Question: What do these two statements have in common?
“Research shows that a quality early childhood education experience can yield significant long-term benefits on overall development of a child.”
“JTEDs and technical training is critical to the future of our state, and it will continue to be critical to the future of our state.”
Answers: (1) Doug Ducey made both statements; (2) Doug Ducey doesn’t want to fund preschools or JTED adequately, because: (3) Doug Ducey says we can’t afford it.
The statement about preschools is from an article in April with the cutest picture of Ducey crouching down in a preschool you ever did see—teacher holding a baby care book and smiling at a child in the foreground, young, bearded guitar player looking like he’s singing soothing children’s songs in the background, Ducey, caring and fatherly, looking adoringly at one of the children. In the same article, we learn that Arizona has far fewer children in federally funded preschool programs than the national average and that only special education students get any state preschool funding. And we learn why Ducey is against funding early education, even though he admits its importance.
“We know that there’s a good return on investment,” he said. But Ducey said people need to recognize the state’s financial condition.
The statement about JTED—Arizona’s Joint Technological Education Districts—is from a Sunday article in the Star’s business section. Business leaders all over the state praise the JTED programs for generating trained, motivated workers in a number of technical fields, saying they’re essential to growing Arizona’s economy. Yet we learn that the legislature’s most recent education budgeting fiasco will have the effect of cutting JTED funding so drastically that the programs will be gutted, and many will simply die. And we learn why Ducey allowed the cuts to happen.
“We had to do what had to be done in this budget session.”
To recap. Our governor agrees that preschool and JTED are valuable programs for individual students and for the state. Yet he agreed not to fund them. And the reason he gave is that we can’t afford the programs.
Saying we can’t afford to fund preschool and JTED at the needed levels is pure, unadulterated bullshit, as is Ducey’s position that we can’t afford to fund public education at needed levels.
If the programs are as valuable as Ducey says they are, the state has to find ways to fund them. Legislators could, say, keep prison funding stable, or lower it, because we can’t afford to raise prison funding right now. Legislators could, say, cut back on some of the tax breaks for corporations because we can’t afford to give gifts to corporations right now. Legislators could, say, get rid of the new business tax cuts because we can’t afford to cut taxes for businesses when we desperately need funding for our school children.
Legislators could even raise taxes so we could afford to support important government services. Yes, they could, even though it takes a two-thirds majority to raise taxes. All it would take would be a number of Republicans, not all of them, joining Democrats to pass a tax hike. It would be tough, but it’s not an impossibility if there’s the will. Or they could ask the voters to reverse Proposition 108, passed in 1992, that required the two-thirds vote to raise taxes. Then it would only take the Democratic legislators and a handful of Republicans to reach the simple majority needed to raise taxes.
That’s why I can’t get too excited about Ducey promising $300 million a year for education, starting two years from now and only if the voters agree to it, to bring funding up to the level where it’s supposed to be right now according to a court order. That money won’t cost him a penny of political capital because it doesn’t raise taxes or take money from other programs. He deserves little praise for what he’s proposed. It’s a cowardly, too-little-too-late move that is, admittedly, better than nothing, but not nearly what’s needed. Ducey either needs to show some guts and push for a significant raise in education funding or shut the hell up about how he thinks educational programs, programs that cost money, are good for children and for the state.
This article appears in Jun 4-10, 2015.
Easy to afford these programs, if the property tax payers weren’t funding the education of tens of thousands (if not hundreds of thousands) of illegals.
Why do ‘progressives’ like this author favor hurting our children to pay for illegals?
Well, Davey boy the simple fact is your guy lost and you’re sorrowfully licking yourself only where dogs can while you continue to cry about it here. Your guys message was rejected and all you’re gonna do is snivel until the next time your message is again rejected at the polls. If you want it your way then find enough people to accept your message. You claim to be for the children, like every hackneyed politician who makes the same condescending claim but you choose to do nothing more than make useless noise while fomenting hate toward a group of people you will never understand. Put your money where your mouth is…..unless you actually prefer to be that licking dog on the porch.
