It’s been two months and a few weeks since Prop 123 passed. As promised, some money has been distributed to districts around the state which they wouldn’t have seen otherwise. That’s the first step Governor Ducey was talking about in the lead-up to the election. With vote-by-mail ballots making their way to people’s homes marking the official opening of the primary elections, it’s time to ask once again, where do we stand, Next-Stepwise?
The AZ Republic has a good article on the subject. Here’s what I learned.
Ducey is still pushing his No New Taxes mantra—no surprise there—and is also saying, No New Funds. According to the article, Ducey’s next step is a push for “outcomes, not funding.” Watch for news from Ducey’s Classrooms First Initiatives Council, which will recommend ways to redistribute our current education funding. Spoiler alert. Expect charters to do very well in the proposals, along with schools in high rent districts. Since this is a zero sum game, expect school districts with poor and minority children to be the losers.
The heavy hitters in the business community, like the Arizona Chamber of Commerce and Industry, agree with Ducey. Prop 123 relieved the pressure for funding increases, which is just fine by them. Their advice to the man in the governor’s chair is, “Keep those yearly tax cuts coming, Doug!”
Pro-public education groups want to see more money above and beyond Prop 123. The Arizona Education Association is reminding people that Prop 123 isn’t new money. It’s what the courts say the legislature owes the schools—actually only a portion of what it owes—which brings our per student funding almost back to where it was in 2009. We were in the per-student funding cellar back then, and we’re in the same cellar now, post-Prop 123. But so far as I can tell, no one is saying we need new taxes to pay for increased funding. Some groups say we can get the money we need by stopping Ducey’s planned tax cuts and closing tax loopholes, even though anyone with a pencil and the back of an envelope to scribble figures on knows that won’t nearly cover the kinds of increased funding our schools need. Closing tax loopholes is the Arizona Democratic version of Republicans’ trickle-down economics, the difference being that closing loopholes actually generates some funds, just not enough, while trickle-down only increases our already obscene levels of income inequality.
The Republican candidates mentioned in the Republic story are either on the same “outcomes, not funding” page as Ducey, or they say we’ll be able to raise funding by growing the economy. Some Democrats in the story are singing the same tune as the Republicans. Others want to close tax loopholes and stop the upcoming tax cuts.
All of which says to me, our next step is marching in place. It’s school funding business-as-usual as far as the eye can see—though I won’t be surprised if we take a baby step backward.
This article appears in Aug 4-10, 2016.
Oregon is a very liberal state when it comes to tax and spend politics for education. How did they rank? 46th. And this article blames it on lack of funding.
http://www.oregonlive.com/education/index.ssf/2015/06/underachieving_oregon_state_ra.html
Yet the solution seems to hinge on teaching kids to read. Really?
How much more should that cost?
But upon further investigation, it is the Oregon schools that have eliminated teachers, nurses, librarians, etc… How much do you want to bet they added administrative jobs that gobbled up all the money?
It sounds just like TUSD. Get the political hacks out of public education.
Albert S. Oregon ranks 38th and their funding has been drastically cut also. You posted an old article.
http://www.oregonlive.com/education/index.…
Administration has not eaten up the money in TUSD. We need Sanchez to stay. We have gone through many superintendents in a short time. He is doing a good job and we must pay competitively. It is not an easy district to manage with the deseg suit and people like you who tear down the district. I think Dr. Sanchez has done very well with little money. He is innovative.
We need more funding in education nationally and especially in Arizona.
David:
Why did Sanchez give over $3 million in desegregation funding back to taxpayers?
From the Star article on the February 2016 State of the District address, accessible here:
http://tucson.com/news/local/education/tusd-leader-seeks-to-bust-myths-in-rd-state-of/article_7c9beb52-d9de-11e5-ae22-f7e019a483e8.html
“TUSD will seek to get out from under the federal court order next school year and has already cut desegregation spending by $5 million, lowering the tax rate, Sanchez said. ‘We lowered our tax rate by 16.7 cents last year, that doesn’t sound like a lot but when you take a look at the total reduction it added up to more than $3.3 million for Tucson taxpayers,’ Sanchez said. ‘In terms of wasting money, throwing money away, I think that’s a good record.'”
In terms of THROWING MONEY AWAY in a desperately underfunded district, that IS a good record — but I think you understand that I don’t mean the same thing when I make that statement that Sanchez did.
The district’s own summary of the State of the District address and the complete video recording of it is accessible here:
http://tusd1.org/contents/distinfo/spotlight/022316stateofdistrict.asp
So here you are, David, earnestly promoting more the desperate need for more funding in blog after blog, writing, “Some groups say we can get the money we need by stopping Ducey’s planned tax cuts and closing tax loopholes, even though anyone with a pencil and the back of an envelope to scribble figures on knows THAT WON’T NEARLY COVER THE KINDS OF INCREASED FUNDING OUR SCHOOLS NEED.”
