Dear Board Members of the Tucson Unified School District:

[Editor's Note: A chronological list of AICL's coverage of the shut-down of the Mexican American Studies classes at Tucson Unified School District is here.]

Dear Board Members of the Tucson Unified School District:

What happened to last night's board meeting? In the last few days, reports from people in Tucson indicated you planned to vote on an initiative to set up a multicultural program to replace the Mexican American Studies classes that you shut down based on a racist and politically driven anti-Indigenous agenda.

This morning, I read that you had a very short meeting. One of those 60 second kind of meetings that allow you to conform to your own bylaws about holding regularly scheduled meetings. Why did you do that?

Was it because of Michael Hicks' appearance on The Daily Show? Are you in some intense behind-the-scenes damage control?

This morning I ran a search on Twitter using "Tucson" as the search term, and guess what? The top twitter story on Tucson is about the Daily Show episode. I grabbed this image around 6:30 AM, Central Time, on April 4th, 2012:

For the sake of the citizens of Tucson, I hope you're figuring out how to get rid of Hicks, and, I hope you're also trying to figure out how you're going to withdraw your letter to Sean Arce telling him his contract is not being renewed. Sean Arce, the man who directed the Mexican American Studies Department for the last several years...  You know Arce just received a national award from a highly regarded organization, right?

Come on, TUSD board members! All of this attention can not be good for anyone in Tucson. How many people are choosing not to move to Tucson based on what they're learning about TUSD?

And I've got a question for Mark Stegeman, too. Are you defending Hicks? I've been following your defense of him on Facebook, on Curtis Dutiel's wall (note: the thread below started on Monday, April 2nd, after the Daily Show episode aired):

It looks to me like you (Stegeman) are trying to defend Hicks. In the Facebook comments, Hicks tell us he went to Rusk's class. When he was on the Daily Show, did Hicks forget he'd been to Rusk's class? Why are you talking about THAT?! Is it because you---like the rest of America---are shocked at the rest of what Hicks said and prefer not to address Hicks' ignorance?

When will you just admit that Hicks is not qualified to be on the board and ask him to step down? Is that what is going on right now, behind the scenes? I hope so.

For information about Sean Arce's award, see Zinn Education Project Honors Sean Arce at the Zinn Education Project website.

CNN: "Security checks anger Arizona Latinos"

[Editor's Note: A chronological list of AICL's coverage of the shut-down of the Mexican American Studies classes at Tucson Unified School District is here.]

 

The Daily Show's segment on the shut-down of the Mexican American Studies program gave some cause to laugh and exclaim over the ignorance and racism of Michael Hicks, one of Tucson Unified School District's school board members, but it is imperative we remember what is happening in Tucson. This CNN story captures some of it:

 

In related news, Education Week has a story out about the Common Core Standards, and how students ought to be reading more demanding texts. In the now-shut-down Mexican American Studies classes at TUSD, students were reading texts that some felt were too complex for high school students. Moreover, they felt that the classes and study of those texts promoted resentment of a race or class of people (with race and class referring to affluent white people). So, they voted to shut down the classes. In the middle of the week. In the middle of the academic year.

Ironically, TUSD announced recently they were adopting the Common Core Standards!

Seems to me they ought to reinstate the entire MAS program and its teachers!

School districts across the country ought to call Sean Arce and invite him to help them revamp their classes in light of the Common Core Standards. He just received national recognition for his work, but it looks like TUSD's governing board is not going to renew his contract.

How much shame will TUSD endure before it stops its attacks on the Mexican American Studies teachers and students???

Michael Hicks and Curtis Acosta on the Daily Show with John Stewart

[Editor's Note: A chronological list of AICL's coverage of the shut-down of the Mexican American Studies classes at Tucson Unified School District is here.]

Last night, The Daily Show with John Stewart aired a segment on the shut down of Mexican American Studies classes in the Tucson Unified School District. Most of it was an interview of TUSD school board member, Michael Hicks.

