Dysfunctional TUSD Board and Incompetent Weak Wet Noodle Superintendent
79th Open Letter
From: TUSD Whistleblowers — Comprised of a Large Group of Extremely Concerned TUSD Administrators, Teachers, Former Students/Class of 2018, Several Retired Administrators, Parents, & Grandparents
Subject: DISCONNECTED TUSD: Dysfunctional TUSD Board and Incompetent Weak Wet Noodle Superintendent
There’s plenty to be worried about in TUSD instead of the DISCONNECTED dysfunctional dynamics on the TUSD Board.
We recognize this.
It does not escape us. Those who have read our letters know that we have dealt with issues throughout the District: at the Board level, the top administrative level, and at the school level.
What we have seen in addressing these issues is that all of the concerns are related to the Board’s inept oversight in dealing with the issues and/or the previous and current superintendents’ inadequacies. Some of our detractors have insisted that we should focus only on the symptoms which are boiling over at the schools as a result of the 1010 administration’s incompetency and Board dysfunction. We will continue to deal with all of the issues since it continues to show the inordinate dysfunction and DISCONNECTIONs throughout the District.
This letter places another spotlight on the Board’s dysfunction and Superintendent Trujillo’s visible absence of leadership skills which has resulted in severe DISCONNECTIONs. We do provide some school-specific problems to illustrate that the trickle-down effect in TUSD is deadly. It is killing schools.
The Two Mean Girls and Leila Counts All Thought They Played One Another- They All Lost
Leila Counts received plenty of political support from the TUSD Mean Girls (MGs)- Kristel Foster and Adelita Grijalva. There are pictures, videos, and written documents to verify this and Counts cannot deny it. The Mean Girls accommodated several endorsements for Counts, they had “their” people carry Leila’s campaign literature, posted their campaign support on FB, and generally did whatever they could to get her elected. Of course, they each expected a “pay-back!” Was Counts clueless about the implications in having their support poured into her campaign?
Shout-out to Counts: When you sell your soul to the devil, it is YOUR fault.
Plenty of people confronted Counts about her close association with the Mean Girls during her campaign. She repeatedly responded that she was “independent,” while being forced by those who shared their concerns with her to confront the picture she continuously painted in her political attachment to both Foster and Grijalva.
While she may claim to have been clueless, the clues were delivered directly to her by many! Whether Counts recognized it or not, she was entering into an “I owe you” contract with each of the Mean Girls. She may want to play naïve, but we know from many who talked to her about her accepted support from the Mean Girls that she knew she was selling her soul. Now she is pretending to independently own her pure soul.
Counts cannot have it both ways. Counts’ actions during Board meetings has indicated that she believes that she is much brighter than either of the Mean Girls. Wrong. As proven by the first Governing Board Meeting, their IQ is comparable. It is Counts who painted herself into an inescapable corner, which is far from showing intelligence.
Counts claims that there was an attempt to “steamroll” her (this is straight from her FB comments) at the first Governing Board meeting of the year over the election of officers but she has only coyly hinted about who it was that tried to “steamroll” her. (Counts, we all know and if you are going to call the MGs out- actually call them out.)
Counts is not the victim she is now claiming to be in this drama. She was a willing soul-seller. And, Counts was not prepared to deal with the Mean Girls. If she got steamrolled it was from her own failed attempt to awkwardly grab back her sold soul; the one she willingly sold for a few silver dollars to the MGs. Since then, the Mean Girls have responded with pure vengeance since Counts would not go along with what the MGs were led to believe by Counts was due to them: The seat for Board President… and anything else they requested. They thought they had another evil majority.
Since Counts did not deliver the expected goods, Adelita Grijalva has once AGAIN gone to her very lowest denominator and pulled out her torn and worn-out race card, attempting to make Counts out to be a racist. Foster has been pouting all over Tucson and making up lies about Counts in the same way she has done about anyone who she believes has not done as she has willed them to do (the list grows). She cried to some TEA folks that she had worked her fingers to the bone to get Counts elected.
