The following is an original production of AZPM News.

Coming up today on The Press Room, a special show looking at education in Tucson.

We're looking at all ages and some critical decisions being made right now with two local journalists who cover the issue at every level.

I'm David Lee and The Press Room starts now.

Welcome to The Press Room.

I'm AZPM News Director David Lee and joining me today we have Prerana Sannappanavar of the Arizona Daily Star, Noor Haghighi of AZPM News.

Thank you both for joining us today.

Earlier this year the Arizona State School for Deaf and Blind announced they were closing their doors but many wonder why.

So AZPM investigates.

We have very deep roots in the community, very deep roots of the community.

It is home for many of us, for deaf and blind children who have been through the program.

Lisa Fur is a 1984 alum of the Arizona State Schools for the Deaf and Blind.

She's one of many who are hoping to stop the relocation of a historic Tucson campus to Oro Valley.

But after more than 100 years on the West Speedway Boulevard, ASDB is on its way north and community members are reeling with the effects.

A combination of budget shortfalls, low enrollment of about 114 students, and deteriorating buildings on the 56 acre campus is making it difficult for the school to stay afloat.

Here's District Superintendent Annette Reichman.

It's an issue facing several school districts in Pima County.

Continuously falling enrollment brought on somewhat by the declining birth rate is sinking the schools that depend on per pupil funding from the state.

A board vote on February 5th advanced ASDB's lease agreement with the amphitheater school district that would move students to Copper Creek Elementary School, which Amfi voted to close.

It's about 15 miles away from ASDB's current campus.

And according to Amfi, has the capacity to hold more than 800 students.

ASDB parents have been left with a lot of unanswered questions in this process, which has unfolded in less than a month's time after families were notified of a potential relocation.

Lizzia Smith is a mother of three children who are deaf.

Smith says that her kids don't really understand what's going on.

A big concern for them is, are they gonna make friends here?

Are there gonna be sisters going?

I know a lot of staff, they're in the process of laying staff off, so I'm not sure if my kids are gonna see the same features that they recognize.

First said that the isolation will be the biggest hurdle for the children.

They need role models that are also deaf and blind so that they don't grow up isolated.

And if ASDB is closed, then they will struggle and be heard in person.

During a January community meeting, parents submitted questions, but many ended up frustrated and speaking out of turn.

60 to 70 staff are expected to be laid off next year.

One staff member at ASDB who wished to remain anonymous, wrote to AZPM stating, "On top of it all, my job is now on the line.

I've yet to get answers to the most burning questions.

Reichmann is being very vague and her total transparency is numb."

The outpouring of confusion was somewhat addressed in following meetings, but soon enough, new concerns arose.

The proposal Reichmann presented would separate blind and visually impaired students from their deaf peers.

A group of ASDB families even filed a lawsuit against Reichmann and the district alleging the unlawful dismantlin of programs for blind and visually impaired students.

The parents who filed the suit also accused the district of failing to provide a timely and accessible notice of action.

Donald Porterfield, who was the president of the National Federation of the Blides Board of Directors, sent a letter to ASDB in January.

The letter starts, "Our concerns are not about the decision to reorganize campuses or programs, but about the process, communication, and equity of planning for blind students as these changes move forward."

When it came time for the board to vote, ASDB officials were met with resistance for families at a meeting in Phoenix.

One parent, Randall Kidd, called for more honesty from school officials.

However, if you make decisions on your own, how then do you expect the community to stand up and support you when you say that you're going to be transparent, yet the community has no communi or access?

Please be transparent, communicate, and work with us.

Thank you.

Donna Lambert is a social worker for ASDB and has been employed there for 25 years.

She said financial issues are an agency responsibility, not something to burden students with.

For many students, it is the first place they have felt safe, understood, and able to truly learn.

Many arrived after experiencing bullying, isolation, academic failure, and lack of access, vision-specific instruction, and public schools.

On this campus, they are not surviving, they are thriving.

They are building independence, confidence, and essential skills.

A week after the board meeting in early February, an ASDB board member from Tucson handed in his resignation.

On February 16th, ASDB sent out a letter to parents confirming that visually impaired students would not be moving to Copper Creek alongside their deaf peers.

