TUSD, GOP leaders in heated exchange over climate change forum

Pima County Republican Party Chairman David Eppihimer engaged TUSD Superintendent Gabriel Trujillo in a contentious email argument over a “Climate Science, Advocacy Forum” at Pueblo High School, which had sponsoring organizations that Eppihimer said were “radical environmental extremist groups and would be classified by many as terrorist organizations.”

The Feb. 29 event was sponsored by Center for Biological Diversity, a Tucson-based conservation nonprofit, Sierra Club, LUCHA, Defenders of Wildlife and Pueblo High School. It was advertised as being an environmental forum on climate science and advocacy training where community members would discuss local consequences of climate crisis and participants could send a video to elected officials urging climate action.

Eppihimer asked that Trujillo take “swift and forceful” action, cancel the event and issue a statement that “political indoctrination will not be tolerated in TUSD schools.”

After not receiving a reply, Eppihimer sent another email, a few days after the event, this time CC’ing more than a dozen local reporters. He asked what Trujillo would do in the future to “prevent political activity on public school grounds.”

Trujillo responded that it was a voluntary student-sponsored event scheduled for a weekend and was not facilitated by school employees.

“Banning students from their right to express themselves via the first amendment during a non-instructional day in which attendance of the event is voluntary and taking place on the grounds of the public school that they attend would be a flagrant violation of student civil rights on the part of the district,” Trujillo wrote.

Eppihimer replied to Trujillo’s email, in an exchange that became increasingly contentious with ever-present niceties sprinkled in. Eppihimer said TUSD was “substandard,” with poor leadership.

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Referencing longtime governing board member Adelita Grijalva, Eppihimer said, “The Democrats are playing the long game in the war between Socialism and Capitalism and Raul’s offspring is following in the footsteps of her father in this war. The disempowering of the Grijalva's [sic] is the only solution to the disintegration of TUSD.”

“Perhaps the only cure is one that has been floated by many over the years: Break it up and peace meal [sic] its parts out to neighboring school districts,” he wrote. “Maybe then the cancerous priorities of your Governing Board can be finally excised.”

Trujillo responded with a list of TUSD’s accomplishments, saying that Eppihimer’s “hostile, angry, and unfounded attack” on TUSD was full of inaccuracies and “expresses a deep seeded [sic] disdain” for the district, students and educators.

After Eppihimer corrected Trujillo’s misspelling of “deep seated,” without noticing his own grammatical and spelling errors, he said “a PhD ain’t what it used to be, apparently.”

The leader of Tucson’s largest school district replied.

“I want to thank you very much for taking the time to bring my typographical error to light,” Trujillo said. “It is duly noted. Hopefully, in the future, the time, energy, and labor intensive effort necessary to check my spelling and scrutinize weekend student activities at Pueblo High School will be expended towards at least fielding a GOP candidate next time there’s a mayoral election.”