Grijalva and Foster went on the race-attack with Rachael Sedgwick at the start of her term and Foster could be seen taunting Sedgwick at numerous Board meetings. These are the type of behaviors that have earned them their “Mean Girls” title. (We have heard that some individuals are considering a personal lawsuit against Foster for her continued slander. We cheer anyone on who sues her for her contemptuous and slanderous lies.)
Counts has already proven that she does not know how to play hardball and she awkwardly fell into supporting Stegeman for Board President totally based on the lack of having thought through any real plan prior to the meeting. The MGs should be ashamed but Counts should own most of the shame and blame. This time Stegeman was not part of the plotting. However, he jumped in right away and took full advantage of the conflict between the MGs and Counts. He did not expect to be in a leadership role when he drove to the Board meeting but he sure was happy on his drive home.
Counts cut a deal with the devil and now is attempting to claim deniability. Just because she has climbed onto a “holier than thou” platform looking down on the Mean Girls (the “steamrollers”) who supported her campaign does not make her holier. It exposes Leila Counts as a political exploiter; a hypocrite; and someone who believes that the public is not capable of assessing the situation for what it is.
In the midst of all the drama that Counts has created, she angrily addressed the Whistleblowers on FB for writing about her. Does she honestly believe that she is untouchable given all of her antics? She sounds like Trump whining about “fake” news. Doesn’t she realize how transparent and embarrassing her sloppy power play has come across? Her attempt to play both sides- ONLY to her benefit makes her look very, very shallow and dumb!
During the election and up through her “win” our biggest criticism of Counts was her very public alignment with the Mean Girls and, as she can now see, we were justified in criticizing her cozy political alignment with the MGs/steamrollers.
She introduced her attack on us by warning that she was only going to say what she had to say once, as if she were speaking to her children. At least she did not warn us that she would “count” to three. We find her warning to us whacky and we are happy that we will only have to hear itonce. The immaturity of her attack is almost breathtaking.
Another Shout-out to Counts: Power is an illusion. The misuse of power is simply one’s display of their values. Addressing us, as if you have any command over us is not only pathetic, it continues to reveal just how oblivious you as you maneuver through the political arena. Ron Barber may think you are the best thing since Gabby. He is wrong.
You cannot, or at least shouldn’t have gotten into bed with one political side of the TUSD Governing Board -Foster and Grijalva- and then assumed that no one was watching while you so easily slunk into bed with Stegeman and Sedgewick- just to suit yourself. People actually pay attention to your conduct as a public figure.
You may think that you played the Mean Girls but they are not finished with you. Foster, the very worst and meanest of the whole lot, will continuously connive and execute “pay-back”- with Grijalva right by her side. You will get stung many times.
And Stegeman (whose record continuously shows signs of extreme elitism- inclusive of racism) has already started his plays to manipulate you. Do not underestimate him. He will plot out lies to persuade you on issues dear to him. In our opinion, you should have stayed away from any sitting Board member involvement in your campaign, along with their family members and inner-circle connections. You didn’t. At the very least, Own it.
Trujillo Is In Way, Way, Way Over His Head- He Treaded Water for Awhile but He is Now Drowning in a District that is Totally Dysfunctional and Disconnected!
There is only one thing that is worse than someone who is incompetent and that is someone who is incompetent but who pretends to know what he is doing- faking it all the way by knowing just enough to be able to give a good pitch on topics in which he has no real depth of experience. Trujillo does give one good pitch after another on a number of “his” proposals. But this is where the buck stops!
At least a dozen people have described him as a great used car salesman. The trouble is, once you get under the hood of any car he is peddling, it is either empty or corroded. If you kick one of the tires, it collapses right before your eyes. This is Trujillo. For a while he had us fooled. For a while, he had a lot of people fooled. Here are just a few of his exemplified inadequacies:
1. During his first year as Superintendent, Trujillo seldom met with principals to provide organizational information. He certainly did not involve principals in any critical decision-making. This caused confusion and disconnections that are all still prevalent. Principals learned about issues indirectly and when decisions were made it has continuously been top-down ineffective communication. His popping in and out of our schools should never have been seen as any type of effective action. It was used so that he could say that he visited every single school. As principals began to compare notes, we realized that if we asked for any type of support from him during his visit to our schools (or during a meeting with him), he would promise to follow-through on the support, which he never did. He has little to no confidence from principals (except from those who are the newest and most intimidated). His new appointments want to be loyal to the person who appointed them but most are swimming in disappointment. The man does not deliver.
