not doing so is greater.
Barbara LaWall
Pima County attorney
Schriro fudged stats, didn’t do us any favors
Re: Mark Kimble’s Thursday column (“There has to be a better way”) and the article on Dora Schriro, department head of the Department of Corrections:
Arizona residents cry for stiffer penalties for DUI and drug arrests to keep those people off the streets.
Everyone seems to forget, however, that once convicted, they go to prison and that costs money.
I agree there are alternatives to prison for nonviolent offenders. There are many programs to keep sober and to help small-time dealers get away from the need to sell.
But Ms. Schriro has not done us any favors.
Arizona published statistics showing her programs in the past 12 months have reduced inmate assaults and have benefited inmates.
But some DOC teachers have claimed they are told to help inmates pass the GED, even give them the answers, in order to achieve the director’s program quotas. The numbers are greatly inflated. As with any statistics, data can be skewed to one’s benefit.
The truth is that there have been more staff assaults and homicides in the past 12 months than in the last five years. Due to her classification system, a death isn’t ruled a homicide, it is ruled as a serious assault that results in death. A staff assault is not classified as such, unless the officer is sent to the hospital. Semantics. Dead is still dead! Her classification system suppressed actual statistics to make her numbers look appealing.
Many correctional officers and midlevel management hail the day she announced her resignation. Of course, the fear is that as she goes on to higher levels of government, she will continue to push her alternative reality on other states and keep her fingers in this state.
So goodbye to Director Schriro. On to a new administration that hopefully allows the correctional staff to gain control of the system instead of those incarcerated, as under Ms. Schriro.
Libby Lubner
Grijalva works to save dwindling wild areas
Once again, Arizonans have reason to thank Rep. Raúl Grijalva for his efforts to protect our wonderful public lands (“Bill to expand boundaries of Saguaro National Park is introduced,” Jan. 27).
Grijalva’s bill will protect Saguaro National Park’s streamside areas, sensitive species and cultural, scenic and recreational values.
At a time when the entire Tucson region, like much of the West, faces tremendous development pressures, this is just the sort of forward-thinking approach we need to protect our dwindling wild areas.
Rebecca Knuffke
The Wilderness Society
Phoenix