At the same time, Sanchez is handing millions of dollars of funding back to taxpayers and bragging about it as an achievement in his 2016 State of the District address.
What the hell is going on here?
Admit it: Sanchez is either an incompetent or a right wing ideologue brought in to placate Ducey — or both.
Just looking at the article and the comments, is it any wonder the mess that schools have? Why don’t they restart by copying the success of charter schools?
Education policy in Arizona, and every other State run by ALEC wh@res, is not about educating children, it is about privatization fetishes, and about coded racist ideolology. What they really want is a segregated, privately operated school system for the rich elite and an underfunded system for educating (minimally) brown kids. All the rhetoric about “choice” is really about these items. The voters of this state need to take it back from these Neanderthals, like Ducey and Lesko. And especially from a fascist like Biggs who essentially ran this state for four years. That is a disgrace.
Frances,
I agree with most of what you wrote about state-level policy. But here is an excellent opportunity to understand the sorts of things pro-public-education, social-justice-oriented LOCAL leadership needs to do, within the larger toxic context created by our legislature and governor.
Job #1 would be: In a state where we have one of the lowest per-pupil funding rates in the nation, don’t give any portion of the already insufficient amount of tax dollars flowing into a low-SES district back to taxpayers. Instead, do a better job APPLYING the deseg funds so proper use and student benefit can be documented. Then, when the legislature makes its move to cut deseg funds entirely, which it will no doubt do, you have iron-clad documentation that the funding they propose to cut is producing specific, well-documented benefit for students. When you have put yourself in a position where you can say “this funding, applied in this particular way, improved math and reading performance by this amount,” or “this funding, applied in this particular way, increased the percent of classrooms managed by fully qualified, permanent teachers rather than subs by this percent” you create a PR problem for those who propose to cut the funding.
From what I’ve seen, reading the correspondence between TUSD and the desegregation authority which is posted on the TUSD website, TUSD has not been doing this. Certain parties try to characterize the Special Master and Judge as unreasonable in their demands. From what I have seen — and I’ve spent hours reading the correspondence between the parties posted on the TUSD website and I encourage anyone who has an interest in this issue to do the same — what the Judge, Special Master, and plaintiffs are asking for is reasonable. An added benefit of COMPLYING rather than picking fights with the deseg authority, is that1) legal expenses will be reduced so more funds can be applied in the classroom and 2) the kind of documentation of student benefit the deseg authorities are asking for is just the sort of documentation that will be needed, when the state attempts to cut deseg again, to make the case to the public that the $60+ million in deseg funds is being well-spent in ways that benefit students and the broader community.
Case in point: One of the plaintiffs’ advocates has been noting that too many classrooms in ethnically concentrated neighborhoods are still covered by subs and not fully qualified, permanent teachers. Why wasn’t that $3.3 million divided up and applied as incentives to fill key positions? Instead the tax rate was lowered by a whopping 16.7 cents. But what is the relative benefit of that tax cut to the community, when compared with what the long term benefit would be of having hundreds or perhaps thousands of students having permanent, fully qualified teachers in their classrooms rather than a rotating cast of subs? In K-12 education, if a year is lost through poor or patchy instruction — particularly in math and reading — it creates problems down the line with students being able to work at grade level and puts students at higher risk for dropping out and all the subsequent problems — and costs — associated with that.
One of the commenters above — a die-hard apologist for the district — writes, ” We need Sanchez to stay. We have gone through many superintendents in a short time. He is doing a good job and we must pay competitively. It is not an easy district to manage with the deseg suit […] I think Dr. Sanchez has done very well with little money. He is innovative.”
But it seems many in this community feel that it may not be a good idea to pay a young man who had 3-4 MONTHS of previous experience as an INTERIM superintendent in a much smaller district over $400K per year (total compensation, not salary) to make “innovative” decisions like adding pre-school programs that lose money when K-12 is not functioning well, like giving millions of deseg dollars that could have been applied in the schools back to taxpayers, like picking fights with the deseg Judge and Special Master and changing the deseg firm twice during the course of the last three years, like massively inflating the amount of deseg funds being applied in legal fees instead of in support of students, and — to mention one more howler — like helping to pass 123 and then not applying the funds as promised. (No, I don’t buy Safier’s spin on that one and I don’t know anyone else who does.)
It may be the case that it’s a hard job — but it’s also a job that this community needs done properly.
The only “next step” that will actually accomplish something is to kick conservative ideology out of state government.
Conservative ideology resides in Phoenix. You know, where the jobs, the freeways and the real wages are. Glad I’m retired. The liberal ideology here keeps almost everybody broke.
Cowpokin’ Bob:
The only thing you got correct in your statement was that the freeways are there.