2. This school year Trujillo hired assistant superintendents to oversee assigned schools and direct and supervise principals. BUT, very early into the new organizational structure, he began to undermine the assistant superintendents’ authority by making decisions impacting their schools without their involvement. This disconnection has been very harmful. The communication between the assistant superintendents and Trujillo is very bad and it has made the assistant superintendents look weak to many principals who are getting conflicting directives from Trujillo (or his directors) and their assistant superintendents. The assistant superintendents will say so confidentially but for obvious reasons, they will not reveal these facts publicly. Trujillo will say that things are running smoothly and the assistant superintendents are left with not being able to expose the truth.
3. Schools which were already in crisis when Trujillo was the Assistant Superintendent over Curriculum have continued to slide into extreme crisis after Trujillo was appointed as Superintendent. Right at the point that Trujillo became Superintendent and was given full authority to deal with these schools we should have seen schools get the support that was needed. It never happened. He waited for the schools to go into full chaos before he did anything and most of what he has done has failed.
The problem is that he does not know how to fix the problems. He has stood on the sidelines having various directors take over the problem-solving in disorderly and disconnected ways. For example, Booth-Fickett Magnet School and Safford Middle School are in the full throttles of crisis. Each of these did not sneak up on Trujillo. Each of these schools have been mismanaged for years and Trujillo was fully aware that each school was in crisis. Trujillo’s attempted remedies for Booth-Fickett failed last year when one director was drafted to go fix the school. It DID NOT WORK.
This year he has deployed an extremely poorly thought-out series of scrappy efforts to cover up the problems rather than to deal with any of the real problems. His remedies HAVE NOT WORKED and there are no indicators of any success. We are almost into the 7th month of the school year. Those who report to him go along with his superficial fixes.
He has sent out a “support team” to Safford. This is basically just for show since the problems are well recognized. He will hear back from the support team that
- the administrative team at Safford is totally inexperienced
- that the former principal, who had no experience when he was appointed, harmed the school more than helped move it in the right direction
- that it took TUSD four years to figure out that the former principal was incompetent even though it was so obvious
- that morale is low; that the students are running the school
- that the school cannot retain substitutes; that the turnover rate for teachers is high
- that instruction in many of the classrooms is substandard
- that discipline consequences are inconsistent
- that more curriculum oversight and professional development is critical
- that so-called in-bedded professional development will not work at a school in crisis (and probably not in any school)
- that training is needed in the area of discipline; etc.
The District will then take its inept time to address the issues.
In order to address another year of crisis at Booth-Fickett, Trujillo directed that about 25–30 people be pulled from District departments for 30 days to provide what was termed “emergency coverage” at the Booth-Fickett. He assigned Giovanna Grijalva to oversee the process. The teachers at the school and those who were sent to the school were not given any information or direction.
Everyone keeps asking, “How much did this failed experiment cost?”
Trujillo also has a former TUSD administrator, Joseph Hines, “coaching” or “mentoring” the Principal: a brand new administrator in TUSD. Someone in our group was a teacher at Catalina High School when Hines was the Principal and another member currently works at Booth-Fickett. Our former Catalina HS teacher told us of very serious concerns that teachers and parents had about Hines’ when he ran the school.
The problems became so serious that they reached the highest level within the District. Hines was immediately moved out of the school. In attempting to track down why he was recently selected to “coach” or “mentor” the principal at Booth-Fickett (which is a valid revelation that she is not up to performing the job of principal) we have talked to numerous people about what has occurred and what we found is that Gloria Copeland is behind many of the administrative decisions being made for and at the school. She was squarely behind bullying Trujillo into hiring Hines to “mentor” the Booth-Fickett Principal.
