Mark the date, May 20, 2016. That’s the day Governor Ducey declared that Prop 123, his “first step” to improve Arizona education, passed. The count isn’t official yet, but Ducey believes it’s a done deal. So now it’s time to find out what he has in mind for the next step.

When Howard Fischer asked Ducey outright what comes next, the governor got cute.

“We’re going to take the rest of the day off,” he said. “We’re going to celebrate a little bit.”

Fine. But unless he’s planning to go on a serious bender, the celebrations should be over soon and it’ll be time for him to state his plans. The “Next Step” Watch has begun. Today is Day 1. Weekends count, since being governor is a 24/7 job. I’m sure Ducey has been thinking about what he wants to do next, he just hasn’t told the rest of us. It’s time.

Let me offer a suggestion. Ducey should get together with the leaders of the House and Senate and propose a $300 million K-12 education package to match the $300 million Prop 123 is supposed to bring in. The first $90 million of that will take us from 70 percent to 100 percent of what the courts say the state owes our schools. The remaining $210 million will be new funding.

The result would be a total $600 million boost over pre-Prop 123 levels. If that sounds like a lot, it isn’t. We’re now in 49th place nationally in per student funding. The extra money would put us just ahead of 48th place Oklahoma. That’s nothing to brag about, but it’s something.

Rounding out my suggestion, I think Ducey should call a one day special session to pass the $300 million budget boost. Legislators can go back home with “I voted for our children’s education” bragging rights to use in the upcoming election, and people who opposed Prop 123 for the very good reason that it drains money from the state land trust might feel a little better—not a whole lot, but a little better—knowing that the governor has shown he’s serious about raising the amount we spend on our children’s education even if it cuts into the budget surplus.

What do you say, Doug? We’ll keep the light on here at The Range. The watch will continue until you let us know what you’re planning.

This article appears in May 19-25, 2016.

16 replies on “Ducey ‘Next Step’ Watch: Day 1”

  2. May I suggest a concurrent countdown for how long Ducey has left in office? Feel free to keep a running count of how many bills he signs and actions he takes with a focus on those he helps and those he hurts. Hopefully, the electorate will see him for what he is.

  4. Go ahead and waste your time watching Ducey and cook up as many more compromise schemes as you like to funnel more funds into the greedy machine for MIS-allocation of funds and MIS-education of young people that TUSD has become. TUSD has made itself desperate for funds through decades of self-mismanagement. Now, with their miserable crumbling facilities and their classrooms which teachers and students alike are fleeing in droves, they can’t afford to play the long game. This is a self-created problem in many ways, but still their advocates went around weeping in public meetings and writing their misleading propaganda in support of 123 and so the Proposition, it appears, will probably succeed: the proper funding structure for the entire public education system in Arizona and the land trust that belongs to the schools have been sacrificed to the dual-headed monster: the Grijalvas’ TUSD machine politics and Ducey’s ALEC agenda.

    You keep feeding that monster, David. Many of us with kids enrolled in these schools are making long-range plans to leave the state, because this is absolutely the last straw. It is clear that the proposition could have been defeated if Democrats like you had not formed alliances with the pro-123 forces and started promoting it. Instead of stayin on the right side of the issue and uniting the party behind getting these chiselers OUT of office, you joined forces with them and now the strategy is to continue begging for them to toss the public system scraps? Please. Watching what you and your friends do is nauseating.

  5. Why leave the state when there are free schools that are better? Charters. And I haven’t heard one of them complain about funding.

    Better yet, why not donate directly to the school in your childs name and supplement their education?

    Obama said we need to have some “skin in the game.” He would have been right on this one, had he said it.

    David, on one of the other threads you and I were accused of working with the Grijalvas to pass 123. Give them my thanks.

  6. Rat T:

    Really? I should donate to a TUSD school? Because having skin in the Grijalva game would help this situation? Can I quote you on that?