Each child deserves a good quality education that is fully accessible, with equal access that allows them to participate fully in sports, in academic, and the social life of education with students that are like themselves.

Noor some really good reporting from you and Thatcher Warrick Hess, first take me through how you heard about this whole story.

So I had been doing some reporting on the Amphitheater School District.

They closed four of their elementary schools due to what they said were enrollment shortfalls as a result of a decline in birth rates across Pima County and that's something we're seeing across the whole country.

But anyways, in January, literally the morning after the Amphitheater Board voted to close those four schools Annette Reichman, the superintendent of ASDB announced on social media and online that Tucson campus will likely be relocating into Copper Creek Elementary School which was one of the Amphitheater Elementary schools that were closing and the whole time of deliberation before the Amphitheater vote even came out, a lot of parents and families were wondering like, what's going to even happen to these four elementary schools that are closing?

Aren't we going to have to still pay for them and maintain them?

And so as ASDB moves into Copper Creek, yes, that's partially true.

But essentially what ASDB is going to be paying is the lease that they've signed for about five years as well as utilities.

Okay, Prerana, I understand you did some some reporting on this early in the stages.

What were some of the responses hearing from the school community members as they heard of this news?

I think the biggest thing that I kept hearing was that the community wasn't involved in the decision making and it was sort of being kept away from the community for a bit and they kind of started hearing rumblings students and parents did around Christmas time, I want to say and then obviously in January is when they started really understanding more and more about the fact that the school's moving and then it's also about the fact that the Tucson campus offers dormitory.

So it's not just about education, it's also about students who live far away, they get housing on the Tucson campus, which is not going to happen at the Oro Valley campus.

So one of the things obviously was transparency and I think the biggest things was concerns for the visually impaired students and the blind students because they're not moving to the Oro Valley campus and that was also something that was said to them after a while of them constantly asking these questions at the meetings.

Noor was that a similar experience that you heard I know in your reporting you and Thatcher, there were a lot of parents who felt like we needed to say something and you needed to hear from us.

Yeah absolutely, a lot of parents did and even staff they thought it kind of seemed to them like the school had their mind made up basically, that no matter how much they spoke at call to the audience during these board meetings their minds were made up unfortunately.

And what actually Thatcher and I heard recently from Katie Sienko, she's the president of the Arizona Association for the Deaf.

She was telling us some of the latest conversations from ASDB families are that they're thinking of moving their whole families to Phoenix is one option that's where the other ASDB campus is and it's still up and running.

Even to neighboring states to Utah, New Mexico, California where there are specialized schools for the deaf and blind because here in southern Arizona the Tucson campus was really their only option and like Prerana said the dormitories are no longer offered even though it was a small population occupying those dorms which is why the district said well we don't have to go forward with that but it still affects families.

So you alluded to a little bit of where we're at now where are we kind of as of you know today moving forward?

Yeah I mean the school's relocating it's a done deal.

Like I said parents are still thinking of where to send their students.

Katie Sienko told us especially the visually impaired and blind students are she said quote, 'pissed off.'

A lot of the younger students are just confused by what's happening and they're fearful of bullying frankly because the students the visually impaired ones who are going to TUSD campuses actually they're worried that they're gonna have to assimilate to a group of students that maybe doesn't understand what they're going they certainly don't understand what they're going through.

Is the school district doing anything to I guess ease the transition or they you know saying we're gonna figure out something to help this you know happen?

Well one thing that they've said is each family is going to sit down with the school have what's called an individualized education program meeting an, IEP meeting, that's sort of required by law basically.

Some parents as have said they actually have not had those meetings yet as of I believe March 12th was the last board meeting some parents told me we still haven't had our IEP meeting and what that IEP meeting is all about is looking at the plan forward deciding what's how do we optimize the situation for my student what are their needs going forward.

Okay there are also some changes coming to the University of Arizona's admissions policy.

Prerana you did some reporting recently stating that the applications are down talk to me a little bit more of what you discovered.

So there's a couple of things the first crux of this whole thing is that the University of Arizona has changed its admissions process just a little bit.

It used to be a rolling admissions motto which basically means that they review applications as they come in throughout the fall of last year and spring of this year for fall 2026 and there's no hard deadline but now what the university is doing is early action which means that there is one hard deadline on November 1st and decisions for that November 1st deadline go out on January 15th and after that they go back to a rolling admissions motto where they keep getting and reviewing applications.

