Black and Hispanic kids in the Tucson Unified School District are too stupid, too uncivilized, too incorrigible to be disciplined on the same basis as white and Asian kids. Those are not my words and to be fair, they are also not the words of officials in TUSD. But they are the inescapable implications of policies being considered by the district’s board.

The problem is that black and Hispanic kids — let’s call them Type 1 kids — cause more trouble, and more serious trouble than white, Asian or other students — we’ll call them Type 2 kids. As a result, the number of disciplinary actions against Type 1 kids is substantially greater than against Type 2 kids. Officials fret this is unfair to Type 1 kids, alienating them from the school environment. They want disciplining officials to take these factors into account when imposing punishment on violators. They call this social justice for all students.

Type 2 students will necessarily receive more severe punishment because in their culture such disorderly conduct is not tolerated. The opposite is true for Type 1 kids. They have proposed that Type 1 students of African-American and Hispanic heritage be disciplined on a different level than the others because their culture and climate are different.

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The idea is that suspensions and expulsions of Type 1 kids will be reduced to the point that there are “no ethnic/racial disparities.” This will achieve statistical equality of treatment between the two types of students.

The goals are laudable but the methods are not sufficiently refined. If discipline is to be dealt to the students based essentially on the color of their skin, I propose a more objective method be used to determine the level of appropriate punishment.

An objective standard for calculating the amount of incident light reflected by the student’s skin would do that. With such an objective standard, no complaint could be heard that the discipline was discriminatory. I have had some experience with devices that could do this. They are meters that are available in better photographic stores or, like everything else, from Amazon.com.

I have found the Sekonic L-2008 meter to be particularly suited for this purpose, and at less than $100, it is economical for the even the most financially embarrassed school district. This should solve that problem of statistical inequailty.

Arizona 'For Sale'

Speaking of short-sighted solutions to far-sighted problems, the State of Arizona is getting ready to put “For Sale” signs on some state-owned buildings and properties in an attempt to raise about $350 million of the $3 billion-plus budget shortfall. Being considered for sale are the buildings housing the state House of Representatives and Senate and the State Hospital, in Phoenix, and Kartchner Caverns State Park near Benson. The Department of Administration has put a value on the properties totalling $1 billion, but there’s no way to get that much for them in this market.

The state intends to lease back the properties for 20 years at a cost of about $65 million a year or a total of $1.3 billion. I figure Arizona Public Service must have cut off the power to the state computers when they were figuring this deal.

If Arizona is so broke it has to sell the capitol buildings, where will the money come from to lease back the properties over the next 20 years? The leaseback would provide for the state to recover ownership of the properties when the lease terminates.

The state plans to spend all the money raised from the sale either this fiscal year or next. So where will the money come from to pay the lease?

This is the kind of planning that got Arizona into this condition.

It also points up how little the state actually owns in such fixed assets. Our most prominent assets belong not to the state but to the federal government.

We cannot sell off the Grand Canyon, the Santa Catalina Mountains, or scores of such spectacular properties. But selling and leasing back in this case is obviously horrible planning and at best will only defer the day of reckoning at considerable additional expense.

 

Contact Lionel Waxman at territorial@waxmanmedia.com or visit his website: www.newflashpoint.com.