Forget about the “next step” in education funding Governor Ducey promised when he wanted to pass Prop 123. Ducey has forgotten about it, or is trying to forget, anyway. His phrase du jour is “changing the trend line.”
Ducey published an op ed about his most recent educational goal. He wants 60 percent of Arizonans to have a college degree or career training certificate by 2030. Oh, he admits it won’t be easy to reach that mark—right now, about 42 percent of adults in the state are there—but he thinks we can do it. How? He didn’t offer a plan. He didn’t suggest more funding for K-through-college education. All we need is a goal, he says. Ducey told reporters after presenting his 60 percent benchmark, “Nothing focuses the mind and the resources like setting that goal.”
If we just focus our minds . . .
In our future, I see bumper stickers passed out by the governor’s office that read, “Visualize World Peace More College Grads.” Or Ducey dressed like Peter Pan, hands clasped together, saying, “Do you believe in more college grads, boys and girls? Then wherever you are, clap your hands. Clap! Clap!”
Once again, Ducey has made it clear, he has no plans to increase next year’s education budget. Any budget surplus is earmarked for tax cuts for his rich friends. Instead, he’s patting himself on the back for “changing the trend line” in education funding. Which means, after a consistent, dramatic downturn in education funding since the 2008 recession, he’s leveling things out.
Ducey wants us to believe he increased education funding in last year’s budget, hoping we have short memories. So, lest we forget, here’s what Ducey wrote, and what actually happened.
Ducey wrote,
In this year’s budget, we added $142 million to K-12 education – above and beyond the voter-approved Proposition 123.
We-l-l-l, not exactly. More than $100 million of the $142 million is adjustments for added students and inflation. That’s stay-even money, not additional funding. And $30 million is a restoration of the money taken away from JTED in the previous year’s budget, reversing a disastrous funding cut opposed by the education and the business communities. The only real dollars added to K-12 education came from Prop 123, and that was drawn from the students’ State Land Trust money, not the budget. And it was a portion of the money the state illegally withheld from the schools. It wasn’t new money.
Ducey continued,
For universities, we approved an additional $38 million.
We-l-l-l, yes, I guess you added $38 million for higher ed in the most recent budget, after cutting $99 million the year before. That’s a net loss of $61 million. And of that “additional” $38 million, $5 million went to pay for the “economic freedom schools” at UA and ASU, which were originally created and funded by the Koch Brothers.
If Ducey performs as advertised, his “changing trend line” will be a flat line, with no significant additions to education at the K-12 or higher education levels.
This article appears in Sep 15-21, 2016.
OK, let’s make this easy…
All liars are not politicians, but all politicians are liars.
Ducey is a politician, therefore he is a liar.
Questions?
Just having a college degree is meaningless. We need to increase interest in STEM. 4 year degrees in English and Sociology just won’t cut it anymore.
Perhaps Ducey’s “plan” is to help banks advertise student loans to vulnerable high school students who don’t know what they’re getting into when they load themselves up with debt in pursuit of a college degree that may or may not help them secure decent-paying, meaningful work.
Whatever his “plan” may be, it should be noted that increasing college grads or those with career training certificates from 42% to 60% under the current tuition expense and funding system without creating more government funded tuition grants will mean a whole lot more money, in the form of interest payments on loans, flowing into the coffers of the malfeasant banking system whose unsound, self-serving practices cratered our economy in 2008.
More college educated middle class workers = more indentured servants with tens and sometimes hundreds of thousands of dollars of undismissable loan debt, bound to work work work at whatever jobs the economy offers up, not to buy themselves a home or invest, but to pay back the loans that underwrote the inflated “cost” of the work they did to earn a degree.
I’m sure the employer-class does want a larger pool of workers entering the work force every year in this prostrate position. It’s a group with sadly reduced financial security and entitlements that’s very easy to exploit.
Years ago I was teaching at a religious affiliated high school. The administration wanted to increase enrollment. The teachers were all for that. Of course they wanted more kids and no more teachers. In a meeting with the teachers, the chief administrator stated, “If you just have love in your hearts, you can teach 50 or 100 students in a class.” I hereby offer that solution to our creative governor for his use on any public education issue at anytime, “If you have love in your hearts you will be able to teach on the pittance we give you.”
Nice analysis of the reality behind Ducey’s claims of increased funding to education. Let’s hope people pay attention. Unfortunately, the “trend line” in the electorate is to lose the hope that motivates people to continue paying attention and trying to make a difference.
And noted frequently in these comment streams is the fact that part of the cynicism and disengagement in the Southern Arizona electorate is based on an accurate perception of dishonesty and quid-pro-quo dealings in local government.
Think about it, David: when voters see something like the scandal surrounding Foster and Juarez accepting $5,000 campaign donations from the wife of an executive in the company recently awarded a more-than-$20 million contract to handle the management of outsourced subs in TUSD, how can you expect voters to believe that what goes on in public school districts like TUSD is about benefiting needy students and protecting the rights of labor — two things that “progressive” politicians are supposed to stand up for when the electorate entrusts them with public office? How can you expect voters to advocate for giving more money to a district where it’s the managers of low-entitlement, under-professionalized, outsourced labor that are benefiting from tax dollars invested, rather than the many needy students in the district, whose classrooms are staffed by underpaid subs “managed” by this company, one of whose employees gave such generous contributions to two incumbent candidates who voted in support of it?