Naturally, once Copeland appears to be responsible for hiring someone — or at least convincing people that she was responsible for their “hire” she lets them know that they are indebted to her. Now Copeland knows more about what is happening at Booth-Fickett than Trujillo. Hines talks to her regularly. This has not been the only time that Gloria has bullied the District to line Joseph Hine’s pockets with District dollars.
Is this type of bullying/lobbying and corrupt influence really part of her role or has Trujillo hired her as one of his Assistant Superintendents? Or is this just one way to placate someone involved in the desegregation lawsuit?
In either case, he looks like a WEAK WET PLIABLE NOODLE! Has the Assistant Superintendent over Booth-Fickett just caved-in? How can he allow such lack of accountability?
During the last few years, Copeland was also behind having HT Sanchez hire Hines as a consultant. His contracted assignment was to conduct an assessment of the state of education of African American students in TUSD. And even though lots of people know about the report and how Hines was contracted for the deal, no one has seen the report because it was buried! It was never presented to the Board and it is not available on the TUSD website. How much did it cost the District to have Hines do the assessment and where is the report?
How much is Hines being paid to mentor the Booth-Fickett Principal to be a principal?
As far as the quality of “mentoring” that is being provided by Hines to the Booth-Fickett site administrator, we know that Hines has no middle school administrative experience. According to ADE, he is not a certificated administrator. We could provide a list of several well-respected certificated administrators in Tucson with successful experience in actually managing and leading a middle school and wonder why none of the most qualified individuals from this type of list were considered to mentor a non-experienced principal who was placed at a large magnet school.
Hines would not make the cut on any credible list of former TUSD school administrators to consider to assist in TUSD. We are hearing that Copeland’s new lobbying strategy for Hines is to get rid of Jimmy Hart as the African American Student Services Director and replace him with Hines. Will the Wet Pliable Noodle bend again? What is at play here is an avalanche of inept administrators making very poor decisions from the top directly to the school.
In addition to hiring Hines as a so-called “mentor,” the District also hired Lisa McCorkle to evaluate teacher performance during the first semester at Booth-Fickett. Lisa has experience as a principal at the elementary level but has no middle school or K-8 experience, yet, she continues to be politically connected through Mary Belle McCorkle (her mom) to John Pedicone who is Mary Belles’ relative.
Pedicone remains in the role of “mentoring” Trujillo and also maneuvers the Wet Noodle around his plate. Cronyism is still at work in TUSD. Trujillo has bought into it.
Teachers at Booth-Fickett were curious about why their own administrators were not conducting their classroom observations and they learned a few months ago that the Booth-Fickett Principal is not certified to conduct teacher performance evaluations and neither is Joseph Hines or the Assistant Principals.
Those hired by Trujillo at Booth-Fickett have fallen short and are not able to meet the requirements to run a school. So, WHY WERE THEY HIRED?!
Instead of dealing with the mistakes for which Trujillo is responsible, the Weak Wet Pliable Noodle continues to throw layers of a cover-up over the problem as he concedes to the pressures imposed by those lobbying for people like Hines. Is it any surprise that Booth-Fickett has catapulted into total catastrophe?
A Booth-Fickett teacher asked the Principal what the role of Hines is at the school and the response she got was outrageous: “You stick to your job as a teacher and I will stick to my job as Principal.” No one at the school really knows what Joseph Hines is doing. DISCONNECTION.
The Booth-Fickett Principal seems to be absent a great deal and it is suspected that her “illnesses” are either convenient fabrications so that she does not have to deal the administration of the school or that she just cannot handle the stress from her own inadequacies. (We should add that this is also true of the Doolen Middle School Principal, who arrives late regularly and who misses a lot of work. But this is another story for another letter.)
Booth-Fickett is a math and science magnet school that has functioned year after year with an outrageous number of vacancies. Many of the vacancies have been in math and science. This year the school has long-term subs in these spots. Parents have left the school in large numbers. Many believe that the District has either been oblivious to the situation or have just stood by and watched the school disintegrate. Either reveals the incompetence of the current and previous superintendent.
Trujillo has announced that the staff at Booth-Fickett will need to apply for their jobs for the coming school year. This has not been on a Board agenda. Is the Weak Wet Pliable Noodle making these type of decisions without Board action? Or is the Horse taking the Lead from the Cart?
