February 23, 2007
What did district leaders have to say about the 2 proposals?
View report Tolleson Union High School: Governing Board member Kim Owens criticized both plans during Tuesday's meeting. She said combining the high school district with five elementary school districts would create a district that is too large and would "decimate" the school system. She also opposed Plan 1, which would divide the high schools to create four new union districts. "It bothers me that only a K-12 district delivers effective education. You can't say K-12 is the only answer," she said. Redistricting Commission Chairman Martin Shultz told the governing boards to look at the larger picture and to remove their emotions from the decision-making process. "Get out of the Pendergast District just a little bit and look at the district as a whole," he said, explaining that the process is intended to improve Arizona's education system. Commission member Tom Shoaf echoed his thoughts. "It's an issue of responsibility. I think we need to ask within our individual communities if we can do a better job," he said. Any plan the district chooses to support requires its members to be brave for the future. Superintendent Kino Flores said. "We would be cowards or liars if we didn't say we didn't need to do better," he said. "Are we, in fact, courageous and caring enough to make a change and a difference?" Tolleson Elementary: Bill Christensen said he doesn't know which way the proposals ultimately will shake out, but some form of one of the two proposed school consolidation plans likely will go before voters in November 2008. "I realistically don't expect leaving things as they are will be one of the options," said Christensen, who is the business administrator for the Tolleson Elementary School District. Christensen represented the Tolleson Elementary District at the meeting because he will take over as superintendent for Diane Hamilton, who is retiring this summer. In an interview the morning after the meeting, Christensen didn't commit to either of the plans, saying each has its own issues and challenges. For one thing, there just aren't enough details to the proposals for administrators and the district's Governing Board to make a decision, Christensen said. "We don't want to do anything that's going to hurt students, hurt the tax rate or take money out of the classrooms," Christensen said. "The commission is looking at things from the perspective of 1 million students; we're looking at it from the perspective of four schools." The timeline from here on out will see the commission delivering proposals to districts no later than April 30 of this year. Districts' governing boards will have until July 30 to review and respond to those proposals, but they are advisory-only, Christensen said.
"The commission can take as much or as little advice from the boards as they wish," Christensen said. The commission will then complete its final proposals and forward them to the governor no later than Dec. 31. After that, voters in each of the affected districts will have the opportunity to say yay or nay in the November 2008 general election. "We'll only have until July 2009 to implement those changes, which isn't much time at all, considering that you're talking about coordinating everything from textbooks to curricula," Christensen said. Littleton Elementary: Discussion of how redistricting plans would affect the Littleton Elementary School District was nothing new for the five-member Governing Board, which remains divided in choosing a plan that would best serve its students. Board members Sandi Nielson and Kelli Watson said they would favor Plan 2, which combines six school districts into one. They've both experienced large K-12 school districts and said they feel their own children would benefit from such a change. However, board members Kathy Reyes and Sally Maddux said they needed more information to support Plan 2. Many of the questions the board members posed to Superintendent Roger Freeman at previous meetings were asked again at the joint governing board meeting held Tuesday night. After listening to the results of various studies concerning the academic performance of large districts versus those of smaller districts in states other than Arizona, Reyes asked why information wasn't provided from districts closer to home. She said Phoenix and Mesa unified districts serve as examples, which should be evaluated before looking outside of the state for data. Pendergast Elementary: Pendergast Elementary School District leaders said they have doubts about consolidation. "Every district really expressed their tradition and the interest in having a strong community connection with their schools and their district," Superintendent Ron Richards said. "I think there was a concern that that might be lost if we were to go to the mega district." The Pendergast District is made up of 13 schools and 10,700 pupils. Board member Hilda Ortega-Rosales expressed her concern about the enrollment size of Plan 2, which would consolidate six school districts and have almost 39,000 students. "We are all growing - every one of these districts," Rosales said. "I know that in five to 10 years, we would go way beyond 50,000 [students]." Her optimal district enrollment would be 10,000 to 15,000, she said. "I have five children, two of which are in high school and one who is in elementary," said board member Patricia Lopez. "My fear as a parent is that if the organization is too large, then I get lost in the system and so do my kids." "We have all basically built our infrastructure based upon our known demographic and known parameters," Richards said. "Certainly the infrastructure I've created for Pendergast wouldn't serve a mega-district. So do we create a new infrastructure?"