Finally, something to report in the continuing Ducey “Next Step” Watch. His Classrooms First Initiative Council will be meeting June 21 to discuss “school funding proposals.” Note the word “new” is missing from the phrase “school funding proposals.” This isn’t about proposals for new funding. It’s about ways to shift around existing dollars.
That bears repeating. The “school funding proposals” are a zero sum game. They’re either manipulating education funding in the current budget, or the budget plus Prop 301 funding if that makes it through the court challenges. I have no doubt the governor will try to sell the proposals coming out of this meeting as the next step he was talking about. And actually, that will be accurate, in the sense that his plan for a next step has always been to step away from the issue of adding any more money to our near-bottom-of-the-barrel per student funding. Call this Ducey’s “Face it, you’re not gonna get any more money from the general fund, so get over it” next step.
After Prop 301 passed on May 17, education and business interests submitted funding proposals to the Classrooms First Initiative Council. Basically, they’re all asking that their favorite pieces of the funding pie be saved or increased. Virtual/online schools want to make sure their funding isn’t cut. Urban schools are asking that the poverty level of students be figured into the financing formula. Rural schools want their extra costs be considered. And so on.
Here are a few things you can be reasonably sure will come out of the June 21 meeting—unless it delays its decisions as it has in the past.
First, the two submitted proposals that are closest to what the council will arrive at are the ones from Lisa Graham Keegan, who has been fighting for her conservative “education reform” agenda for decades and is in nearly perfect synch with Ducey, and from the Arizona Chamber of Commerce and Industry, which has the governor’s ear because it’s the Arizona Chamber of Commerce and Industry.
Second, whatever funding realignment is actually decided on will shift money in the direction of schools with students from the state’s higher income families and away from schools serving a lower income population. That will probably be true for both district and charter schools, though I’m guessing charters serving lower income students will take less of a hit. The council will try to camouflage the funding shifts by using words like “equity,” hiding the actual financial consequences of their decisions behind obfuscatory language and spotlighting the occasional low income schools that will get some extra funding. But it’ll be smoke and mirrors. If Ducey, Keegan and their co-conspirators get their way, high income and rich students will get richer educationally, and the poor will get poorer.
The media and the education community need to report and respond to the results of the council meeting in a way that stresses what their proposals aren’t, and what they are. They won’t be a way to find more money for our schools, and they won’t be a revenue-neutral way to clean up our complex education funding formula. Their proposals will be designed to keep the state education budget at its current level, or even allow Ducey and the Republican legislative leadership to make strategic cuts to free up more money to give tax cuts to Ducey’s rich friends and financial backers, while moving more education money in the direction of the haves and away from the have nots.
This article appears in Jun 16-22, 2016.
OK, looks like we have an “educational” opportunity here: First, all those who supported Proposition 123, even grudgingly, must freely admit they were wrong; Second, all those who are still waiting for Ducey and his thugs to do anything positive for Arizona education must admit it will never, ever, to-infinity-and-beyond ever happen, NEVER! The only thing to do now is to organize, document the malfeasance of those killing education for all in Arizona and to be prepared to blanket the media, rally the people and throw out Ducey and his gang during the next election cycle. Normally, I do not like the idea of litmus tests for political office, but what has been done to education in Arizona constitutes a crisis that must be first and foremost in the minds of all Arizonans, and if prospective candidates do not have a plan to turn around education in this state, they need to peddle themselves elsewhere.
“Education is a better safeguard of liberty than a standing army.” — Edward Everett (1794-1865)
sgsmith, I agree with where you end up. We have to throw out as many of the Ducey gang as possible, or make them concerned enough that they take some action, soon, to add funding — something that’s not likely to happen. But as one of those people who held their noses and voted for Prop 123, I don’t think I was wrong, because I voted for it knowing everything I know now. If you read my earlier posts, you’ll see I expected this outcome. It’s just that, I don’t think they would be more likely to budget more for education funding if 123 went down. We have a disagreement on tactics and, I’m guessing, on how severe the impact of using some of the state land trust principal will be. I don’t think either of us is inherently wrong or naive. We just drew different conclusions from the same information. (I’m guessing you’ll disagree with me, which is fine. If you want to tell me how wrongheaded I am, I’ll give you the last word.)
The problem with 123 is that it settled the lawsuit. There is no legal recourse now. Good luck with electing different people. I really doubt that will happen. The only thing left is to figure out how to make do with less. If job losses continue here, funding cuts will follow.
Watch Kansas and there we go. We are almost there now. All I can say is we better get a bunch of these people out in November. We are almost totally owned by the Koch brothers now.
You WERE wrong, David, and you continue to be wrong, both about 123 and about TUSD’s malfeasant board leadership and dishonest Superintendent. It’s pitiful and sad that you continue to try to excuse yourself.
The passage of 123 made it much less likely that Ducey will be booted out of office. There are plenty of constituents who are too stupid to look beyond the fact that something they care about got a few small scraps tossed in its direction.
