The Arizona Daily Star endorses Leila Counts and Adam Ragan for the Tucson Unified School District Governing Board.
They are running against Doug Robson, who owns a real estate management firm, and incumbents Adelita Grijalva and Michael Hicks.
Leila Counts is a fourth-generation teacher with deep roots in the district — her grandmother and mother worked there, and she is a TUSD parent.
She works as a professional development instructor for educational best practices, which she said keeps her in touch with the concerns of educators throughout Southern Arizona.
Counts specializes in positive discipline and would bring a strong voice to efforts to address the discrepancies in discipline regarding race and gender that affect TUSD, as well as most districts in the country.
She has been an advocate for children and families, worked with representatives in expansion of Head Start and Title I funds, as well as supporting better wages and smaller classroom sizes. Being on the board is the next step to bring her advocacy work to the policy level, she said.
Adam Ragan teaches senior English and dual-enrollment writing classes at Sunnyside High School and Pima Community College. The teacher’s voice and perspective are a missing piece in board discussions, he said.
“The benefit of having the teacher’s voice is that every day, from the moment I wake up to the moment I go to sleep and every moment in between, I’m focused on what I can do for my students.”
There are a lot of great things going on in TUSD, such as the dual enrollment program, JTED, career and technical education and AP offerings, some of which aren’t available at charter schools, Ragan noted, but they don’t receive the attention they deserve.
Counts and Ragan both believe it is time for a change on the board and said they would approach their position as an opportunity to refocus the district on student achievement, and to leave behind the petty personal politics that have come to characterize current leadership.
That change cannot come soon enough.
During their time, the incumbents have presided over a mass exodus from a district that has shown only moderate improvement and seems adrift in need of ideas. Grijalva — who has been on the board for 16 years — is highly knowledgeable and has always been a strong advocate for students, but her long tenure has not produced commensurate meaningful results.
Hicks, running for his third term, continues to be better known for his gaffes than for anything else — just earlier this year, he said the women on the board always appeared to be on “that day of the month.”
When his place on the ballot was challenged, he described it as a “blessing in disguise.” A man who shows such little commitment to such an important position does not deserve to be re-elected.
Counts and Ragan identified waning enrollment as one of the key challenges facing the district and how the current board seems intent on being an obstacle instead of providing solutions.
While the Legislature shares blame in not providing adequate funding, the lack of confidence and toxic atmosphere surrounding the Governing Board help push more and more parents to remove their children from the district, leading TUSD toward a death spiral.
This lack of trust in leadership also manifests itself when the district asks for help from voters through bond overrides.
“It’s embarrassing and it’s not representative of the hardworking, caring families that we’re supposed to be working for,” Counts said.
Ragan noted the board often seems to lose sight of why they are there. “They should be asking themselves, ‘How does this help kids? How is this making our children’s education better?’”
It is clear from a recent candidate forum sponsored by the Star, in which only TUSD students could ask questions, that the most important people the district serves are hungry for leadership on issues that affect the quality of their education and life inside their schools.
The Star believes Leila Counts and Adam Ragan can provide that leadership to the TUSD Governing Board.