4. Trujillo’s appointments in the curriculum area do not know what they are doing and this is proven over and over again. The Philosophy 101 (Koch brother curriculum infiltration into TUSD) is one of many recent examples. Yes, the fiasco was set in place by HT Sanchez but Trujillo continued to make the situation worse by not dealing with the problem head-on with the obvious curriculum violations that were exposed during his tenure.
The most recent curriculum/textbook review process was a sham. It wound up focusing on a textbook that should have never even arrived at the textbook review committee level. The course curriculum was not reviewed prior to examining the textbook. How did things get so backward in the process? As the District’s top curriculum administrator (his alleged area of expertise) Trujillo held no one accountable. There are never consequences to any of the blunders that his staff has pulled off. He has learned to divert blame to HT at every turn.
Trujillo’s curriculum staff are the weakest we have ever experienced in TUSD- well, except when there was NO curriculum administrative support. Trujillo promoted Charlotte Patterson to an Interim Curriculum Assistant Superintendent in the District. She was not involved in curriculum development or oversight in her last position. When she was promoted, she maintained her last title and also took over the Curriculum Assistant Superintendent position. She, like Hines, is closely tied to Gloria Copeland and when any racial issues pop up, Patterson is proud to say that in her discussions with Mrs. Copeland she has learned whatever it is that she has learned. It never makes any sense.
For most of us, Patterson’s credibility shrinks every time she brings up Copeland’s name, especially when it pertains to racial relations. Gloria Copeland is a bigot and Patterson is so clueless that she has not been able to determine this one fact. It is not OK to reference a high school graduate who has been caught lying about her education, her credentials, and hundreds of other things, all of which publicly depicts Copeland, as the worst source possible on all matters.
He also hired Giovanna Grijalva as the Interim Curriculum Development Director. Her background does not include anything near a comparable position. She has worked as an instructor and professor but the majority of her experience is in instruction for English Language Learners. Comments provided by some of her former students at the college level include:
“I found her to be really fake. She makes no attempt to connect with the students and gets flustered if the students don’t express interest in the dull material she has to cover. I definitely would not recommend her.”
And also:
“What an awful and condescending teacher. She constantly loses your assignments then blames you for it.”
At the Board meeting of 1/16/19 Trujillo and his curriculum staff recommended the costly purchase of a boxed curriculum program for handwriting: Handwriting Without Tears. The cost has exceeded a quarter of a million dollars for a boxed curriculum for K-5 students. The cost comes at a time when Trujillo and Board members have repeatedly stated that the District is under great financial constraints.
With a curriculum department which is staffed by costly administrators, why wouldn’t TUSD have its own staff develop K-5 handwriting curriculum? Maybe it is because he has mismanaged their focus, such as having Giovanna Grijalva take the lead on overseeing the “emergency coverage” fiasco at Booth-Fickett.
A handwriting curriculum does not require a financial encumbrance of over a quarter of a million dollars. TUSD seems to be reliant on a great deal of these types of outsourced boxed programs. It is lazy and it is expensive. There is NO ownership by educators for this type of boxed curriculum.
5. Student enrollment has continued to decrease at a very high rate under Trujillo’s Weak Pliable Wet Noodle leadership. This year’s budget was miscalculated based on inaccurate projections pertaining to average daily membership/attendance of students and which is relevant to student enrollment. A recent article in the Arizona Daily Star states:
“Now TUSD is hoping to “(stop) the bleed” of students leaving the district with a twofold approach, according to Superintendent Gabriel Trujillo. It requires recruiting new students, but more importantly it requires the district to take a more hands-on approach to student retention.
Declining enrollment is not a new problem. But Trujillo says that that “now” TUSD is hoping to “stop the bleed.” Is he just now noticing the problem? It takes more than hope to stop the bleeding. This is another of the pitches that he has given the Board without bothering to put a REAL WORKABLE PLAN together.
The “bleeding” has been obvious for several years. It is more like hemorrhaging! For example, Booth-Fickett has lost 348 students since 2016–17. This includes a loss of 203 students just since last year.