I wonder if Arizona's Superintendent of Public Instruction John Huppenthal or Arizona's Attorney General, Tom Horne watched it? Or Mark Stegeman, the president of TUSD's governing board?

Thanks to The Daily Show, millions of people saw Michael Hicks embarrass the district and the state, too.

Citizens of Tucson: It is not in your best interest to have Hicks on the school board. I think you should sign the petitions to have him recalled. Learn more about Hicks from TUSD's Hicks Recall Effort Begins Sunday. and from David Safier's blog post, Michael Hicks' letter to UA Dean of Social and Behavioral Sciences.

Below is my transcript of the Daily Show segment. Beneath it is a response from Michael Hicks. Beneath his response is a post to Mark Stegeman's Facebook wall. As more responses appear, I'll add them.

Stewart introduces segment on Mexican American Studies:

John Stewart (Daily Show): Your children’s education…  Nothing is more important! You want them to learn enough to do well in the world, but not so much that they can win arguments with you.

But, what are they really learning in school? Al Madrigal followed this eye-opening story.

Madrigal introduces the law:

Al Madrigal (Daily Show): Across the country public education is failing, but in Arizona, lawmakers have found a solution to the biggest problem facing their schools.

CNN TV news: Arizona’s governor Jan Brewer just approved a bill banning ethnic studies classes in public schools.

Al Madrigal (Daily Show): And using this new law, the Tucson School Board banned the K-12 Mexican American Studies program. School board member, Michael Hicks:

Madrigal’s interview of Michael Hicks:

Michael Hicks (TUSD school board member): My concern was a lot of the radical ideas they were teaching in these classes, telling these kids, that this is their land, the whites took it over and the only way to get out from beneath the gringo, which is the white man, is by blood shed.

Al Madrigal (Daily Show): When you sat in on these classes, what types of...

Michael Hicks (TUSD school board member): I chose not to go to any of their classes. Why even go? Why even go? I based my thoughts on hearsay from others so I based it off of those.

Madrigal's set up for interview of Curtis Acosta:

Al Madrigal (Daily Show): With powerful evidence like hearsay, the Tucson School Board ended the program, protecting kids from dangerous teachers like Curtis Acosta. 

Cut to Madrigal’s interview of Curtis Acosta:

Curtis Acosta (TUSD teacher): Our students are much more likely to graduate, to go to college… Their test scores have improved, and most of all, they’re excited about education so they can pursue it in their future lives.

Al Madrigal (Daily Show): And you do that by teaching them to hate white people?

Curtis Acosta (TUSD Teacher): We don’t teach them to hate white people. What we’re trying to do is provide a more complex version of what has happened in our past so that our students are engaged and they can ask themselves critical questions and build their own understanding.

Madrigal's set up for interview of Michael Hicks:

Al Madrigal (Daily Show): Critical thinking? More like critical brainwashing, and it gets worse.

Cut to Madrigal’s interview of Michael Hicks:

Michael Hicks (TUSD school board member): They would, every week, go out and buy burritos and feed these kids.

Al Madrigal (Daily Show): What?!

Michael Hicks (TUSD school board member): Yeah! What that does is that it builds a, more of a bond, between the teacher and students.

Al Madrigal (Daily Show): Sure… “I’m loyal to this guy because he bought me a burrito.”

Michael Hicks (TUSD school board member): Right. Right. Right.

Cut to Madrigal’s interview of Curtis Acosta:

Al Madrigal (Daily Show): You slip your burritos to kids, don’t you?

Curtis Acosta (TUSD teacher): Why would giving food to our youths be frowned upon?

Al Madrigal (Daily Show): When the program goes away, the burritos go away. That’s why these kids are upset. No mas burritos.

Curtis Acosta (TUSD teacher): That’s pretty offensive.

Madrigal's set up for interview of Michael Hicks:

Al Madrigal (Daily Show): And now that they’ve eradicated Mexican American Studies from the schools, they can focus on other ethnicities.

