Governor Ducey tells deadbeat dads to “Man Up & Pay Up” in his 2016: Year in Review. But when it comes to talking about education funding, Ducey isn’t man enough to tell the truth, and he sure as hell isn’t planning to pay up the money our children need to pull them out of the per-student-funding cellar.

Where to begin? How about the beginning section of the flashy online 2016: Year in Review titled Educational Excellence, which says Prop 123 “is adding $3.5 billion to our K-12 education system over the next 10 years.” Prop 123 gives back a portion of what the deadbeat dads and moms on the Republican side of the aisle at the Arizona legislature stole from the state’s school children in 2009. Yes, stole. Lest we forget, the lege illegally violated the 2000 voter mandate in Prop 301 to use a new sales tax increase to increase K-12 spending. When you renege on child support mandated by law, then pay some of it back, you don’t get to pat yourself on the back for your generosity.

Right under the Prop 123 lie, Ducey says the 2017 budget “injected an additional $142 million into K-12 education and an additional $38 million into universities.” Nope. Most of the K-12 money was to cover inflation and increased enrollment—that’s stay-even money—and to delay planned funding cuts to schools—that’s we’ll-get-you-next-year money. The $38 million for universities includes $8 million to cover increased student population, $5 million to pay for the “economic freedom schools” which were previously funded by the Koch brothers, and $19 million total in one-time money to our three universities. With the amount slashed from university budgets over the past few years, that $19 million is small change and small comfort.

Directly below that comes the next deception: “The governor’s Classrooms First Initiative is making sure new money for our schools remains a top priority for Arizona.” Nope. The Classrooms First initiative isn’t about new money. It’s about redistributing the insufficient funding that’s already there, most likely giving more of it to charter schools and to schools filled with children from affluent homes.

The last sentence in that part of the document says, “Arizona is committed to providing every student with a world-class education.” Whoever wrote that should be grateful there’s not an Education God sitting in a classroom in the sky. If there were, a lightning bolt, or maybe a giant wooden paddle with the words “Board of Education” written on it would have come crashing down on the lying wordsmith’s head.

Then this: “One of the first actions of this year’s legislative session was a $28 million investment in Joint Technical Education Districts to help students learn what they’re passionate about and prepare them to succeed in post-secondary education.” Wrong again. The legislature took $30 million away from JTED the previous year, and the business community screamed because it depends on the technical education programs to provide competent new hires. So Ducey and the Republicans put back $28 million for JTED in the current budget. Like Prop 123, that’s giving back money you took away to help fund tax breaks for businesses and the wealthy. It’s not an “investment.”

And finally, this, a headline that reads, “Serving As A National Model For Education Excellence.” The evidence? “In April 2016, U.S. News and World Report released its 2016 rankings of the country’s best high schools; Arizona is home to three of the top ten in the nation.” That’s three BASIS schools, containing an academically select group of students, culled down to a smaller group of high school seniors who have taken lots of AP courses. That’s a model for a way to give high achieving students a strong academic education, something you can find in other schools across Tucson and across the country. Beyond the bogus BASIS example, “A National Model For Education Excellence”? Arizona? Not so much.

Don’t count on much in the way of “next step” money for education in the next legislative session. There’s barely enough money in the budget to fund the state needs at their current level and give promised tax cuts to Ducey’s buddies. It’s time Ducey adapted his #deadbeat initiative to cover the deadbeat legislators who vote against increased funding for our school children. In the words in his 2016: Year in Review:

Governor Ducey announced the #deadbeat initiative in his 2016 State of the State Address, which aims to hold child support evaders accountable. The initiative posts photographs, names, and amounts of child support owed on social media in order to highlight #deadbeat parents who skirt their financial responsibilities. The initiative has been a great success, locating evaders and serving as a deterrent for others who don’t want to show up on social media.

This article appears in Dec 8-14, 2016.

9 replies on “Ducey ‘Next Step’ Watch: Day 207. Lies My Governor Told Me. Or, Hey Doug, Man Up & Pay Up!”

