TUSD Superintendent Gabriel Trujillo has done away with a secret blacklist that dates back two decades. Hundreds of employees were wrongfully placed on the list./Kelly Presnell / Arizona Daily Star/
By Hank Stephenson | Arizona Daily Star
Hundreds of former employees of Tucson’s largest school district were blacklisted from ever being employed in the district again — wrongfully, secretly and seemingly illegally — despite never having any serious disciplinary issues on their records.
Instead, Tucson Unified School District officials say the former employees were put on the blacklist because of “personality clashes” with supervisors, poor evaluation scores and using all of their vacation time — offenses that aren’t grounds for firing, let alone blacklisting.
In many cases, it’s unclear why the employees were put on the blacklist in the first place or who blacklisted them.
And many of those employees were never told they were blacklisted.
“Any teachers who had their careers derailed by being included in an illegal blacklist deserve to to have those responsible answer for their actions and compensate them for their losses to both their income and reputation.”