So that's the change and what that has led to is a couple of concerns amongst faculty one of it is that this has reduced application numbers or just there's like a reduction in application numbers and that's augmented also by the decline in you know people wanting to go to college as well nationwide.

Also one of the concerns was transparency this whole change requires a lot of communication internally to deans to colleges faculty and externally to community members like high schools and you know community colleges and just parents who are interested in sending their school students to school so that's also been a concern and also I think the larger concern is that if if this kind of admissions model continues then it might lead to disadvantaging certain first generation students students of color just students from marginalized communities who need more support.

Okay there also in your reporting seems to be some disagreement or information that doesn't seem to jive between both the president and what faculty are hearing in terms of the numbers as well.

Yes for sure I think what faculty keeps hearing from community members because so many of the faculty members are outside in the community you know they have friends and you know neighbors who are sending their kids to the U of A to apply and then there's you know administration the enrollment office the provost the president who are kind of talking about different things so one of the things one of the numbers that we heard at the march faculty senate meeting was the president said that by march which was march second faculty senate meeting the university had received about 35,000 to 37,000 applications.

What I heard from a person who has close knowledge of admissions who requested anonymity was that the university needed 40,000 applications by the November 1st deadline but what they got was about 25,000 so just in general like a significant decline and also in addition to lesser application numbers there's two more things one is that community members are saying that the U of A is accepting lesser applications and also then there's the problem of the yield rate so yield is after student is accepted how many of them actually choose to enroll so there's lesser applications what community members say is lesser acceptances and then there's lesser enrollment too so overall I think what faculty members are concerned about is that there's not going to be right size classes coming fall there's going to be like lesser students in classes.

What is the plan I guess overall for the university moving forward I think what what I keep hearing from you know the provost from the enrollment office and administration in general is that they're receiving more and more applications every single day they continue to admit students and just kind of going back to what their side of the story is what they're saying is that there's um they're still accepting students who um, who meet ABOR requirements and ABOR is the Arizona Board of Regents that oversees Arizona's public universities and their standards is a 3.0 GPA, or students who are in the top 25% class, so they're saying administration is saying that they're still accepting these students but at the same time the president went on and said that the average GPA of students that they're accepting is 3.6 which is higher than previous years and then you know just anecdotally what faculty members are hearing is you know even students who have a 3.7 GPA are not getting in or you know students who definitely thought that they would have gotten it in past years or who this year are getting into ASU or NAU are not getting into the U of A so this is all anecdotal but that's where the the dissonance is between the two perspectives.

Okay Noor, there also seems to be some issues on campus regarding changes to honorary degrees and how those are being handed out, you did some reporting on that.

Yeah both Prerana and I kind of looked into this issue a bit of drama with the faculty senate.

Chair Leila Hudson has called out multiple times uh the U of A president Suresh Garimella's new policies on who gets to decide or who gets to nominate honorary degree recipients at the end of the year.

Typically that process is usually done with the faculty senate, which is an elected body.

This year things are different.

The president is appointing nine members of the faculty individually, so that kind of steps away from the faculty senate's role as a unified body, making this decision and that's what chair Hudson's gripe is pretty much with.

So she's said, you know, I'm not going to participate in this nomination process.

She's also not going to participate in her typical role during commencement, carrying the mace.

So she's, you know, in ways like protesting this, this decision.

She's also going to, um, she says she's in a letter to president Garimella she says she will be notifying the degree recipients of this breach of protocol, is what she says.

Okay yeah, back to the Tucson Unified School District for a little bit.

Noor, still working on getting their budgets all locked in.

Where are some of the overall cuts coming from?

Yeah some of the biggest cuts are going to be in transportation, plant maintenance, and central services.

That, um, the latest cuts will contribute to the around $10 million that the district is cutting just for next school year and that's in an effort to chip away at a greater $27 million deficit that they project by 2030.

So in the next four years they've got to start cutting significant amounts from their budgets again this is an issue of enrollment particular--uh, somewhat an issue of enrollment.

Also an issue of just funding from the state a lack of funding, frankly, from the state.

The issue with transportation is a lot of what the district heard from a feedback survey had to do with transportation.

