💰 TUSD's $40,000 Secret Settlement: Taxpayer Money Vanishes While Students Go Without Care, Principal Who Changed Grades Sues and Wins
Only Sadie Shaw votes no as board approves confidential payout connected to Auggie Romero corruption
😽 Keepin’ It Simple Summary for Younger Readers
👧🏾✊🏾👦🏾
The Tucson school board had a really concerning meeting 😟 where they approved spending $40,000 💸 in secret legal settlement money while over 500 students can't get the occupational therapy they need 😢 because there aren't enough therapists.
A community member named Lillian Fox brought data 📊 showing that kindergarten classes have 26 kids each (compared to 16-22 in other states), and that the school board isn't even being shown important information about how many teachers and staff the schools actually have 🤔.
Meanwhile, the district is cutting programs that help families 🚫 while paying for legal problems from past corruption. Only one board member, Sadie Shaw, voted against the secret payment ✋, and another board member, Natalie Luna Rose, successfully stopped discriminatory dress code changes that would have targeted female students unfairly 🙅♀️.
🗝️ Takeaways
📊 517 students denied occupational therapy services despite federal requirements and only 7 therapists for 860 students needing care
🎓 Kindergarten classes packed with 26 students compared to 16-22 in South Carolina (with teacher aides)
💸 $40,000 secret settlement approved 4-1 connected to Auggie Romero corruption, only Sadie Shaw voted no
📋 Board systematically excluded from basic oversight, with staffing formulas hidden from elected officials
👥 Systematic exclusion of community voices through buried hearings and summer scheduling
📉 $4 million desegregation deficit eliminates family engagement programs serving vulnerable communities
🏫 Interim principals appointed at minority-majority schools while permanent positions remain unfilled
Some quotes were attributed to the wrong person due to transcription errors. Thank you for bringing the errors to our attention.
TUSD's Troubling Priorities: Board Rejects Accountability While Approving Secret Settlements
The Tucson Unified School District Governing Board met on June 10, 2025, revealing disturbing priorities that prioritize institutional protection over student welfare.
From secret settlements to service denials, the evening exposed a district more concerned with managing its image than serving its community.
Speakers and the Power They Challenged
The Institutional Gatekeepers
President Jennifer Eckstrom orchestrated the evening's proceedings with calculated control, wielding procedural power to limit community input while protecting administrative interests. Her management of speaker time and agenda flow revealed the board's comfort with democratic theater over genuine engagement.
Dr. Gabriel Trujillo, Superintendent, delivered sanitized reports about graduation ceremonies while avoiding discussion of the district's systematic failures. His appointment of interim principals at predominantly minority schools for consecutive years revealed a pattern of institutional neglect disguised as administrative efficiency.
The Voices of Resistance
Anna Badia - A former Pima County juvenile detention officer who delivered devastating testimony about concerning trends in school discipline and safety policies. Her professional experience managing incarcerated youth provided crucial context about appropriate boundaries in educational settings.
Lillian Fox - Armed with staffing formulas and class size data, she systematically exposed the district's deliberate concealment of resource allocation failures. Her presentation revealed how the board is systematically excluded from basic oversight responsibilities.
Sylvia Campoy - A former TUSD insider with twenty years as a Mendoza plaintiffs representative, she contrasted today's bureaucratic strangulation with a more responsive institutional past, providing devastating historical context about the district's regression.
Tracy Anderson - An eight-year veteran teacher whose testimony exposed bureaucratic warfare against educators, revealing how the district's administrative processes actively harm teacher retention and professional mobility.
Joshua Chuk - A district employee and parent who courageously exposed the fraud occurring in "gifted" education programs, where non-endorsed teachers instruct students in programs marketed as specialized.
Janna Hamilton - A fierce advocate who documented the board's systematic exclusion of community voices from decision-making processes, highlighting authoritarian tendencies that contradict democratic governance.