Did you see the idiotic letter in the Star about how Sanchez is a “good man” because he “donated” a bonus given to him out of the public coffers — money that should have been applied in our starved schools — to Camp Cooper? Case in point. There are a lot of people who don’t have the analytic capacity to understand that they’ve been bought off by money taken out of heir own pockets. That’s the kind of weak-mindedness people like Ducey and Sanchez depend on with their filthy sleight-of-hand politics and their laughable media lapdogs…
Mr. Safier,
Anyone who has been paying attention to American politics during the past 40 years has seen the decline and virtual extinction of compromise in government. Compromise is seen as showing weakness. The fact that the people who control Ducey can trot out such shoddy legislation and people who should know better tell us to hold our collective noses and vote for it anyway only emboldens those who seek to supplant a free government ruled by the people with a pay-to-play government run by special interests and dark money. When Ducey offers to throw you a bone, you’re only going to get boned. Here endeth the lesson.
Things go better with Koch.
Those who care about public education must support petition efforts to get the gross amounts of dark money out of Arizona political campaigns. It should be clear to all by now that we have elected politicians more beholden to corporations and their lobbyists than to the people of Arizona.
A big problem with throwing the Ducey people out, is they are not up for re-election during presidential election years. AZ governor, Sec of State, Treasurer, and Supt of Instruction are always elected in mid-term elections which are characterized by low turnout. It will take a strong concerted effort to retire Ducey and Co.
Pima Mujer, in my book, “Ducey people” includes the Republican legislative leadership and the Republican legislators who supported them. All those folks are up for election. They should be asked two questions: Do you plan to push for more funding for education, and if so, how much? And, do you support Donald Trump (then ask the same question about some of his more egregious comments, one by one)?
If only you folks were this organized in opposition to ISIS.
But Ducey is your public enemy #1?
I thought you guys were smarter than this.
Who is going to fly the sophisticated aircraft that will drop smart bombs on ISIS? Who is going to design and build those sophisticated aircraft and smart bombs? Who is going to operate the tactical surveillance and targeting systems on the ground? I could go on, but the bottom line is to fight a threat like ISIS it is going to take a team effort on the part of our military, scientists, engineers, industry and some political leaders that are committed to something beyond the next election cycle. Anyway you cut it; people like Ducey and his ilk only detract from the fight when they threaten basic education. If you want to know what happens when education and critical thinking skills go away, I give you ISIS.
It funny from the “don’t just throw money at it” crowd. We throw tons of money to the military. We throw tons of money at drug companies for Medicare, but we can’t negotiate lower priced drugs. We throw tons of money at private prisons we don’t need. We throw tons of money to charter schools and on line for profits that produce dubious results. We throw tons of money for vouchers for unaccountable, affluent people, private schools. But if we even suggest being less than last in public school funding. Horrors!
Our public schools have trouble marshalling public support, Frances, because many of them have not been run well. The constituents have not paid sufficient attention to what is happening on their boards and in their administration to ensure that they are operating in a way that will build the kind of trust needed to pass bonds and overrides — or, for that matter, the kind of trust needed to elect legislators who run on platforms of increased support for public district schools and decreased support for charters, vouchers, and “choice.”
Various commenters keep bringing up to you the connection between malfeasance in the operation of local public districts and the kinds of attitudes you like to denigrate in the electorate, but your commentary never seems to demonstrate that you understand the complexities of the politics surrounding education — or the compelling need for better oversight of local institutions.
Sorry “good”, I know lots about local school board operations and management. First they are locally controlled. You want to see the district’s detailed budget, hop down and look at it all day if you want. Budgets are transparent and are approved in public hearings. The legislature of this State prepares its budget in secret, trots it out, and demands approval at the last minute, before any one can see the details. Try to go to a charter school and ask for that. Please go to BASIS and ask them two simple questions. What is the “teacher improvement fund” spent on? How much profit does your company make a year? Public school administrators are responsible to a publically elected board. Dont like the Board, please run for it, it’s wide open. Many people in the electorate who have not been in a school classroom in ages, are all experts at getting the Mayor to improve education. (That’s a joke, so many dont know that the Mayor has nothing to do with operating school districts). In summary, there are certain commentators here who always harp on school district mismanagement, who don’t know a thing about it, don’t offer any specifics, or just don’t agree with anything. ( It’s all bad, throw ’em all out)
A million positive things happen in public schools everyday, teachers bust butt to get positive results yet many commentators complain to a never ending degree. Run or go in a classroom and help. Do something positive.
Frances Perkins: you continue to dwell in the land of pure theory, not in the land of what is actually happening in the schools — and on at least one of our local district’s school boards (the largest one, with an annual budget of tens of millions of dollars). Many of the comments responding to you DO cite very specific things going on (or not going on) in local public district schools and on their boards. I grant that the transparency LAWS governing district schools are superior to the sadly deficient transparency laws governing charters (including the egregious BASIS schools), but I challenge you to do some research about the extent to which transparency laws relating to public district schools are actually ENFORCED. For example: Investigate whether reporting requirements on deseg spending in TUSD are made as required by law. Investigate whether site based governance and allocation of undesignated tax credit funds actually takes place on every public school site as specified in the relevant statute. Then come back to David Safier’s comment streams and report to us on your findings.
Some of us HAVE done quite a bit to help. It is our DIRECT EXPERIENCE on school sites that motivates our efforts to improve the functioning of the system. Commentary about WHAT IS ACTUALLY HAPPENING is an important part of improving the functioning of the system.
Did you attend Sylvia Campoy’s presentation earlier this evening?