Pounds of carrots, cabbage and broccoli, boxed milk and canned tomatoes lined the lunch tables at Toltecalli High School.
It was nearly the end of the semester as the community class prepared for its final food bank of the year.
Dozens of neighbors waited in the shade. And for 90 minutes, Toltecalli’s community class bagged groceries, chatted with neighbors and sweated in the May morning heat.
“All right. Are we ready? Who do I have with the clipboard,” teacher Marcelo Cruz asked his students as nearly 40 eager neighbors looked on, ready to get their food bags.
“This community class partners with the Community Food Bank of Southern Arizona, with the U of A, to get out and connect students with what’s around them,” Cruz said. “It’s like a social gathering for everyone.”
The links between Toltecalli students and the elders on Tucson’s South Side keep students engaged. And learning in the classroom of the wider world — as the 36 students in the community classes do — rather than sitting in desks makes a difference, Cruz said.
Recent data also shows this. Toltecalli High School’s four-year graduation rate has improved steadily since the pandemic, according to Arizona Department of Education statistics. From 25.5% in 2021 to 45% in 2024, the charter school at 251 W. Irvington Road focuses on community leadership and responsibility and is an alternative school for at-risk students, according to its charter filing with the Arizona State Board for Charter Schools. Pima County’s four-year grad rate in 2024 was 72%.
Toltecalli (the name is derived from the Toltec people, who lived in central and southern Mexico before the Aztecs) was founded in 2002 and is one of four Chicanos por la Causa community schools in Arizona. The Latino nonprofit, one of the nation’s largest, began in 1969 in this state. One of its focuses is education.
Graduating senior Indira Mendes, 18, says the direction and encouragement in the community class has propelled her to earn her diploma.
Credit: Shannon Conner
“This class is where I learned how to communicate,” she said. “I am a very shy person. And I would say it was hard for me to communicate and hard for me to participate and I started doing it and I was like ‘you know what? I like helping the community. I like doing this.’ It gave me a lot of confidence.”
Mendes, who aims to join the Air Force this summer, used her Spanish speaking skills to round up the neighbors and keep the line moving during the monthly food bank.
As he loaded two grocery bags into his wagon, 70-year-old José Monreal made a beeline for his apartment next to the school. His three-minute chat with a reporter was all he could spare.
“I’m a cook. Headed to make chiles rellenos and rice for lunch,” the Nogales native said. “The food bank has helped us a lot — especially with the price of food right now. I don’t know what we got in the bags today, but I will make dinner with it.”
Read the white board
Voice your perspective on diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives in education.
A study conducted by University of Arizona Ph.D. candidate Taylor Roloff, aims to gather data from Southern Arizona teachers and administrators to further her research in educational psychology.
“Given the current political climate regarding DEI initiatives, educator voices and experiences play a crucial role in helping us understand teachers’ perspectives,” Roloff, 41, said. “This study is meant to offer a space for teachers to reflect on their belief systems regarding DEI and their contextual experiences in engaging (or not engaging) with DEI policies in school and classroom contexts.”
Two questions with Roloff, who hopes to have the findings of this study published by November:
Q: What inspired your work in this area?
A: After years in conducting research, educating pre-service teachers, and participating in nonprofit/community endeavors, I have become deeply aware of the complexities surrounding the lives of teachers and their impact in the classroom. I am deeply committed to enriching and elevating the conversation about how political, national conversations and accepted social norms can impact contextual experiences for these teachers — and I argue that anyone who cares about educating our future youth, needs to be involved in these conversations, across political party lines.
Q: What do you hope to learn?
A: The goal is to gather perspectives from educators who play a crucial role in shaping the classroom environment, and understand how DEI initiatives are being implemented, perceived, and experienced in real-world teaching contexts. We hope to learn more about how national conversations about DEI are talked about from teachers who experience the application (or removal) of these policies on a daily basis. More importantly, we seek to find, (a) how personal and professional belief systems can impact teacher experiences with diversity, (b) how teachers discuss DEI policies in contextual settings, and (c) how we can develop meaningful, applicable, and contextual information to help support and educate teachers on how policies can directly impact personal belief systems.
To participate in the survey: Go here.
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🛒 Free groceries: Check your family’s eligibility to get free groceries this summer. Low-income families with any school-age student in any school district may qualify for this summer program.
🏫 Antisemitism in Education Act: The bill passed the Arizona House of Representatives this week and was sent to the Governor’s office for her signature. It says students and families can hold educators civilly liable for promoting antisemitic ideology in the classroom.
📖 “Higher education is first on the chopping block, …” Arizona students, teachers and legislators gathered at the Capitol this week to protest the Trump administration’s attacks and cuts to higher education funding.
📚 Need a low-key summer gig? Be a teen library volunteer for Pima County Public Library. Sign up.
📝 Donate school supplies: Tucson Values Teachers is collecting school supplies. Donate.
📣 Share your stories: Do you seek answers or work for solutions? If you’re a parent, student, teacher, counselor, school administrator, education researcher, advocate or anyone connected to the education system, we want to hear from you. Tell us here.
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