The Tucson Unified School District held a meeting Tuesday night where community members expressed their concerns over reallocation of funds into the equity, diversity, and inclusiveness program at the district.
At the end of September federal pandemic money is ending for TUSD. The school district is looking into how to reallocate money to support their desegregation program which helps students of different backgrounds who could be experiencing learning loss because of the pandemic.
All school districts that received funding were required to spend a minimum of 20 percent of the funding provided to address areas of learning loss related to the COVID-19 pandemic. That was a minimum of $34.5 million for TUSD.
The district says the desegregation program helps students who belong to each major racial groups, kids with disabilities, homeless students and other groups.
However, TUSD emphasized because pandemic era funding is ending and to prevent over 60 teachers from being cut, eight administrators with their equity diversity and inclusiveness program are being reassigned to other departments.