Eleven named families of students at the Arizona State School for the Deaf and the Blind have filed a complaint in Pima County Superior Court seeking to prevent a board vote Thursday to close the Tucson campus and move to Oro Valley.
The complaint, filed Monday, alleges the school did not give families enough input and notice before it informed them the Tucson campus would move to a new site — Copper Creek Elementary School in the Amphitheater Public School district — 15 miles and about 30 minutes away.
ASDB, the ASDB Board of Directors and Superintendent Annette Reichman are named in the complaint.
A board vote is scheduled for Thursday at 4 p.m. in Phoenix. Tucson-based parents asked for the vote to take place here and were denied, they say. Board meetings rotate between Phoenix and Tucson.
“The families just want an opportunity to be heard,” said attorney Melissa Rueschhoff of Signature Law Partners PLLC, who is representing the families. “If they pass the vote, it will be against federal and state laws specifically designed to protect these families.”
A community meeting is being held tonight, Feb. 3 from 5:30-7 p.m. at Grace St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, 2331 E. Adams St. On Jan. 21, the ASDB administration shut down a community meeting after questions and comments were shouted from the audience of mostly families.
Arizona Luminaria reached out to ASDB administrators for comment about the lawsuit but did not receive a response by publication.
Declining birth rates resulting in lower enrollment, more complicated student needs, lack of federal and state funds and deteriorating buildings and infrastructure are the primary reasons for the potential move, Superintendent Reichman cited in a January video.
“I am forced to make difficult but very necessary decisions in order to maintain our services and continue to educate our students,” Reichman said in the video, adding she would sign a five-year agreement with Amphi to lease Copper Creek Elementary School.
Staff and students would relocate to Copper Creek in the summer of 2026, she says in the video. “The 2026 fall semester will begin on that campus,” she said.
The proposed move would separate the visually-impaired students and try to displace them to local school districts that “lack the capacity to provide comparable services or accessible educational environments,” the complaint says.
The complaint says the ASDB administration moved forward with plans to close programs for blind and visually impaired students while “maintaining or prioritizing programming for deaf and hard-of-hearing students.”
The families allege the ASDB board cannot vote yet because the board has not complied with federal and state laws. ASDB has not, according to the complaint, followed state laws for permanently closing a school. According to the complaint, if ASDB terminates services, then ASDB will be closed to blind and visually impaired students. The parents also allege that ASDB’s vote would violate federal anti-discrimination law.
“We are only asking that Thursday’s board vote be stayed or held in abeyance so the attorneys can have a meeting of the minds,” Rueschhoff said. “I’m sure the Attorney General’s office would want to make sure their client is in compliance with the federal and state constitutions’ guarantees of civil rights, including Arizona Civil Rights Act, Americans with Disabilities Act, whistleblower statutes and substantive due process (14th Amendment), equal protection (14th Amendment) and free speech (First Amendment.) Right now, they are not.”
Parents say they first learned of the potential move Jan. 8 via an email from the school saying ASDB faces a budget deficit, must cut costs and potentially move.
“Those families like mine, it’s double, double unbelievable and unfair that we have to do this on top of everything else that we have to do,” said ASDB parent Beata Tarasiuk. “My child has eight medical specialists. She’s very complex. And on top of this absolute shock and grief, like one in a million disease that she has, now we have to fight for her to be educated. It’s just unbelievable.”
Tarasiuk’s daughter, Kasia, is an ASDB third grader who loves to ride her tricycle and explore the safe surroundings of the 50-plus acre campus. This is her first year at the school after attending Robison Elementary in the Tucson Unified School District. Kasia is visually impaired and has multiple disabilities. Her experience at ASDB has yielded incredible growth, Beata says.
ASDB has been located on west Speedway for more than 100 years. A second ASDB campus operates in Phoenix. The Tucson campus includes grades K-12. It has day students and also boards some learners. Its campus was built for about 400 students but had 114 students as of last school year, according to Arizona Department of Education data.
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