The Crisis of Educational Services: 517 Students Denied Care
The Occupational Therapy Catastrophe
The evening's most damning revelation came through data about systematic service denial:
860 students require occupational therapy services on their IEPs
Only 7 occupational therapists employed (5 full-time, 2 part-time)
517 students completely unassigned to therapists
6.4 vacant positions the district has failed to fill
When over 500 children can't access federally mandated services while the district pays lawyers and administrators, the priorities become crystal clear.
Speech-Language Pathology Understaffing:
76 clinicians serving caseloads of 50-60 students each
Evaluation backlogs creating educational bottlenecks
Limited capacity for the comprehensive assessments students desperately need
Gifted Education Fraud: Joshua Chuk's testimony exposed systematic deception:
"Most of the teachers at the self-contained sites are not gifted-endorsed, which raises significant concerns... students are not receiving the level of differentiated instruction they deserve."
Lillian Fox: The Data Warrior Exposing Institutional Secrecy
Lillian Fox arrived with documentation that the district clearly hoped would remain buried. Her presentation methodically dismantled the board's narrative of fiscal responsibility:
"You only have two responsibilities as a board. One is to oversee the hiring and firing of employees. The other one is to oversee the spending of TUSD's money. You're being cut out of them. You're not being allowed to participate."
Revolutionary concept: elected officials actually doing their jobs instead of rubber-stamping administrative decisions.
Fox exposed deliberate data concealment: "This is the staffing formula. It comes out every year. He never showed it to you last year and I don't know if he's going to show it to you this year."
Her testimony revealed devastating classroom conditions:
"A kindergarten teacher has 26 kids in their class. My niece teaches in South Carolina... The kindergarten to first-grade range spans 16 to 22. When I told her it was 26 years, she said, you're kidding me. Do they have a teacher's aide? Because when they have 22 in South Carolina, they have a teacher's aide."
South Carolina—not exactly known for progressive education policies—somehow provides better learning conditions than supposedly liberal Tucson.
Fox also exposed systematic understaffing: "The staffing formula for monitors is one monitor per 600 kids. That's out of this world. That's why we have such horrific problems with bullying."
Sylvia Campoy: Institutional Memory Confronts Administrative Amnesia
Sylvia Campoy's testimony carried the weight of institutional memory across decades of TUSD's systematic regression. Her credentials demanded attention:
"I stand before you as a former TUSD student, teacher, speech therapist, administrator, governing board member, parent, taxpayer, student advocate and former Mendoza plaintiffs representative of 20 years."
Twenty years fighting for desegregation—imagine witnessing those hard-won gains systematically dismantled.
She contrasted current dysfunction with institutional memory of responsive governance:
"I have vivid memories as a TUSD teacher and speech therapist of driving to 1010 to speak with the director of special education, Dr. Mary Meredith... I did not need to make an appointment. I did not get put off. I was never informed that I had to go through a specific process to remedy the problem."
The devastating comparison: "The district had more than 20,000 more students than it does now. But red tape did not strangle teachers, speech therapists or parents."
Fewer students, more bureaucracy—the modern American education equation designed to exhaust advocates and protect administrators.
Her most damning observation: "Today I do not know of a single teacher who has the same type of access to a top level administrator as I had back then. With 20,000 fewer students today. What's the problem?"
Natalie Luna Rose: Dismantling Dress Code Discrimination
During the dress code debate, Natalie Luna Rose delivered an analysis of institutional discrimination:
"I think that dress codes are inherently sexist, and they continue to be inherently sexist. They target girls... Nobody's talking about looking at the boy's chest, the boy behind. It's always the girl, and it's an enforcement of gender norms and impacting our LGBTQ students."
Her analysis connected local policy to broader patterns of discrimination: "And I think it just reinforces the idea that female bodies are inherently vulgar and I don't appreciate that as a mother, as a woman, and as a mother of a 17-year-old daughter."
The Auggie Romero Settlement: When Past Corruption Haunts Present Governance
The Toxic Atmosphere of Institutional Reckoning
The evening's most disturbing undercurrent emerged from the poisonous atmosphere permeating the proceedings. The energy in that room was thick with institutional toxicity—the kind that rises from decades of unaddressed corruption.