  1. Dry up Safier the likes of you endless spending types with no accountability and no end to diversion of funds to illegals and dreamers lost the elections. If your home Banana Republic is so great MOVE BACK to California.

  2. Ducey is known villain, David, but you are a Ducey collaborator. Should we have a “next step” before reversing the last bad step you and your friends promoted, Prop 123?

    Both sides of the education debate in Arizona are ideologically driven, wrong-headed, and devoid of real solutions to our problems with education. More public funds going to unregulated, untransparent charters and privates using vouchers: not what’s needed. More public funds poured indiscriminately and without sufficient oversight into a giant, abject failure of a district like TUSD: also not what’s needed.

    Unfortunately for the quality of our media AND our schools, we seem to have a plethora of head-in-the-clouds types who retire to Arizona and want to tell us how to improve ourselves.

    Heads up to this crowd.: we don’t need commentary written by ideologues who never had to raise and educate children in this state and who know little about what is actually going on in our schools. You pay little to no attention to local governance and administration and do not know enough about the on-the-ground reality in Arizona education to get the policy details right. Even when you’re not collaborating with Ducey, your proposed “solutions” are always wrong, destined to waste more advocacy energy and more money on bad policy and misguided funding allocations.

    I’d like to see this “truth-in-advertising” info posted at the beginning of every article or blog on AZ education policy: how many children the author educated using Arizona’s “educational” institutions and / or how many years the author taught in AZ schools. If the answer is zero, a lot of time could be saved by reading no further.

  3. I remember David Safier being the liberal genius that he is honoring and stating that he cannot see nothing wrong with a charter school like Sonoran Science Academy. A charter school which used our tax dollars for an over abundance of teachers on H1-b Visas and their families. Arizona has no shortage of teachers. A school directly related to a terrorist organisation where monies had been siphoned off and used to financed the Turkish Coup July 15. Money is laundered out of this school via fake auditing and NGO agencies called the Pacifica and Accord Institute in California set up by the same terrorists cult members from Turkey. This charter school has been under the watchful eye of the FBI and five other Federal Investigations. The schools have been falling to the point of being insolvent yet the state keeps right on funding them. These schools have been scrutinized by parents and teachers with a huge bully problem not only by other students but from the teachers who bully students as well. Please do not take my word for it Just Google search into Gulen Charter Schools. Gulen School Fraud. Gulen School Terrorists.
    Also if you really want to see the inner workings of a Gulen Charter School

  5. To Jo: OMG!!!!! Commercial schools (charter & private) are the ones with no accountability! Get your facts straight! Commercial schools are often run by corporate boards who are not accountable to the voters and aren’t required to open up their books. District schools are governed by school board members elected by local voters. They are entirely transparent and accountable to the voters!!!!!

  6. Midst all this debate I must ask-what happened to the court mandated $360 million, if I recall correctly, to our education system that Ducey seems to have sidestepped? What is its status, Mr. Governor?

  7. Why isn’t there a petition out there to get rid of Ducey? That was the one I wanted to sign this election season! He is an enemy to the kids / students of Arizona. He has stolen the education money.

    Regarding charter schools, There are some really good ones that service kids who otherwise may drop out of school because they “just don’t fit in”. As a mom of 4, I can tell you that public schools are incapable of educating all kids. They are great for the those who learn by the traditional methods.
    But for those who don’t, need more help, or require flexibility, you won’t find that in public schools.
    Been there-done that ..

  8. Linda Lyon, I would have to respectfully disagree. The voters do oversee the public schools and look at the mess they have allowed. On the flipside, charters and privates are geld accountable by the customers, the actual parents, which makes the process much more accountable. Try questioning procedures at TUSD and see what happens to you and your child.

  9. Ducey just may fit the crazy, crony times we live in. Some charter schools are good. Some are not. They get taxpayer money. None of them are required to report budgets with salaries. They should. Why not?

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