Last week we wrote about the very first board meeting for newcomer Leila Counts, the top vote-getter in last year’s election who defeated 4-term once-dominant incumbent Adelita Grijalva by thousands of votes.
During this meeting, the first item on the agenda was to appoint a new board president for the year.
Kristel Foster declined her nomination, then Adelita Grijalva declined her nomination, and finally, on the fifth vote, Mark Stegeman was elected as TUSD board president.
This win required Leila Counts, a Democrat, to vote with Rachael Sedgwick to give Stegeman the 3–2 victory.
As a result, Adelita Grijalva and Kristel Foster took to social media with their loyalists to attack Leila Counts with hundreds of Facebook comments, labeling her as racist.
Repeating from their sore-loser’s playbook, they had their minions who claim they represent the “minority community” show up as they did two years ago after Rachael Sedgwick ousted incumbent Cam Juarez to make claims of racism and white supremacy. These claims were all based on Mark Stegeman’s 2012 vote to suspend the Mexican American Studies.
The problem with all these activists, who only come out when it is to support Adelita Grijalva for a position of power, is that the years 2013–2018 seem to be a vacuum for them. For four years Adelita Grijalva was the board president and had a “pro-MAS” board majority. They never voted to bring back MAS. When they approved the booklist for their new “Mexican perspective” culturally relevant classes, there was not one Latino author on their list!
On August 27th, 2013, I went to the board meeting to ask “how are you going to teach Chicano perspectives without any Chicano authors?” The video is above.
During the HT Sanchez era, TUSD increased the assault on the federal desegregation order, including ordering a ruthless law firm out of Phoenix at a cost of $5 million to keep fighting the Latino and Black Plaintiffs.
This is a perpetuation of white supremacy, and it was led by Latinxs HT Sanchez and Adelita Grijalva working together!
So at this week’s (1/15/19) regular board meeting, when all these activists loyal to the machine came out to call Leila Counts a white supremacy supporter, I had enough. Why were they going back all the way to a vote by Stegeman in 2012 when racism thrived in TUSD during the years after under the leadership of Grijalva?
I spoke out and gave the audience a history lesson on what happened at the meetings they didn’t attend or watch for years.
I wasn’t the only one disgusted by this misuse of pulling out the “race card” only when Adelita Grijalva suffers a loss. TUSD watchdogs Lillian Fox and Lucy LiBosha also spoke out in defense of Leila Counts.
Thus far Leila Counts has been through two school board meetings, and both meetings have been a display of drama and attacks by what many have called the “mean girls”: Adelita Grijalva and Kristel Foster. Their pettiness is what keeps TUSD from ever advancing as their egos get in the way of progress; from the Desegregation Order to ending the mass exodus of students from TUSD.
Under Grijalva, on average about 1,000 students have left every year since she began in 2002, leaving a district with over 62,000 with about 16,000 fewer students, along with the millions of dollars that come from their enrollment. Hopefully, with Leila Counts on the TUSD school board, things can finally begin to advance.
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