    With current leadership in place TUSD will mis-apply everything they get their hands on, no matter what the source – donated dollars, regular tax dollars, deseg tax dollars. Why should any progressive care to demand that a district that has massively increased its budget for picking fights with the desegregation authority — allowing for up to $1million per year to be spent on this for the next five years — gets more money from Ducey? So TUSD can get out from the deseg order which will then give the AZ leg an excuse to “phase down” deseg funds? Another great collaboration between Sanchez and his friends in Phoenix.

    For the record, “on one of the other threads” you were not accused of working with the Grijalvas to pass 123. David and his friends in TUSD were accused of collaborating with the enemy and forwarding the agenda which right-wingers cooked up, which was EXACTLY what happened. I hope he enjoys seeing that you and he are hawking the same goods these days: “support teachers and implement 123.”

    Please do continue promoting the same agenda David is promoting, when you can. I’d be willing to bet that it bothers him more than just about anything else that happens in these comment streams, including my remarks, which I’m sure he loathes.

  7. Dear Stop, for years I have called to close TUSD. But my concerns had never centered around money. My concerns were with the progressive left wing agenda driven board majority, administrators and teachers. Very similar to Portland School District where they have eliminated opposing thought. Just today.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s1ipUvD2IT4
    And do it under the guise that ‘we need to change the world.”
    How altruistic!

    I suggested that you donate to public schools because you espouse believing in them. It’s what church goers do. But when you said that ” Many of us with kids enrolled in these schools are making long-range plans to leave the state, because this is absolutely the last straw.” I twisted your teat.

    Long range plans? Won’t your kids be out of school by then?

    I also didn’t see names or posts from the “many of us with kids…” after your post so I thought maybe they still had jobs or weren’t ready to pack a Uhaul.

    Just remember how frustrating it can be when progressives push too far too fast, and it comes to an end.

    Hope and change were both lost. It isn’t dark money. It isn’t Koch Bros. And it isn’t evil.

    It’s logic. We are $20T in debt as a nation. You might have pulled it off during great economic times.

    I just hope that Trump doesn’t do too good of a job. Progressives lose control of spending other peoples money.

  8. Rat T:

    Darn, you didn’t immediately take my advice, continuing to promote the things David is promoting. Oh well. No doubt you will again at some point in the future, now that you and David have joined the same team on “supporting teachers” and milking the land trust. Eventually you will drop some of the other canned right-wing talking points you have just taken up again in your little snit against my commentary, and you will return to Ducey and 123 because you won’t be able to resist yanking David’s chain on the issue repeatedly. Every time you do it, I will smile.

  9. I just got a call from a friend that says he agrees with you. They have school age kids and they refuse to give the schools any more money. He does not want his tax dollars or those of his fellow citizens wasted on TUSD.

    It seems the problem is much bigger that we thought. Deseg waste and all, it has become a multi faceted problem.

    But I will do my best.

  11. I can’t wait for our children and grandchildren grow up and have the opportunity to read some of the crap their parents and grandparents thought to leave them in columns like this. Hey bonehead, our kids are entitled to the same opportunities for a good education as we had. To see people fight liver who can withhold the most amount of money from their future, which is their birthright, shows what a truly shortsighted, selfish, and downright stupid generation we are. It also shows that when we were growing up many of us didn’t get a helleva lot of common sense. I abhor the very idea that we have to listen to Dog Ducey or anyone else make excuses for why our kids are nearly last in the nation for what they receive in classroom funding. What kind of people live in this State? Don’t we have the same kind of kids that live in states like Connecticut or Massachusettes where they cherish the principles of child education? Why are we so different? And if we want our kids to have the same opportunities then why the hell aren’t we kicking the Republicans from the top ‘DOG” on down out of power?