The source became clearer when examining the executive session agenda, which included discussion of "Romero v. TUSD"—litigation connected to Auggie Romero, the former board member whose corruption we exposed earlier this week.
The $40,000 Settlement: Blood Money for Educational Betrayal
The evening's most revealing vote came on a $40,000 confidential settlement agreement that passed 4-1, with only Sadie Shaw having the moral clarity to vote no.
The clinical language concealed the human cost: taxpayer money disappearing into legal settlements while 517 children were unable to access occupational therapy services.
Forty thousand dollars of our children's educational future, disappeared into the black hole of legal settlements—this is colonization by spreadsheet.
After the vote, Val Romero made what witnesses described as a "cryptic comment about having to vote for it," revealing the casual normalization of this institutional violence.
"Elvis" Romero channeling political theater: "Thank you, thank you very much" to the taxpayers funding the cleanup of institutional crimes they never committed.
The Desegregation Budget: Systematic Defunding of Justice
The district's desegregation budget crisis reveals a calculated strategy to dismantle programs addressing decades of educational apartheid:
$4 million deficit in programs serving vulnerable families
41.46 FTE positions eliminated—real people, real services destroyed
50% reduction in family engagement programs
Complete elimination of the EDI (Equity, Diversity, Inclusion) department
Because nothing says "post-racial society" like defunding the programs that actually address racial inequity.
As community member Betts Putnam Hidalgo noted: "Particularly now, with a government hunting down many of your families, it seems completely unacceptable to reduce the school-community relationships that can offer at least a small feeling of safety."
Votes That Reveal Institutional Values
Personnel Decisions: Perpetuating Educational Apartheid
The board's appointment of Jon Lansa as interim principal at Tucson High Magnet School for the second consecutive year represents institutional negligence.
As Janna Hamilton noted: "TUSD's high magnet school is a majority-minority school... I doubt he would pull such a stunt if it involves Sabino, Saguaro, or University High. It is disgraceful."
The pattern is unmistakable: permanent leadership for affluent white schools, interim management for schools serving students of color.
Community Voices Demanding Democratic Participation
Multiple speakers highlighted the systematic exclusion of community input. Janna Hamilton's indictment was particularly devastating:
"Few, if any, parents and students have been involved each time the administration and governing board decide to change or create a policy, fund, or defund programs and services. The administration and board have never been more isolated and distant from those whom they serve."
The exclusion tactics include:
Public hearings buried on district websites
Zero proactive community engagement
Critical decisions are made during the summer when families are unavailable
Democratic participation has been reduced to performative theater
The Path Forward: Organizing for Educational Justice
The evening's proceedings revealed a governing board more concerned with protecting institutional power than serving students and families. Real change requires:
Immediate Actions:
Demand Service Delivery: Pressure the board to fill occupational therapy and speech pathology positions immediately
Restore Desegregation Funding: Organize to restore family engagement and EDI programs
Ensure Democratic Participation: Require meaningful community input on all major decisions
Reduce Class Sizes: Demand adherence to research-based limits that enable actual learning
Long-term Transformation:
Electoral Accountability: Support candidates prioritizing student welfare over administrative convenience
Budget Transparency: Demand disclosure of all expenditures and decision-making processes
Community Oversight: Establish independent monitoring of district decisions
Restorative Justice: Replace punitive approaches with healing-centered practices
The children of Tucson deserve schools that nurture rather than neglect, that engage families rather than exclude them, that prioritize learning over institutional protection.
What Do You Think? Your Voice Matters
The Three Sonorans will continue to monitor TUSD's board meetings, exposing their decisions and amplifying community voices fighting for educational justice. This type of accountability journalism relies on community support—consider subscribing to help us maintain this crucial watchdog function.
Your voice matters in this fight for educational justice.
How will you hold TUSD accountable for prioritizing settlements over student services? What specific actions can parents and community members take to ensure that our schools serve as a healing environment rather than an institution of protection?
The children of Tucson deserve better than a district that hides information from its own board while denying services to hundreds of students. Together, we can demand the transparency and accountability our community deserves.
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