TUCSON, Ariz. (KGUN) — TUSD’s desegregation program came out of a lawsuit the district was involved in in the 1970s when African American and Hispanic students alleged the district was intentionally segregating them. Two years ago, a judge closed the case, leaving the desegregation program in the district’s hands.
On Tuesday community members were able to talk to the district about last school year’s desegregation annual report.
The report has information about what each of the departments under the desegregation program did for the school year.
The district was supposed to have the public hearing by January 30 and the district superintendent, Dr. Gabriel Trujillo, said he takes responsibility for not having it.
The district is also thinking about how they are going to be able to keep certain positions within their desegregation budget when they lose money they got during the pandemic from the federal government at the end of September.
Sylvia Campoy is a community member who went to the meeting on Tuesday. She said she coordinated communication between the attorney, TUSD, and the plaintiffs in the original case.
She said the district should reconsider their desegregation budget.
“If the district wants to keep those positions, they have to find the money to support those positions elsewhere other than desegregation funding,” Campoy said.
TUSD said nobody is going to lose their jobs, but all departments in the desegregation program are going to reallocate money. They said that includes the transportation, operations, and lien I.T. departments.
The governing board is going to vote on the desegregation budget next month.
Editor's Note: KGUN 9 erroneously reported in an earlier version of this webstory that the district said it had overspent $140 million in a separate budget involving money from the government for Maintenance and Operations (M&O). This was a misinterpretation of the following statement by TUSD about standard operating procedures involving the spending of federal funds.
Statement by TUSD: "If a district has an M&O budget that exceeds $2 million, the district must contract an independent accounting firm to conduct an audit of our financial statements. Our M&O budget in FY23 was over $371 million. The federal government requires that any district that spends more than $750,000 in federal funds is required to conduct a Single Audit. We spent over $140 million in Federal funds."
——-
Andrew Christiansen is a reporter for KGUN 9. Before joining the team, Andrew reported in Corpus Christi, Texas for KRIS6 News, Action 10 News and guest reported in Spanish for Telemundo Corpus Christi. Share your story ideas with Andrew by emailing andrew.christiansen@kgun9.com or by connecting on Facebook, or Twitter.
