Mark Twain once said — or almost said — “Everybody talks about Arizona school funding but nobody does anything about it.” Actually, Twain was talking about the weather, and even more actually, he may have said those words during one of his lectures, but he was probably quoting Charles Dudley Warner, a contemporary who cowrote the novel ‘The Gilded Age’ with Twain. (Your friendly local retired English teacher says, “You’re welcome for those exciting tidbits of literary trivia.”)
Here in Arizona, we seem to be equally helpless when it comes to doing anything about the weather and education funding. I’ll give us a pass on this extraordinarily hot summer, which may be related to climate change but can’t be laid directly at Arizona’s feet. However, when it comes to education funding, the fault is not in our stars [or changing climate conditions], but in ourselves, as Cassius said to Brutus in Shakespeare’s ‘Julius Caesar.’ (Once again, you’re welcome). And by “ourselves,” I mean our Republican elected officials.
Right now, we have three options for increasing education funding.
Behind Door Number One is the most straightforward and doable of the three options. The legislature simply does what the courts have told them to do and increases school funding by around $330 million for this school year. (There’s also that pesky $1.3 billion the lege owes the schools for past years when it refused to follow the law and raise funding for inflation, but that’s a separate matter.) If Republicans choose Door Number One — which they could do during a special session, like, tomorrow — all they have to do is open the door and pick up the money stacked on a table in neat million dollar bundles, courtesy of unexpected tax revenues which have poured in recently. They can hand it to schools with smiles on their faces, and it can be used right away to help educate this year’s crop of students.
The Republican-dominated legislature has decided it doesn’t like Door Number One. Settlement talks over a funding fix, which could have been resolved by agreeing to pay the money, broke down recently. And, according to Jim Nintzel who knows far more about the state’s legislative history than I ever will, the lege may not comply with the court order any time soon.
[L]awmakers have been known to let these things drag on rather than resolve them, even when a court order is involved. In the 1990s, a more moderate legislature allowed a lawsuit over school construction and repair to drag on for eight years before resolving it. (And the state still isn’t taking care of needed repairs at many schools.)
I guess Republicans can fold their arms across their chests like petulant children, say, “You’re not the boss of me!” and get away with it.
Governor Ducey has a plan on his own behind Door Number Two. He wants to take money from the state land trust fund and use it to boost spending on schools. Open that door and you’ll find a maze filled with winding paths, some of which lead to dead ends. First the legislature has to decide to put the funding idea on the ballot, which it may not do. Dead End. And once it’s on the ballot, the voters may not pass it. Dead End. Meanwhile, working diligently inside the maze is Jeff DeWit, the man who holds Ducey’s previous job as state treasurer. DeWit is building a few additional roadblocks of his own as he tries to convince people that taking money from the land trust fund is a bad idea.
Then there’s Senate President Andy Biggs and House Speaker David Gowan’s plan behind Door Number Three. They want to add around $500 million a year to school funding by stealing money from the First Things First funds which are supposed to be used for early childhood education, adding additional school funding in the next years’ budgets and taking some money from the state land trust fund. The light is burnt out behind that door, so it’s hard to see anything, but if you look closely, you’ll find a confused cluster of arrows pointing in a dozen different directions and a few large question marks hanging from the ceiling.
The big problem with Door Number One, the straightforward plan that involves using some of the state surplus to give schools the money the courts say they should have, is that it actually would be doing something. Republicans would rather talk about the weather school funding endlessly that do anything to increase it.
This article appears in Sep 3-9, 2015.
If any of this is a surprise to anyone, it would be a shock. The ostrich-like ideologues who have run our Legislature for years have no qualms about defying the will of the voters and robbing one group of their constituents to make up for the earlier instance when they ignored the electorate. As Nintzel has said, they blew off court orders to stop robbing the Students First fund to “balance” the state budget for years.
As for Ducey, he continues his two-year audition for higher office by treating the state he was elected to run like his own political petri dish. What is fascinating is that he actually sounds at times like he is the voice of reason in comparison to the legislative leadership. i guess we can be grateful for the fact that Arizona Democrats failed to find a candidate for state treasurer because DeWit has been a sound, sensible opponent to Ducey’s schemes.
What is maddening to reflect on right now is the utterly ineffectual and weak-ass campaign for governor mounted by DuVal two years ago. Anyone who knew half of what Ducey believed should have been sounding the alarm to the public about the kind of governor Ducey would be. DuVal was too worried about offending swing voters and the dwindling herd of moderate Republicans to come out swinging and keep up the honest appraisal of Ducey’s views throughout the campaign. He also waited until it was too late to talk to voters about what years of right-wing decision making has done to this state. The equally inept Garcia campaign caused us to be stuck with Diane Douglas as our schools chief.
Arizona is and has been in crisis for years. High poverty, a lousy business climate, poorly funded schools that can’t find enough teachers and a dangerously deteriorating infrastructure are just a few of the many issues our leaders must confront now and in the future. As a Democrat, I’m waiting for some fighters to run for statewide office and use their campaigns to speak boldly and honestly about not just their ideas, but what decades of right-wing leadership have done to this state.
