TUSD didn’t tell Mission View families about a cell tower planned 600 feet from their kids’ elementary school — they found out through neighbors’ letters. That was one of three moments Tuesday night when the district’s idea of “public information” turned out to mean something only a board member, a persistent parent, or a spreadsheet-wielding community member could actually dig up. The numbers underneath tell an even bigger story about where TUSD’s money is really going.
TUSD’s Transparency Theater: When “It’s All Public” Means “Good Luck Finding It”
by Three Sonorans
There’s a particular kind of institutional gaslighting that happens when a public agency insists information is available while making damn sure you’d need a search warrant and a decoder ring to find it.
Tuesday night’s Tucson Unified School District governing board meeting offered a masterclass in the genre. Three separate times, in three unrelated agenda items, the same pattern repeated: someone outside the dais discovers something the district apparently forgot to mention, and administration responds with a version of “well, technically, it’s out there somewhere.”
Exhibit A: the cell tower nobody told the neighborhood about.
Board member Natalie Luna Rose asked Superintendent Gabriel Trujillo a simple question: had families near Mission View Elementary been notified that a 70-foot cell tower is proposed to be located roughly 600 feet from their kids’ school?…