TUSD considers plan to add grades to Cavett Elementary, Catalina High

In an effort to increase the number of students attending integrated schools, TUSD is considering adding sixth grade to Cavett Elementary School and seventh and eighth grades to Catalina High.

Cavett, 2120 E. Naco Vista Drive, is a primarily Hispanic school that, under the proposal, would feed into Catalina, 3645 E. Pima Street — the melting pot of TUSD.

There is room at Cavett and Catalina to serve more students but both schools have received low grades from the state — D and C, respectively.

The effort could also potentially pull nearly 100 students away from Utterback Magnet Middle School, a campus that has been working with experts to improve academic achievement.

The pipeline concept of students moving from an elementary campus to a high school environment is similar to what TUSD is proposing for three schools in the Foothills.

That proposal is still pending approval by the federal court overseeing the district’s desegregation case, and the plaintiffs in the case have argued against it, saying it would primarily cater to Anglo children and that it would do nothing to diversify the district.

The Cavett-Catalina concept, however, is one that the plaintiffs asked the district to look into as it would allow the primarily Hispanic population at Cavett the chance to attend Catalina, which is 46 percent Hispanic, 23 percent Anglo, 17 percent African-American, 7 percent Asian and 3 percent Native American.

The challenge with adding the seventh- and eighth-grade options at Catalina is that it would add only about 60 students.

That would require finding teachers with multiple certifications because it wouldn’t be cost effective to hire a full staff for five dozen students.

The option, however, could draw in more students if parents are attracted to the idea of having fewer transitions for their children.

Because this pipeline wasn’t developed at the grass-roots level like the Foothills proposal was, TUSD would still need to survey families to determine interest and conduct further study.

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Other integration proposals that will be shared with the plaintiffs in the desegregation case include express buses that would take students from racially concentrated schools to campuses where they would improve integration, and reviewing where specialized programming is offered.

The proposal doesn’t necessarily seek to remove specialized programs such as gifted and talented from where they are now but it would consider whether they could be created in other areas of the district.

Governing Board member Cam Juarez raised concerns about diluting programs by trying to make them more widely available, a sentiment board member Mark Stegeman and board president Adelita Grijalva agreed with.

“We’re talking in the abstract and it’s hard to say much without seeing what comes forward, but I would be concerned about something that looks like disrupting or diluting successful programs for integration purposes,” he said.

TUSD has tinkered with the express bus concept of sending kids from one area of the district to another for specialized programming but the interest hasn’t been great and that may be due in part to the fact that trips are the opposite of speedy.

Initially the trips from, for example, a school on the east side to a school on the southwest side that offers a specialized program were designed to be about 40 minutes one way. But the district added a number of stops that extended the time to an hour and 15 minutes, said Charlotte Patterson, director of the district’s school community services.

“It’s hard to incentivize enrollment … when students know they’re challenged with two to three hours on a bus round trip,” she said, adding that students who participate in after-school activities may find themselves arriving home at 9 p.m., making “for a terribly long day.”

The difference this time around would be identifying fixed pickup locations to minimize the number of stops. The cost, however, would be $30,000 for each additional route, and if the district wants to cut back on travel time, multiple buses would be needed.

The proposals will be forwarded to the plaintiffs in the desegregation case as well as to a national desegregation expert tasked with overseeing the district’s efforts.

If those groups are interested in developing the proposals any further, TUSD will do that and return to the governing board for approval in May.