An Arizona school district kept a secret blacklist for decades. A reporter found it

[mahatmakanejeeves]

Retweeted by David Fahrenthold: https://twitter.com/Fahrenthold

This story is for every reporter who has stayed late at a meeting of the school board, county commission, board of selectmen or zoning board. Sometimes it's everything.

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An Arizona school district kept a secret blacklist for decades. A reporter found it

By Hank Stephenson
JANUARY 23, 2018
983 WORDS

FOR YEARS, the Tucson Unified School District kept a secret blacklist that included the names of about 1,400 former employees. The overwhelming majority of those employees were blacklisted for seemingly frivolous reasons: They had used all their vacation time, or had received a few poor performance evaluations, or had butted heads with a school administrator with access to the list. Many were teachers who had otherwise stellar careers in the district. ... My story about the existence of the blacklist for the Arizona Daily Star made big waves in a state that suffers from a severe teacher shortage. The Tucson Unified School District regularly relies on long-term substitutes because it can’t attract or retain enough certified teachers.

ICYMI: A newsroom was told by management to run a “vile” editorial. Staffers made a bold move.

In my story, I compared the blacklist to a “jackalope”—a mythical creature of the American west—and wrote that it had “been talked about, but never actually spotted, for so long that it became part of TUSD lore.” After the story ran, when my colleagues congratulated me for catching a jackalope, I felt a little sheepish. To be honest, I didn’t actually catch it myself.
....

SHORTLY AFTER I STARTED ASKING around about the blacklist, an innocuous-looking item appeared at the end of a long and tedious school board agenda: “Review of Employee Eligibility for Re-hire.” A new school board majority, which included the board member who first mentioned the blacklist to me, hired a new superintendent, who acknowledged the list existed. .... The names were redacted and the data was incomplete, but the records I received showed more than 1,400 employees had been blacklisted during the past two decades. Many of them were teachers. Perhaps only 500 or so employees deserved to be on the list; they had been fired for committing serious infractions, or resigned in lieu of being fired and signed paperwork stating they couldn’t work in the district again.
....

The blacklist drove good teachers out of education, and ruined good people’s lives. I’ve heard from veteran teachers who told me that a new principal made their lives miserable until they quit, in the twilight of their otherwise spotless careers. When those teachers applied for teaching jobs in and around the district, they received enthusiastic responses, but were ultimately denied, time and time again. I’ve also heard from people who wouldn’t talk to me before I published the piece, but now feel empowered to go on the record. There’s talk of lawsuits now, and the state Attorney General’s Office is soliciting calls from employees who think they were blacklisted.

[Kali]

1. tusd has LONG history of crazy bullshit