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Motion to make DAPE mandatory fails after study shows mixed outcomes
Summary
Board members debated a recommendation from the Alternative Education Advisory Committee to make the district's District Alternative Education Program (DAPE) mandatory for long-term suspended students. After presentations showing that obeyance contracts and short-term suspensions had equal or better measurable outcomes, the motion died for lack of a second.
The Tucson Unified School District governing board debated whether to require attendance at the District Alternative Education Program (DAPE) for students given long-term suspensions, but a motion to make DAPE mandatory failed for lack of a second.
The recommendation came from the district's Alternative Education Advisory Committee, presented by chair Felicia Chu, who asked the board to consider several changes including making DAPE mandatory, providing transportation, creating tuition schedules for concurrent-enrollment CTE courses, and hiring additional enrollment ambassadors. The committee argued transportation barriers and limited program visibility were keeping many suspended students at home, and recommended mandatory DAPE as one way to keep students on track to graduate.
Yolanda Nunes, director of alternative education, outlined DAPE operations and data: over the most recent school year the program enrolled 104 students across four sites with substantial week-to-week variance in class sizes. Nunes said transportation and family choice were the two main reasons families declined DAPE offers.
An independent effectiveness study presented by Dr. Frightus, senior director for assessment and evaluation, found that obeyance contracts and short-term suspensions without services were associated with longer times to reoffend, higher same-year and subsequent-year attendance, and higher long-term graduation rates than the outcomes observed for DAPE participants. The analysis used regression methods to match comparable student groups and emphasized limitations: discipline events are heterogeneous and some social-emotional benefits may not be captured by available quantitative data.
"Our analysis showed that obeyance contracts resulted in longer time to reoffend and potentially better graduation outcomes compared with DAPE," Dr. Frightus said in the presentation. She cautioned that the findings do not capture all possible benefits of specialized programming.
Board members pressed staff on operational and equity questions: what would happen if families declined mandatory placement, how to provide districtwide transportation without daily route disruption, whether incentives could increase participation, and how making DAPE mandatory would interact with the district's desegregation obligations. General counsel and district staff said a legal and fiscal analysis would be needed before any binding policy change.
President Shaw moved to adopt mandatory DAPE; the motion lacked a second and therefore did not advance. Several board members said they supported increasing access to DAPE and solving transportation barriers, but were not prepared to expand the program or impose a requirement without clearer evidence of improved outcomes and a detailed implementation plan. Chief Financial Officer Ricky Hernandez said expanding transportation and staffing could be costly and asked staff to return with budget analyses.
Next steps: the board requested additional feasibility and cost analyses of the committee's five recommendations, including transportation modeling, draft language regarding consequences if students do not attend, and further data on DAPE participants’ academic readiness. Staff said those follow-up materials and a budget impact analysis could be ready for discussion at the second governing-board meeting in July.