Cut to Madrigal’s interview of Michael Hicks:

 

Michael Hicks (TUSD school board member): Honestly, this law won’t be applied to any other of our courses. It was strictly written for one course, which is the Mexican American Studies program, and nobody has complained about any of the other, pan Asian, or any of the other courses that are being taught.

Al Madrigal (Daily Show): What about African American Studies?

Michael Hicks (TUSD school board member): The African American Studies program is still there. It’s not teaching the resentment of a race or class of people.

Al Madrigal (Daily Show): I’m a black kid. Try to teach me about slavery without me feeling resentment towards white people.

Michael Hicks (TUSD school board member): How am I going to teach you about slavery… Slavery was…

Al Madrigal (Daily Show): How did I end up here?

Michael Hicks (TUSD school board member): Slavery was… I gotta think on that… Ok. The white man did bring over the, uh, Africans...

Al Madrigal (Daily Show): What kind of jobs did we do?

Michael Hicks (TUSD school board member): The jobs that you guys did was basically slavery jobs.

Al Madrigal (Daily Show): So after we were freed we got to vote?

Michael Hicks (TUSD school board member): Yes! Well, you didn’t get to vote until later.

Al Madrigal (Daily Show): And we were equal?

Michael Hicks (TUSD school board member): Almost equal.

Al Madrigal (Daily Show): What? We were sort of like half? Or three-fifths?

Michael Hicks (TUSD school board member): My personal perception of it? I would say you were probably a quarter.

Al Madrigal (Daily Show): The more he taught me about Black history, the more I realized that Arizona has figured out the right way to teach it.

Michael Hicks (TUSD school board member): We now have a Black man as a president. You know, Rosa Clark did not take out a gun and go onto a bus and hold up everybody…

Madrigal's set up for interview of Curtis Acosta:

Al Madrigal (Daily Show): Sadly, the peaceful lessons of Rosa Clark are lost on the radical reactionaries teaching Mexican American Studies.

Cut to Madrigal’s interview of Curtis Acosta:

Curtis Acosta (TUSD teacher): I think this is a great country. In some countries, I might actually be locked up for teaching the way I have, and, well, in this country, I’m just banned from doing it.

Al Madrigal (Daily Show): You’re very close to getting locked up…

Madrigal's set up for interview of Michael Hicks:

Al Madrigal (Daily Show): Until then, Arizona’s children can count on professional educators like Michael Hicks to protect them.  

Cut to Madrigal’s interview of Michael Hicks

Al Madrigal (Daily Show): Do you think it will be ok for the school district to have a Mexican American Studies program when the district is 100% Latino?

Michael Hicks (TUSD school board member): No.

Al Madrigal (Daily Show): But at that point, there would be no white people left.

Michael Hicks (TUSD school board member): Well, if there’s no more white people in the world, then, ok, you can do what you want.

Cut away from interview, closing comment from Madrigal:

Al Madrigal (The Daily Show): Oh, don’t worry, Mr. Hicks. We will. We will. 

-----------------END OF TRANSCRIPT-----------------

Michael Hicks responded to the segment, saying (the quote appears on Wenona Benally Baldenegro's page on Facebook. She is running for Congress, and if elected, will be the first American Indian woman in Congress. She is Navajo. For background, read the Navajo Times story on her.):

As you know (and I know now) the Daily Show is a satirical news show and thus does not always represent the true remarks their guest make. I went on this show to talk about the Mexican American Studies (MAS) classes. What I believed to be would be a true interview ended up being nothing of the sort. It is unfortunate that the Daily show opted to amuse rather then inform.

On his Facebook page, Mark Stegeman, president of the school district's governing board, is getting criticism about his support of Hicks. Curtis Dutiel (I don't know who he is) wrote:

Wow, Hicks made an even bigger ass of himself. Didn't think it possible.

Based on the reasoning that Hicks presented on The Daily Show tonight, I have no friggin clue why you voted with him Mark and Miguel, but you two have got to seriously re-think your support for Hicks and his actions.

I'll add more responses as I see them. 

