A plan to maintain the magnet status of five TUSD schools is being endorsed by a national desegregation expert tasked with overseeing the district’s efforts.
The plan, initiated by the Latino plaintiffs and agreed upon by TUSD, called for giving campuses more time to meet integration and achievement goals as long as the district agreed to certain conditions. Those included addressing teacher vacancies and restoring program funds.
Though the agreement requires approval by U.S. District Court Judge David Bury, the backing of the expert — Special Master Willis Hawley — bodes well for TUSD because the court often follows Hawley’s recommendations.
The reprieve, however, may only be temporary. Hawley is urging the district to develop transition plans for all magnet programs should their status be withdrawn next fall.
“The recommendation is that decisions about removing magnet status should be deferred until the 2016-17 school year while affirming that there should be no uncertainty in the future about the responsibility of the district to meet the criteria for magnet status set forth by the court,” Hawley wrote in his recommendation to Bury.
As it stands, 14 of TUSD’s 20 magnet programs are racially concentrated, Hawley said.
For TUSD’s purposes, a school is considered to be racially concentrated if more than 70 percent of its population is made up by one race.
The conditions in the October agreement covered five affected schools — Bonillas, Ochoa, Safford, Utterback and Cholla. Holladay met its racial integration goal — as did Booth-Fickett, Borton and Mansfeld — but it earned grades of C or D, falling short of achievement goals.
An updated list of schools includes Robison and Pueblo.
Had magnet status been withdrawn, the five schools faced the possibility of losing some of the funding that comes with the magnet label. Losing the funding would have a devastating effect, district and school leaders have said.
In reporting on the status of TUSD’s magnet schools, Hawley mentioned Davis and Roskruge, B-rated dual language programs, which are not integrated.
Though Hawley said he feels the programs should be sustained, he questioned whether magnet status is warranted and said more time is needed to develop policies to ensure that programming continues.
While most of the desegregation parties are on board with sparing the schools this year, the African American plaintiffs are not.
Calling the district’s request to defer withdrawal of magnet status “irrational,” the African American plaintiffs say the schools have already proven ineffective in their ability to attract diverse groups of students and that as a result, the plan put forth delays the establishment of new and potentially effective programs.