This is while the Weak Pliable Wet Noodle has been Superintendent, so he can’t blame his predecessor. It sure looks like Trujillo just wasn’t paying attention or just did not care. Most of the blame for declining student enrollment falls on the Board BUT Trujillo is not the person to address the problem.
In addition to HT Sanchez’ costly expenditure for the study he commissioned on student enrollment by Applied Economics in 2013–14 (Demographic and Enrollment Analyses), Trujillo has had a large group of TUSD administrators again divert their attention and essentially re-do the work via another Trujillo Task Force. This one was to conduct a “Declining Enrollment Analysis.” What a WASTE of TIME and RESOURCES.
The Board has allowed the current Superintendent to consume more time and resources by assigning top administrators to do RE-WORK instead of directing Trujillo to respond to the completed analysis by experts from 2014. It would have been more efficient to update the Analysis from 2014 than to start from scratch. This Board is permitting the current Superintendent to sniff and mark new territory, which is nothing more than canine territorial behavior and a mighty waste of TIME and RESOURCES.
More students will leave Booth-Fickett under the tragic line-up of incompetent individuals who have been assigned to the school by Trujillo and one enrollment analysis after another will not be adequately addressed when weak site administrators continue to drive students out of their schools. Several of Trujillo’s appointments are incompetent. The Board has to deal with this if they desire to stop the bleeding.
Board members should have dedicated more time to issues such as increasing student enrollment by utilizing information that had already been completed, instead of buying into the Trujillo rework process. Any business that buys into promoting rework is destined for failure. The Board dropped the ball on the student enrollment decline problem in 2014 when the Analysis was presented.
For several years Board members have consumed their time on political platitudes, pleasing TEA, trying to out-speak one another, etc. Are Board members trying to make up for their lost time and attention by going along with the current Superintendent’s initiatives just to make it appear as though massive problems are being addressed?
We will continue to report on the Weak Pliable Wet Noodle’s ongoing mismanagement in future letters. We feel that he is gearing up to roll out his campaign to convince the Board that because he has been able to bump the state’s school grades up once for several schools, that his contract should be renewed. He has mistakenly shared that he was going to give credit to the Board for his GREAT accomplishments so that any evaluation of his performance will actually turn on the Board if they do not acknowledge HIS work.
This is one of his mentor’s (Pedicone) strategies. We hope that at least three Board members see beyond the SMOKE AND MIRRORS!!!!! Anyone who has been around public education for more than a few years knows that a one-year bump in achievement scores is not sufficient to determine valid progress. Trujillo’s bump in test scores is based on dedicating costly and time-consuming resources to teach-to-the-test to a specific group of students for ninety days just prior to the test. The selected students who receive the intense teaching-to-the-test are just below the mid-achievement level. It may be a sophisticated form of expensive cheating, but it is cheating.
Response to Princesse Counts
Finally, a direct note to Leila Counts, TUSD’s new wanna-be royalty. Or so she thinks. Counts responded to our last letter by stating: “I’m not interested in having a one-way conversation with anonymous people, who might not even live in the District. Let me know if you would ever like to have a face to face conversation.”
We will continue to do our work anonymously. You and a few others seem to be hung-up on our anonymity. You do not YET seem to understand the retaliatory nature of TUSD. If you evolve into someone who can be trusted on the Board you may someday hear from those who have spoken out about wrong-doings and then find themselves punished in one or more of TUSD’s menu of retaliation.
Your dismissive/”Qu’ils mangent de la brioche”/“let them eat cake” attitude is elitist and totally oblivious to the District’s great dysfunction and acceptance of punitive treatment towards those who have advocated for what is right. There is no need for you to respond to us. We never asked you to respond.
What we want from you is to be RESPONSIVE to the problems that are exposed by us and others by promoting, pushing, insisting, and demanding REMEDIES. Everyone within our group lives within the TUSD boundaries and is a property owner, with the exception of those who have recently graduated from high school and remain in their parent’s home within TUSD. Perhaps you should make some effort to listen to what we have to say in our letters. It may be helpful to get off your throne and get your ego out of your way.
BTW, many of us have spoken with you during various functions- face-to-face. Who knew?!
