Elizabeth Celania-Fagan takes the helm as the new superintendent of the Tucson Unified School district on July 1^st, and she’ll inherit a district faced with funding challenges and the potential aftermath of school closures.

Dr. Fagan held a meet and greet with a number of TUSD teachers and staff at Rincon High School on Monday, April 14. It was her first public appearance in Tucson since she took the job and capped off a day where she received a crash course on the issues facing her come July.

“Every urban district across the nation has challenges,” Fagan says. “It’s generally just what the challenge of this year is.” She says her background prepares her for the task at hand. “When I came to Des Moines, they had just finished cutting millions of dollars out of the budget,” she says.

Dr. Fagan had to deal with the aftermath of that, and now she inherits a position where unhappy parents consistently protest outside board meetings, primarily over the idea of closing schools to save money. Prior to the meet and greet, the school board briefed Dr. Fagan on some of the issues she faces, particularly the $18 million budget deficit.

“There’s somebody that once said if you don’t engage people, they will engage you,” she said. “I think that when you have protesters across the street you have to step back and say OK, how did we get here?”

Parents seem sympathetic to what Dr. Fagan will inherit. Ann-Eve Pedersen of Tucson Unified School Supporters said “We don’t want her to have to come in and face a huge drop in enrollment and then the subsequent drop of monies from the state.”

Many parents have threatened to send their children to another district or a charter school if the schools close, and each student equals $3,800 in state funding. Yet Dr. Fagan admits she doesn’t have any answers to fix the problems just yet.

“We definitely have more studying to do on that,” she said. “I think that there will be a lot of decisions made before I arrive, and then I’ll just have to go from there.”  The board expects to vote on whether to close the four elementary schools on April 29.