Both Three Sonorans and the Arizona Daily Star wrote about this significant episode in the field of Southern Arizona public education and electoral politics. But David Safier remained silent. What a surprise.
Let my people go. Fund education with lottery profits. Or is that too close to the political slush fund for all politicians?
You want to increase education funding? Sell more tickets. North Carolina is doing well with that.
Frances — you should offer that advice to HT Sanchez and his supporters on the TUSD Board as well as to Ducey. They are the sort to take the tip just as much as the governor is. What would the Perkins of the FDR administration think of TUSD’s outsourcing of subs and reducing their ability to qualify for benefits? And the two incumbent candidates (Foster & Juarez) who can be relied upon to support HT Sanchez’s agenda even in the many cases when this agenda betrays the progressive cause received embarrassing campaign donations from the wife of an exec at the company managing outsourced subs.
So why not be properly bipartisan in your free advice to elected officials, Frances?
Perhaps I should have written “the wife of one of whose employees gave such generous contributions,” but when the money is coming from a joint account on which a marketing exec whose company just receive a $20+ million contract from the district is one of the co-proprietors, one wonders just how much difference it makes who signs the check.
According to the Star article on the subject, Foster and Juarez expect us to believe that they didn’t know there was a connection between the company to which the contract was granted and the unusually large donations to their Tucson-area campaigns from someone living in the Phoenix area. Seems like a local school board candidate who received a donation of this size from an out of town resident might have immediately picked up the phone and tried to find out who the donor was and what motivated the donation.
Could we blame voters for concluding that if these candidates didn’t do that — and didn’t voluntarily return the donations well before the connection between the donations and the marketing exec at the company was “outed” in the media — it is a clear sign that these incumbent candidates don’t have sufficient intelligence, caution, or pragmatism to be entrusted again with elected office?
In any case, if we want to increase the public’s confidence that providing more funding to public school districts will do the community some good, the electorate should ensure that every foolish governing board member who has a record in office of doing things that undermine public trust will, after the November elections, have to find another form of volunteer “service” to the community.
#publicschoolsfirst A good man sums up Dark Money Ducey’s “plan” for our public schools. A good man points out the lies of the greedy and the rich. We often seem uncomfortable talking about raw power. We don’t like the discussion of greed. That’s why we are here. Public education is being choked to death by those that have power. At the root of this strangulation, is greed.
If your candidate won’t agree to fund our public schools immediately with at least $1.7 billion in additional funding ( which barely restores public school funding to 2007 levels, adjusted for inflation), tell them that you cannot vote for them. They have just told you that they side with the powerful and the greedy. They don’t give a damn about the opportunirties denied to the poor and working families. These are our tax dollars, and our children. Step up to your responsibility to elect candidates that put them first.
You must mean honest politicians like the Clintons and Obama. That there is funny.
“If your candidate won’t agree to fund our public schools immediately with at least $1.7 billion in additional funding….tell them that you cannot vote for them. They have just told you that they side with the powerful and the greedy.” — Paul Stapleton-Smith
Sorry, Mr. Stapleton-Smith, your political party is not doing a good job keeping the people on the receiving end of those public education tax dollars from engaging in malfeasant and anti-progressive behaviors, including colluding with “the powerful and the greedy” on the outsourcing of subs and then receiving campaign contributions drawn from an account co-owned by a marketing executive at the company managing outsourced, underpaid labor , so I won’t be using that question as a litmus test for candidates this fall.
http://tucson.com/news/local/education/tusd-school-board-campaign-contributions-raise-red-flags/article_a89773ad-ff91-569f-84bd-b9543e92f343.html
http://threesonorans.com/2016/09/16/kristel-fosters-pathetic-appeal-to-donors-i-really-needed-that-5k-pay-to-play-contribution-help-me-recover/
A better litmus test question for candidates would be, “What will you do in office to make sure public schools are BOTH well funded AND well managed, ensuring that progressive labor policies are implemented, central administrators are not ridiculously overpaid, funds are not wasted in unnecessary legal battles with the court overseeing implementation of the deseg order, constructive collaboration with the deseg authorities occur, and that funds granted are applied for the benefit of students?”
Take a look, in the Three Sonorans article linked above, at the list of Democratic party elected officials that have endorsed the two sadly tarnished, underperforming incumbent candidates for the TUSD school board who received donations from the sub-outsourcing company. Those endorsements undermine the credibility of the elected officials granting them — and the credibility of the Pima County Democratic Party — rather than adding credibility to the candidates endorsed.
So don’t try to pretend your party has a burning passion to help “poor and working families.” I’ll believe that as soon as party operatives start lining up behind reforming TUSD, a public school district whose never-ending quid-pro-quo scandals and shocking mismanagement for the last three years has been and continues to be an embarrassment to the cause of public education.