|
http://www.dailystar.com/dailystar/allheadlines/sun.html Stacy Armenta likes
math and wants to be an architect when she grows up. She was born in California,
raised in Mexico, and is still learning English, so she starts each day at
Wakefield Middle School in a special reading class for Spanish speakers. But she
excels in school - carrying a 4.0 grade point average and helping her classmates
when she's done with her own work.
"I'm going to explain it to you so that you can understand it," she tells them.
Stacy represents the challenge and the hope of the Tucson Unified School
District - Arizona's second-largest. She also represents the biggest share of
the property tax bill for most homeowners - about 39 cents of every dollar for
those living in TUSD. The owner of a $200,000 house in the district, whose
property tax bill totals $2,821, is paying $1,100 to educate public-school
children in kindergarten through 12th grade.
The property tax is where much of the money comes from to educate Stacy and the
other 58,200 students in TUSD, which stretches from River Road to Irvington Road
and includes much of the Southwest Side. The district spent $406 million
teaching, transporting, feeding and supplying them all. Most of the money comes
from state government, in part through a special sales tax, and some from the
federal government for students like Stacy from low-income households.
Most TUSD students started their summer vacation Wednesday, but Stacy is still
in school, preparing for the jump to high school in August. Spend a day with her
at Wakefield, near Interstate 10 and Sixth Avenue, and you'll learn how schools
use your money - and what you get for it.
- Margo Hernandez
Educating Stacy
Tucson Unified School District spent about $400 million to educate
eighth-grader Stacy Armenta and 58,200 other students in 2003-04. We followed
Stacy through her day at Wakefield Middle School to show you where your money
goes.
Title I funds
An estimated 60 percent of the students in TUSD come from households poor enough
to qualify for free or reduced-price lunches, which triggers their eligibility
for another special aid program. It's called Title I of the Elementary and
Secondary Education Act of 1965, a cornerstone of President Lyndon Johnson's
"War on Poverty."
At Wakefield, known as a community school and drawing much of its enrollment
from low-income neighborhoods in the immediate area, more than 90 percent of
students are eligible for Title I.
TUSD received $15.1 million in Title I money during the 2003-04 school year,
which was distributed to students at more than 30 of its 122 schools. In
2004-05, Wakefield received $550,000 in Title I money.
Schools have discretion in the use of the federal money. Carmen Kemery, in her
first year as Wakefield principal, said the money has been used there for
teacher training in math and science, materials, and hiring seven staff members
- some to help reduce class size and two to act as liaisons with families and
the community.
Still, even with this help, Wakefield has a higher student-teacher ratio than
the TUSD average - 23-to-1 compared with 21-to-1.
Elsewhere in the district, Title I money supports 22 preschool programs
preparing children for kindergarten.
Wakefield gets other extra money through the district, too, because of its poor
performance on the math portion of the state's AIMs test. The percentage of
students passing has been in the single digits. The money pays for a coach who
provides what Kemery called "intensive professional development" for math
teachers.
As a community school, Wakefield does not participate in TUSD's desegregation
efforts, which were ordered by a federal court because of imbalances in the
racial makeup of it schools. TUSD spends $55.77 million a year - 13.5 percent of
its budget - trying to comply with the court order. A ruling Tuesday that lifts
the desegregation order against Phoenix Union high schools leaves TUSD as the
only district in the state operating under such an order.
Administration
The busiest person at Wakefield is Principal Carmen Kemery. Kemery takes charge
of everything from instruction to parent complaints as head of the school. She
knows students by name and can tell you about the teaching style of teachers on
her staff.
If you can find her in her office, she's probably on the phone. And if she's not
in her office, the only way to find her is through the walky-talky that she
carries throughout the school.
Kemery is in her first year as principal at Wakefield. She has more than 40
years' experience as administrator and educator and has worked as principal or
assistant principal at all levels in the district.
At middle-school level, the average salary for a principal is $79,594. Benefits
push that to $93,971.
All told, administrative costs at TUSD amounted to 10.3 percent of the
district's budget in 2003-04. That's higher than the statewide average of 9.5
percent.
Kemery, like much of the Wakefield staff, is comfortable speaking English and
Spanish. Her native Spanish amounts to a job requirement as she works to make
sure students achieve their potential and parents remain involved in a school
where 93.5 percent of the students are Hispanic.
Salaries
Stacy got a lesson in adjectives this day from Armida McKenna, a reading teacher
at Wakefield Middle School, and lessons from other teachers in math, Spanish and
science. As in many workplaces, their salary and benefits represent the lion's
share of spending on public education - more than 90 percent of the budget in
TUSD.
From Stacy's perspective, teachers put up with more here than she is accustomed
to seeing. Students are "more respectful in Mexico," she said. Stacy, who at 15
is older than her classmates, moved to Tucson 14 months ago.
At the same time, she believes the instruction is more personal here and she is
learning more from teachers - in mathematics, for example, where her teacher is
Elaine Ruiz. "Here, they show you more things," she said. "Mathematics (is) at a
higher level than in Mexico."
TUSD is No. 6 on the list of top employers in Southern Arizona with 7,684
employees and a payroll of $293 million, according to the Star 200, published by
the newspaper each February. A distant second among county school districts is
Sunnyside with 2,223 employees.
More than 3,300 of the TUSD employees are certified teachers like McKenna and
Ruiz. This year, they received a 2.5 percent raise, and their average
compensation - salary and benefits - totals $49,294.
Average experience among teachers districtwide is 9.8 years and 11 years at
Wakefield.
Computers
Like many people in the modern world, Stacy begins and ends her day in front of
a computer.
Computers are no longer a luxury but a tool that's central to the way many
subjects are taught in TUSD. In addition, classes are offered in computer
proficiency. The district spent $7.71 million on computers and
telecommunications technology in 2003-04, nearly 3 percent of its budget. Of
that, $6.5 million went directly to schools in the form of hardware, software,
salaries and maintenance.
This day, Stacy heads to the library to join a group of classmates who stay with
her most of the day - English-language learners like her. Eleven of them are
here to start today's reading lesson: translate personal essays from Spanish to
English.
After working with their teacher, the students adjourn to a bank of a dozen
computers that line a table near the checkout desk. They work quietly amid the
vaulted ceilings and high, arch-topped windows of this spacious room - part of a
restored stucco-walled, tile-roofed school complex built in 1939 and named for a
pioneer woman educator.
At the end of the day, these students pile into a regular-sized classroom for a
more chaotic computer experience. Dozens of students from two classrooms click
away at keyboards before rows and rows of monitors. Stacy and her classmates use
the time to pick up where they left off on the reading essays. Stacy's is about
her dreams of a career in architecture.
Transportation
Stacy walks to school every day because she lives nearby. And because it is a
community school, almost all Wakefield students walk to school.
But TUSD is a big district - at 225 square miles, it is ranked around 50th in
the nation in area. Getting around it requires big expenses for transportation.
Transportation in the district employed more than 700 people and cost more than
$18 million in 2003-04.
That's 4.5 percent of TUSD's budget, higher than the state average of 4 percent.
About 300 district buses logged more than 4.6 million miles last year for
everyday school transportation, field trips, athletics and special education.
The department provides more than 5 million individual r ides per year.
|
))
Wakefield
Middle School eighth-grader Stacy Armenta, left, and Aileen Sanchez
go over a homework assignment in Spanish class.