Excellent comment, “Speaking of fault, dear Brutus…”
There was an editorial a while back in the NYTimes that said something to the effect of “If Republican legislators said the moon was made of blue cheese, the headline in the liberal press the next day would be, ‘Some parties report: moon is made of blue cheese.'” In other words, liberals try too hard to be dispassionate and kind, when what they should be saying is, “The crackpots are lying through their teeth and if we continue re-electing them it will mean the demise of many beneficial endeavors it has taken generations to build.”
However: if what you are waiting for happens, and “some fighters” run for statewide office and use their campaigns to “speak boldly and honestly”…to whom will they be speaking? To the electorate “educated” by the public schools the Republican legislators have been starving, voters who (if they take an interest n politics at all) are vulnerable to the kind of political “thinking” promoted by Fox News and Rush Limbaugh.
The problems in states like Arizona, New Jersey, and Wisconsin are at this point intractable and pervasive. They have to do with deep-seated patterns of settlement and habits of thought it’s difficult if not impossible to influence. I’ve lived here for more than 20 years now and I’m tired of looking at what can only be termed idiocy in high (and low) office. I was raised and educated in a state that had (and continues to have) good values and good public policy, and I had the misfortune of having to try to raise my own children in this Godforsaken hell hole.
Oh well. No use crying over spilt milk. Time to give up on the Wild West and leave Portlanders like David Safier to tilt at the various windmills it offers up.
It sounds like nobody is happy. And yet we are polar opposites. We can’t both find utopia. Is there some middle ground because times a waisting.
The solution for government-hating right-wingers, Rat T, is to get the h— out of Southern Arizona. Phoenix would be a very congenial environment for them. If so desired, they could watch the legislature’s ongoing dismantling of the public sector live from the galleries of the capitol, and revel in the great good being accomplished for the neoliberal free market, everything-for-profit project. Or, they could take a field trip to ASU and observe what is happening in the “new American [read: corporate] university.” Yet more fun.
The solution for honest, transparency-oriented liberals is to move to Vermont or other blue states with a decent civic culture and sane public policy.
There’s nothing worthwhile that can be accomplished in Tucson, where what we observe in our largest local school district is the product both of local malfeasance (Pima Dems / TUSD Board majority) and malfeasance originating from the right-wing nut-jobs in the AZ legislature.
Oh well. Back to the drawing board.
If anyone thinks door # 2 is a good idea, I would like to point a few things out. Ducey has cut programs in the budget tremendously that are generally to help and educate people. He said on the campaign trail that he would never pay education back the money owed( I heard him say that). So far he hasn’t obeyed a court order to pay education back as he promised. He now has a surplus and still won’t pay education back.
He now is saying he wants to use the money from the state land trust that actually is part of the infrastructure of educating our children to ‘help education’. So if we look at what he has done so far, is there any reason to believe that he has the best interest in education or our children at heart? I see no reason to trust him at all. If he had bargained in good faith anywhere, I might feel differently. He has not.
Best definition of insanity: Doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. In this case, that would be watching him hurt education over and over and now he is trying to help education?
Those of us who agree with David’s assessment of the school funding options should take to heart the assessment of Cassius that the fault lies in ourselves. We the people of Arizona – voters and non-voters – have elected legislatures with ‘leaders’ like Andy Biggs and David Gowan, state officials like our present and most recent past governors and our embattled Superintendent of Public Instruction. They have done and continue to do what they have indicated they would do if entrusted with the power WE have given them. I’m old enough and skeptical enough to wonder whether stronger campaigns by well qualified candidates like Fred Duval and David Garcia might have turned the minds and hearts of sufficient numbers of voters to have the state today beginning to do the right thing in regard to education — fund it adequately and get out of the way of the educators. Sadly, I’m convinced that next year the Republican candidate for president — whether he be Donald Trump or Donald Duck –will win Arizona handily. I’m not ready, and I hope dear Brutus and Hell Hole aren’t either, to move to Vermont or some other congenial place. I suggest we stay and “we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender.” And I doubt Biggs, Gowan, Douglas or Ducey can tell me whom I’ve just quoted.
@franklymydears – Nice comment! As you’ve stated “the fault lies in ourselves”. Arizona voters continue to choose anti-government officials to run the government store. Big surprise that Arizona is always rated in the lower tier of states for education, childhood welfare, etc.
We’ve had a succession of Republican governors, often hard-nosed business types, who have made this state a backwater for education, while being consistently opposed to raising taxes (which obviously supports those who brung them to the dance.. like car dealers).
If we are in fact backwater for education can the schools be assessed any of the blame, or is it all just mo’ money?
That’s all you guys ever say. If they had it they’d waste it.
Based on your opinions the schools are so bad they should be closed for under performance. Don’t you just love government benchmarks when they ignore them themselves?