  12. My children are the fourth generation of my family getting educated in Arizona. The first three generations received good educations here. When my husband graduated from a TUSD high school 30 years ago, per pupil funding levels in the AZ public system were higher, in absolute terms (not adjusted for inflation) than they are now. For the fourth generation, getting educated in this state has been tough, as we’ve tried to patch together something resembling a decent program for K-12 by using a combination of under-regulated, under-professionalized private schools and tragically under-funded public schools.

    Whenever you wonder how this state got here, remind yourself that “democracy” means “rule by the people,” and ask yourself:

    How many hours of your life have you walked door-to-door on behalf of either:
    –a) a local school board candidate who supports transparency and proper process in public institutions
    or
    –b) a candidate for the state legislature or the governor’s office who supports not just SUFFICIENT funding for public education, but funding from the right sources
    or
    –c) a funding initiative like 301 or 204?

    How many letters have you written to your elected representatives at the local or state levels?

    How many times have you attended school board meetings or site council meetings for your public school district or your neighborhood public school? How many times have you spoken in Call to the Audience at these meetings?

    How many demonstrations or marches have you participated in?

    How many friends have you recruited into these sorts of activities?

    Our dual problem in Arizona and Tucson with the mismanagement of our state level funding mechanisms and mismanagement of our largest local public school district — and some of our larger problems at the federal level with the influence of money in politics — didn’t start yesterday. These problems are the results of insufficiently effective organization, attentiveness and advocacy at the grassroots level in monitoring, and responding to what’s happening in our public institutions. They are also the result of letting cynical people like Safier and his friends — people who don’t understand or support the kinds of values that keep democracy healthy — into positions of influence in our political party operations and in our public institutions.

    Now, we’re in the process of losing large portions of the public sector to privatization — and it’s not just Ducey & the Koches et al. who are at fault. It’s those of us who didn’t, for example, pay enough attention to what was happening in TUSD governance and administration to keep the institution from falling into such a sad state of dysfunction that it can be pointed to by right wingers as an example of how “government schools” don’t work. It’s those of us who didn’t pay enough attention to what was happening in TUSD governance and administration to allow us to measure the distance between what was actually happening in the schools and what people like Safier were reporting about the district. More recently, the ongoing move towards the weakening and dismantling of the public sector is the fault of those who blindly listened to TUSD operatives’ misleading sob stories and followed their advice about 123, betraying the long term well-being and validity of the funding structure underlying the entire public system for the sake of a few quick and insufficient bucks from the wrong source “NOW, NOW, NOW!!!”

    Sorry, Thomas Borin. Some of us don’t want increased funding channelled NOW into a district where governance and administration are capable of cobbling together a $400K compensation package for HT Sanchez for the ’15-’16 school year and hiring Adelita Grijalva’s mother-in-law as an administrator over two more qualified candidates:
    http://tucson.com/news/opinion/tucson-unified-superintendent-s-percent-raise/article_2f0dd6fc-85ff-5ead-93e1-1b6f5e69b64d.html
    http://tucson.com/news/local/education/new-details-emerge-in-grijalva-kin-hiring/article_674695dc-d25c-5912-936a-c6bd531d1bbb.html

    Two small examples — many more could be cited — of the sorts of mismanagement we’re currently seeing in the district whose operatives were instrumental in getting MORE-MONEY-NOW-123 passed.

    Unfortunately for those who don’t want to do the boring and tedious work of tracking the operation of governance and administration, properly tending public schools and ensuring that our children get a good education there involves a lot more than getting MORE $$$$$$ in the door. It involves being involved enough and effective enough with your participation and advocacy to get that $$$$$$ applied in the right places, and that has not been happening in our largest and most conspicuous local public school district for some time now.

  13. Liberals find billions for illegals. But for Americans, not so much.

    Liberals have destroyed public education.

  14. Ducey’s next step? That’s easy — more tax cuts for his fat-cat cronies in Phoenix now that he’s “solved” the education budget. I’d bet $5 on it.

  16. Some very imaginative writer has opted to use a handle — FranklyMydear — very like my own but her comment above doesn’t read like mine.

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