The racial overtones were hard to miss. As Green Valley High School's all-white madrigal choir rehearsed inside the school district's Flamingo Road administration building last Thursday, a coalition of black groups held a press conference outside, accusing school administrators of everything from misappropriating resources to promoting Hispanic administrators over blacks. Activists even called for an investigation into McGraw-Hill Cos., which supplies textbooks to the district and has hired Superintendent Carlos Garcia to be its vice president of urban markets.
"Now this superintendent is leaving," school board trustee and coalition frontwoman Shirley Barber told the crowd, "and he intends to make appointments, (and) spend monies—and we act like there is nothing we, who are elected to govern this district, can do about it."
Contacted by the Weekly, Garcia lamented the press conference as unnecessary—"they're rattling off erroneous stats"—and challenged claims that the board is trying to undermine Barber, the board's lone black trustee. "Ms. Barber is on the board," he says. "She knows the rules and how to speak up." The exiting superintendent agreed to respond to each of the allegations.
Activists contend that schools in established neighborhoods (read: older, minority neighborhoods) aren't getting resources and that money that could be used to build and modernize campuses shouldn't be funneled into the new Flamingo Road administrative offices.
"They (activists) say the new administrative building cost $19 million," Garcia says. "We paid $14.5 million. They got mixed up. If the school district were to build that building, it would have cost $19 million. We saved the taxpayers $5 million. We're spending $900,000 on leases, so it makes sense to own the building." As for schools not getting resources: "I don't know what they're talking about ... look at full-day kindergarten (implemented in dozens of impoverished schools). But we don't have enough money to satisfy everyone."
Construction Overruns
To combat overruns, activists want a committee comprised of officials from the district and construction industry to determine if they're reasonable, then submit recommendations to the school board.
"There's no such thing as construction overruns. The vast majority of our projects come in under budget or at budget," Garcia says.
Hiring Freeze
Garcia says preventing him from hiring senior-level administrators (the board voted 6-1 last Thursday not to curtail his powers) would only hurt the district—school business has to continue with or without him. But some black activists worry he'll fill executive posts with more Hispanics. They circulated a handout showing that Garcia has hired one black high-school principal compared to six Hispanic principals, seven black elementary and middle-school principals compared to 18 Hispanic principals and seven Hispanic central office administrators.
"The reason (for the disparity) is that 36 percent of the district's students are Hispanics and prior (to Garcia), the district had a dismal performance of hiring Hispanics. Blacks comprise 14 percent of the student population. Our administrative force is 12.3 percent black, which is close to the black student population. Hispanic administrators make up 10.5 percent, so they have a long way to go. This (hiring more Hispanics than blacks) is not a gross injustice. Our support staff (food servers, bus drivers, etc.) is 24.3 percent black, which is double their student representation, and 17.2 percent Hispanic."
Activists are pressing for a comprehensive plan to stem dropout rates, increase standardized test scores and lessen the achievement gap among ethnic students. Garcia says improvement is underway.
"The dropout rate is lower than it's ever been; we've tripled the amount of kids taking advanced placement courses; we've increased from 10 percent to 70 percent the percentage of algebra," Garcia says. "Prior to No Child Left Behind, we only tested kids who spoke English. Now we're required to test all kids who've been here a year. One of five students is a limited English or non-English-speaking student and our scores have stayed at the same level. That is a success."
News spreads fast in this insta-information age. Shortly after the school board declined to hear a proposal on releasing funds for a new campus for Booker Elementary—a good school in a tough neighborhood, with a high percentage of black students—word circulated that the fix was in. Booker wouldn't get its new campus. Parents and activists began planning an attack strategy.
School district flack Albert Jones hopes to quash the rumor.
"I understand that there are rumors in the community because of the history of what it took to get to this point but there's no truth to it," he told the Weekly.
Jones says the board declined to take action funding the request not because the project is bad but because the Bond Oversight Committee, which reviews expenditures and sends proposals to the school board for approval, didn't have a quorum (seven of 13 members showed) at its monthly meeting and couldn't send a recommendation.
When the board does take up the Booker campus item—likely at the May 26 meeting—Jones says rising construction costs and structural design could be sticking points. Bids on some construction projects have come in more than 40 percent over budget—pegged at $600,000, a bid for a plumbing project at Robison Middle School came in at $1 million-plus.
"I expect to see increased costs with the Booker project," Jones says—its original budget was $16.3 million. "Costs began going up last year—there's a construction boom, a shortage of labor and developers can be selective in choosing projects and new projects are bearing the brunt. Another issue is that the school is being built too small for a prototype elementary, for 660 students as opposed to 725."
Though Garcia assures that no one's trying to scuttle the project, Booker principal Beverly Mathis is wary. "I've been to a lot of wonderful school dedications and have never heard of any hitches ... The school board is doing a great job. (But) I just want the board to be accountable for what it promised. At this point, there should not be any concerns about Booker getting a new campus."