Families and students saying, 'do not take away our transportation services' because TUSD is a huge district.

It's the biggest district in Pima County, it's very spread out so a student at the east end might be going to school on the west end of the district and they need transportation.

The district has said the cuts that are happening to transportation however will not will not affect students very much.

It's going to be mostly cutting the out-of-district routes and also cutting 25, the equivalent of 25 full-time employees.

That's monitors and drivers, bus drivers.

However I think this, it could be an issue moving forward between how students and families feel because for example, I've heard from multiple people at Pueblo High School, they don't even have bus transportation to begin with so those students are relying on either walking back home or taking city transportation.

So to see that the transportation services are depleting even further might be a problem.

Okay I'm going to take an overall look at at something when it comes to, you know, possible shutdowns in just education in schools in particular.

You know, you're looking for budgets you're trying to you know trim things a lot of things and it's not just in Tucson, they'll look to cut a school right and and reassign everybody.

I guess the question is at the K-12 level, you know, those are big changes for students and families and the community.

You know, how is that affecting them and then does that affect at all any incoming issues with, you know, community college and university?

So let's start with you.

Yeah, I mean, school choice is a very intentional choice for families.

Families don't necessarily just send their kid to the school next door unless of course they make the choice to move to that neighborhood because they want to send their kid to that school and that was the case with a lot of the Amphitheater um families especially at Copper Creek Elementary School.

They chose to move that to that school so they could literally cross the street and send their kid to that A-rated school.

I mean a lot a lot of the feedback um and like calls to the audience responses that have come out of the Amphitheater School District and the ASDB closures have people have said like a school is not just a building.

It's where a student grows not only academically.

Socially, emotionally, you know they build connections.

They make their lifelong friends, they build mentorship with their teachers, they have, in some cases like ASDB, they have specialized services that they can get nowhere else, so it's a big deal to close a school and it's, yeah, for a lot of families it's been sad, frankly, to see to see their schools close.

Prerana, do you think that it shuts the dream of going to college um and affect the numbers there possibly if a school shuts down, if we're not getting the same kind of students applying I think for sure like Noor said, you know school forms the foundation you know it's the foundation of learning they kind of get their core classes going and the core kind of studies that they're going to build off of in college.

And I mean I can't speak specifically to, you know, University of Arizona or Pima Community College over here but just in general I think universities across the country, across Arizona are seeing declining enrollment and there's lots of aspects to this.

One of it is also how expensive it is to go to school.

-Sure.

-You know, to do your undergrad.

But also I think the other part of it is the demographic cliff, which is the decline in 18 year olds after there was a decline in birth rate during the 2008 great recession.

So the cascading effects of that is leading to less 18-year-olds who are you know kind of wanting to go to college and you know if we just look at ASDB, you know, when I was covering that earlier this year there were lots of parents and students who were talking about how ASDB and the specialized services and the kind of community that it creates for differently abled-kids, kids who are visually impaired, it just kind of gives them like such a great foundation.

It makes them feel accepted you know they can make friends like Noor said, and lots of them did talk about like bullying and stuff and that that really does stunt, you know, education and learning experience also because it's so much about peer learning and obviously cascading effects of that into, you know, higher education.

Alright quickly, we do our viewer question here at this time.

Again, just a reminder you can send in your question to azpm.org/pressroom or you can comment on our YouTube channel or you know Facebook or Instagram.

Just send us a question.

This week's question comes from our Facebook user Camille Kershner and it references some reporting that you did, Noor, awhile back regarding dismantling of cultural housing communities at the U of A. Not a lot of time here but the question is, "do these students not deserve a well-rounded college experience, not to mention the peer support for those who must benefit from these types of programs?"

-Sure.

So the university's response to to closing these cultural housing communities has been that internal data shows they're not contributing to graduation rates and you know academic things like that.

In response to that, I think a lot of students and they have told me, that the students that have been part of these communities, that academics is not everything when you're coming to university again like you are looking for community especially those marginalized communities, like indigenous youth and LGBTQ youth.

Yeah they need to find their their safe spaces.

Alright.

Noor, Prerana, thank you very much for having this enlightened conversation.

Really appreciate it, and thank you at home for watching and listening to the program.

I'm David Lee, AZPM News Director.

This is The Press Room.

We'll see you next week.