Tucson Region

TUSD complies on deseg, U.S. says

TUSD moved a step closer this week to getting a 26-year-old desegregation order lifted when the U.S. Department of Justice filed an opinion in federal court saying the district had complied with the order. But opponents to granting the the district unitary status say it may be premature to say the court will lift its oversight of the district. The department filed its opinion in U.S. District Court on Monday, saying the Tucson Unified School District has complied with the 1978 court-ordered desegregation of its schools for a number of years. The department was one of three original plaintiffs in the petition to desegregate the second- largest school district in Arizona. TUSD serves about 62,000 students. The other two plaintiffs were African-American, represented by attorney Rubin Salter, and Mexican American, now represented by the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, MALDEF. "The United States has no substantive objection to the district's request for unitary status and termination of court oversight," wrote John Moore, an attorney with the Justice Department. The granting of unitary status would mean that TUSD is no longer under court supervision. Moore's opinion is important, said Richard Yetwin, attorney for the district. "Moore has been in the Justice Department his whole career. He negotiated the settlement of TUSD's case in 1978," said Yetwin. But an attorney representing the black interests in the desegregation order said the department hasn't seen enough data. "The district sent out selective pieces of information to support their position," said Salter, representing the Fisher family. "The district has not come into compliance and they have not erased all the vestiges of the past dual system." But the burden of proof lies with the plaintiffs. "If the plaintiffs have credible evidence, then they're going to have to come forward and show it," Yetwin said. Hector Villagra, regional counsel for MALDEF, said that's exactly what's going to happen next. "We're about to engage in gathering and presenting evidence to justify the court continuing its oversight," Villagra said. "There are some areas the district probably has satisfied." But other areas - like making advanced placement and honors classes equally accessible to all students, regardless of race - still need to be improved, he said. The case could go before a judge anywhere from six months to a year from now, attorneys said. TUSD Superintendent Roger Pfeuffer said he hopes it's sooner rather than later. "The biggest single thing that unitary status would do, it would return the governing of the school district back to elected officials rather than a federal judge," Pfeuffer said. "In the past, if we wanted to build a new school, assign students to different schools, change a K-5 school to a K-8 school, we had to get the judge's approval." "That's why it's much more than a token," he said. "It's a very real thing to return the major policy decisions back to the governing board."