As his future began to take shape, Duncan Sohn Hasman knew two things: He wanted to be a teacher. And after seven years in food service, he saw the realities of wage labor and yearned to change them.
Now a 12-year teacher at BASIS Tucson North, Hasman has used his experience to help teachers at his charter school unionize and ratify a collective bargaining agreement. This means they secured a legally-binding agreement with the school’s for-profit operator, BASIS, LLC.
“There’s nothing really as powerful as a worker advocating for themselves and bringing their coworkers along with them in the struggle for a better world,” said Hasman, president of AFT Local 6627, Arizona Alliance of Charter Teachers and Staff, part of the American Federation of Teachers.
The charter school union is the first in the state to unionize and began the collective bargaining process in 2023. Among the union’s aims are improving teacher pay and benefits and it can also now more effectively advocate for student services such as nurses, counselors and librarians, Hasman said. “All those are positions we want to see filled,” he told Arizona Luminaria.
The BASIS campus at 5740 E. River Road, has 55 teachers in grades five through 12 and was last month named the top high school in the country by U.S. News & World Report. BASIS schools were founded in Tucson in 1998 and have four campuses here. They have expanded to more than two dozen schools in Arizona, Washington D.C., Texas and Louisiana.
Hasman, who teaches fifth-grade history and Spanish to eighth graders, grew up in Tucson and attended BASIS schools, which are tuition-free here and known for their academic rigor. He says the agreement will mean consistency for students.
“Our big issue is reducing teacher turnover and burn out,” he said. “That means that students are fostering deeper relationships with teachers from year-to-year.”
Three questions with … Sara Haghighi, Pima Community College refugee education program manager
Education was Sara Haghighi’s path to a new life on a different continent.
Now, her professional mission is to pay that forward, as an educator who helps connect refugees in Tucson to English classes and services.
Growing up in the Baha’i Faith in Iran, Haghighi was not allowed to attend university, she said. Baha’is in Iran face persecution and are banned from attending university. A secret, online, university-level institution, the Bahá’í Institute for Higher Education (BIHE), was started in 1987.
“So learning English was my way out. It was a chance of survival,” said Haghighi, who oversees instruction to adult language learners within Pima’s Adult Basic Education for College and Career. “I thought I could be a tour guide if I knew English. So that was my motivation. And then it was just watching movies. It was a window to the outside world.”
Her faves? “Desperate Housewives” and “She’s the Man.”
Three questions with Haghighi, 39, who is part of an integral crew at Pima, as it celebrates three-straight years of enrollment growth.
The Aztecs have just under 20,000 students taking classes this fall — their 10th-consecutive semester of growth, the school says. And enrollment, the number of courses students are signed up for when the semester began late last month, is up 8.2% over last year.
What do you love about your job? A lot of different things, like, when you’re in education, there’s this opportunity to become a life learner, that you feel like you’re always learning. Whether you’re learning about your job or you’re learning from your students and learning about people. I like meeting people from all around the world. When I go to our school, I feel like it’s just unity of mankind. There are like 37 languages spoken in our program, and they all come in peace, sit together for one job — to learn. … You see the good side of people. And you’re always very hopeful. Yes, there is negative out there, but there are people that really work hard and do stuff.
What’s the toughest part of your job? Funding. That you’re always thinking, what’s going to happen to your students? What’s going to happen to the teachers? What’s going to happen to the whole program? It’s very politicized. In the adult-ed world, it’s always been bipartisan. Everybody loved adult-ed, but they are politicizing it. Education shouldn’t be politicized. It’s very heartbreaking to see what’s happening to that.
When you’re not working or hiking, what are you doing? I read, I really like reading. I spend time with friends. I either listen to audiobooks or read them. “The Return.” It’s by Hisham Matar. Hisham is one of the professors at Columbia University right now and his father was a politician in Libya. And then they got separated when he was young, and now he’s going back to Libya to see if his father’s alive or not. It is a true story. I don’t know what happens yet.
Read the whiteboard …
Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes has challenged Tom Horne, Arizona Superintendent of Public Instruction, to end a policy that automatically reimburses an Empowerment Scholarship Account receipt of $2,000 or less.
In a letter sent late last week, Mayes demanded the Arizona Department of Education stop the ESA policy that automatically reimburses purchases under $2,000.
Horne says he follows state law and his office reviews purchases after they are made.
As of this week, Arizona’s ESA program has 95,508 students enrolled. The ESA program allows a student to use taxpayer funds for anything they need, including private school tuition, tutoring, homeschooling or education materials. The program is estimated to be funded at more than $880 million this year and has been the subject of much recent scrutiny when purchases of a diamond ring, appliances, clothing and more were uncovered.
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💵 Coloradans get Arizona ESA money, then get caught: After enrolling more than 40 real and fictitious children, the pair defrauded The Grand Canyon State of $110,000, pleaded guilty to felonies and will be sentenced next month.
🥕 Federal cuts to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) are here: About 80,000 Arizona families with children could lose SNAP benefits starting Oct. 1, according to the Urban Institute. The $186 billion cut will make it harder to determine eligibility for free and reduced-price meals and to cover meal costs that federal reimbursement once covered.
School-based food pantries throughout Arizona could struggle to meet demand, says the Arizona Education Association — Arizona’s largest public-sector union, representing nearly 24,000 Arizona teachers, librarians, custodians, cafeteria workers, counselors, and other public school educators.
“Every single day, educators in Arizona’s public schools are thinking about new and creative ways to stretch their funding to cover student needs. With new cuts to federal funding, their job is becoming even harder,” said Marisol Garcia, President of the Arizona Education Association.
📣 Sound-off: Tell us what’s working, what’s not and what/who matters to you.
💰 Add to your college fund: Fifth and sixth graders can earn $529 for college in a statewide essay contest about their dream job. The AZ529 contest runs through Oct. 5 and 20 winners will be chosen.
🍎 FREE English classes for parents and caregivers: Bring your diverse background and educational experience to English classes at two sites this fall, sponsored by the Tucson Unified School District and Literacy Connects. Sign up now and get free transportation. Classes at Catalina Family Resource Center, 3645 E. Pima St. will be Mondays and Thursdays from 9-10:30 a.m. Sept. 22 – Nov. 20. Call 520-232-8684. Classes at Southwest Family Resource Center, 6855 S. Mark Road are Mondays and Wednesdays from 10-11:30 a.m. from Sept. 22 – Nov. 19. Call 520-908-3980.
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