Updates, 9:25 PM CST, April 3rd, 2012:
Latino Rebels reports on a response from TUSD Spokesperson, Cara Rene:

Michael Hicks is a publicly-elected official and was speaking as an individual. His comments do not represent the TUSD governing board or the school district.
If you want further comments, you will need to seek them from Mr. Hicks.

The Three Sonorans reports that earlier today, Sean Arce received notice that his contract with TUSD will not be renewed.  Yesterday, the Zinn Education Project named Arce as the recipient of one of its 2012 Myles Horton Education Award.

TUSD Board Member, Michael Hicks: "if you do not trust your employee, you need to remove the employee."

 [Note: For a chronological and comprehensive list of links to AICL's coverage of the shut-down of the Mexican American Studies Department at Tucson Unified School District, go here. To go right to information about the National Mexican American Studies Teach-in, go here. The best source for daily updates out of Tucson is blogger David Abie Morales at Three Sonorans.]

___________________________________ 

On January 10, 2012, the Tucson Unified School District voted 4-1 to shut down the Mexican American Studies (MAS) Department. They passed a resolution (the complete text of the resolution can be downloaded from the TUSD website) that says:

All MAS courses and teaching activities, regardless of the budget line from which they are funded, shall be suspended immediately. 

On January 18, 2012 MAS teachers were given a sheet of "Guiding Principles for MAS Teachers" that says (see the principles here):

• Assignments cannot direct students to apply MAS perspectives.
• The teachers cannot use the MAS curriculum designed individually or by MAS staff in TUSD.
• The focus of student learning must not exclusively trail back to MAS curriculum and issues. 
• Teachers should balance the use of literature focusing on multiple perspectives and varied literature.
• Race can be taught and discussed. However, context is important and the focus should be on using literature content as the teaching focus relative to race or oppression.
• Visitations in class by an administrator will be frequent to insure compliance. (At least one visit per unit of lessons.)
• Teachers will write and submit a syllabus and/or a curriculum map that demonstrates adherence to common, standards based approach to the curriculum. The due date is January 26.
• Student work will be collected by the evaluator when he/she comes into the classroom.
• Teachers can choose to submit student work that would serve as evidence that curriculum is adhered to.

Those guidelines are chilling. Teachers are doing what they can to figure out how they are to go forward. There is an audio recording of Curtis Acosta, the literature teacher, asking his administrators for clarification about how he should teach Shakespeare's The Tempest. As one of the bullet points notes, teachers will be monitored. That is happening. 

In one of his letters, Acosta wrote:

...there have been credible claims that two TUSD Governing Board members have told our district superintendent that any violations by teachers should be disciplined harshly and immediately. Thus, my colleagues and I feel that our jobs are very much on the line...

Yesterday (Feb. 2, 2012), I listened to an internet broadcast of a Tucson radio program in which TUSD Governing Board Member, Michael Hicks was the guest (it is a four-hour program; Hicks was on during the latter part of the broadcast. Update at 7:15 AM--go here to listen just to the Hicks segment.). Again and again as I listened, I shook my head at the things Hicks said, but for now I am focusing on the jobs of the teachers. 

Hicks said that he did not agree with the decision to keep the teachers and students together following the shut down of the program because the teachers are not like "a light switch" that can be turned on or off. His "common sense" tells him that the banned content is still being taught, and that teachers carry the banned materials in with them each morning when they come to school. 

The only way to make sure they don't teach the banned curriculum, Hicks said, is to have monitors sitting in the classrooms, but that he doesn't agree with that. He said "I believe if you do not trust your employees, you need to remove the employee."

Curtis Acosta is right. Their jobs are on the line. 

So far, TUSD has shut down the program and it has banned the books and curriculum. Will TUSD start firing the MAS teachers? 

I've seen videos of teachers in the classrooms, and videos of students talking about the program and what they do. They are inspiring.  Please read Jeff Bigger's profile of former director of the MAS Department, Sean Arce and do what you can to let others know what is going on in Tucson. Turn your outrage into action.