Not funding what voters approved is no different than ignoring federal laws and declaring sanctuary cities.
I’m sure this is not going to end well.
As stunned as I am at the governor’s and legislature’s ongoing “make me” attitude toward the court order to pay the money owed to the schools, I am just as stunned that so-called “supporters of public education” tolerate what goes on with TUSD governance and administration. In blue states with decent civic cultures and sound public administration, yes, the state legislatures provide more funding for public education — but it’s also true that if people ever attempt to run public education institutions the way TUSD is run, they are ridden out of town on a rail.
Why don’t we add a “recall Ducey” campaign to the “recall Douglas” and “recall Grijalva-Foster-Juarez” campaigns already underway? I think it’s time for us to find out: just how many grass-roots recall campaigns can the community manage to run simultaneously to try to solve the problems our local and state-wide political machines created for Arizona education in November of 2014?
Great article by Safier. I can only add a quotation from Melville’s Barnaby the Scrivener describing the legislature’s stance on releasing the funds ordered by the court:
“I prefer not to.”
“…public education” tolerate what goes on with TUSD governance and administration. In blue states with decent civic cultures and sound public administration, yes, the state legislatures provide more funding for public education — but it’s also true that if people ever attempt to run public education institutions the way TUSD is run, they are ridden out of town on a rail.”
Would that be Philadelphia, Chicago, DC, Baltimore or Camden?
Nope, Rick: blue STATES like Minnesota, Vermont, Maine, Rhode Island, which, in addition to funding schools well, seem to have reasonable expectations of professionalism for those administering the public districts. It’s nice to have a legislature, governor, and State Department of Ed you would feel good appealing to when something goes wrong on the local level. No such luck in Arizona.
What you list are cities, and, while poor urban districts have special problems associated with them, it must be admitted that there are better and worse ways to deal with those problems. What we’re seeing right now in TUSD governance and administration is a particularly egregious example of chronic mismanagement and chronic lying to cover it up. The literature on troubled urban districts acknowledges that these kinds of dynamics have been known to develop in these settings, but I have yet to read a reputable researcher who will say that mismanagement and lying should be tolerated and excused rather than confronted and eliminated. Partisan bloggers are another matter: witness Safier. There’s a lot of local malfeasance he’d love for us to tolerate and excuse, at the same time he wants every misdeed outside the boundaries of TUSD — especially those in the state capitol — to be relentlessly prosecuted and punished.
Back to Safier’s question in this blog: should Ducey open Door 1, Door 2, or Door 3? Door 1 is undoubtedly the best solution, but whichever “door” Ducey opens, unlike the right wingers, I have no doubt that increased funding will do children enrolled in RESPONSIBLE public school districts throughout the state of Arizona a world of good. In TUSD, on the other hand, as long as the current leadership is in place, it seems likely that much of what is disbursed will be misapplied, and it will be hard for the public to discern this because of the pervasive problems with deliberately constructed obstacles to transparency.
TUSD is run like all government instutiions, poorly. Where there’s no accountability for teachers, students and spending, it’s just money down a black hole, like most of our taxes.
TUSD is run poorly, but not all government institutions are run poorly. TUSD needs greater accountability, but the fact that TUSD wastes money does not mean “most of our taxes,” across the board, are “money down a black hole.”
Where is a thinking person to go in Tucson? We have Republicans who overgeneralize in one direction (all government is bad) and Pima Dems who overgeneralize in another, equally invalid direction (support every public school district unequivocally, even districts that are mismanaged by those who consider lying to the public an acceptable PR strategy).
Rat T, there is a middle ground: it involves APPROPRIATE roles for both a sufficiently regulated and overseen private sector and a well-managed, transparent public sector. You can’t find that here. Instead you find on one team those committed to mowing down the public sector and replacing it with unregulated, irresponsible private institutions, and on the other team people who want to support and excuse lying, malfeasant public institutions.
Should Ducey, as well as Douglas, Grijalva, Foster and Juarez be recalled from office? Probably, but who will replace them all? We got rid of Huppenthal, but the lesson learned there is that getting rid of one bad actor doesn’t guarantee that a responsible public servant will step in to fill their place.
Which door should Ducey open? Some are better than others, but the bottom line is we really are reaching a point in this state where the only real solution may be to get out of this hell-hole. It was a struggle to provide a decent education for my kids here — it involved a lot of supplementing “instruction” provided by poorly overseen private and public institutions, raising supplementary funds for disastrously underfunded private and public schools, and pointless advocacy with irresponsible private and public administrators. I’ll be damned if I’ll advise my own children, who are excellent students, good people, and likely to be constructive citizens of whatever state they decide to live in, to settle here and wrestle with the various dysfunctions in this shoddy education system as they raise their own families.
So let’s add that to the various consequences of our failure to properly fund and oversee Arizona schools: not only will the academic outcomes for most of those who remain here be poor, but many of those in the next generation who would be most likely to value and support education are being advised to settle elsewhere.
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