Ducey wants to look like Walker did after a short time… like he created a real surplus which was a lie. The debt there was growing at a percentage larger than under previous governors and I suspect ours will too. Those big tax cuts for corporations and the wealthy are actually creating the increase in debt . Wisconsin is now in more debt than it was before. But the prisons are funded and so are Walker’s and Ducey’s friends.
So education is drastically underfunded. Social services are drastically underfunded and 2 children died in 10 days because there just are not enough workers. The blame was passively shifted to the worker who stopped and no one was home… she ‘just’ left a card. No one wrote how many more calls she had that day. A child died in that home from abuse shortly after. I am so glad to see the county is suing the state for shifting these costs to the county.
If we continue to not fund social services and education, the consequences will grow and grow. There is no way I will support the way Ducey wants to ‘fund’ education now. He wants to pull the infrastructure out from under education and make it look like he is backing down and funding education. He is not. I also suspect he will find a way to use this money to say he ‘paid education back’. He is underhanded and hoping for a poorly informed voting block. Heaven help us once he has access to that fund.
Governor Ducey knows very well the importance of funding education. That’s why he spends north of $15,000 per year to send HIS kids to a very fine private high school.
Dave Gallagher – “Governor Ducey knows very well the importance of funding education. That’s why he spends north of $15,000 per year to send HIS kids to a very fine private high school.”
Then Obama must REALLY know the importance of funding public education –
“President Obama and first lady Michelle send their two daughters, Sasha and Malia, to the exclusive Sidwell Friends School in Washington, D.C. While the lower school charges $33,268 per year in tuition, the middle and upper schools cost $34,268, and this price includes “hot lunch,” according to the Web site.Sep 10, 2012”
And does Il Duce get tax credits for “donations” to the tuition support fund, from his friends and relatives? Ducey is a stone cold hypocrite and liar.
It is true that Gov. Ducey won the election and the other guy (from Tucson) lost after reportedly running a lackluster campaign – Maricopa Co. always gets the last say anyway. But if the governor intends to run the state the same way he ran the ice cream franchise company, the one that The Wall Street Journal called one of the “10 worst franchise brands in terms of Small Business Administration loan defaults,” we will all have to get used to reduced services across the board and, in this case, schools that will have to survive on local overrides that only rarely work. And also like the ice cream company, Gov. Ducey will probably walk away enriched while – just like the franchise owners who were forced to default – decent citizens, innocent kids and hardworking parents, will have to pay for themselves somehow – or they will go down hard.
Contrary to what some commenters might say here, the issue of education funding is not Obama or illegal aliens it is because our Governor and majority of the legislature simply will not fund education. The Governor and Andy Biggs has resisted any and all efforts to increase revenue. Instead they collectively have manufactured this funding “crisis” to claim that the State cannot afford to adequately fund its responsibilities. David Safier is right on target and we need more voices like him to raise awareness of what if going on in our State
Michael S. Ellegood – “Contrary to what some commenters might say here, the issue of education funding is not Obama or illegal aliens “
Yeah – just chump change, when it’s someone else’s money.
Analysis of the latest Census data indicates that Arizona’s illegal immigrant population is costing the state’s taxpayers about $1.3 billion per year for education, medical care and incarceration. Even if the estimated tax contributions of illegal immigrant workers are subtracted, net outlays still amount to more than $1 billion per year. The annual fiscal burden borne by Arizonans amounts to more than $700 per household headed by a native-born resident.
http://www.fairus.org/site/DocServer/azcosts2.pdf
Thank goodness for Prop 108 that requires a 2/3rds vote of the legislature. Otherwise the do-gooders wold have spent us into oblivion. Also, prison funding cannot be cut due to federal judges requiring TVs in each cell and that cells be bigger than dorm rooms, go figure. Corporations and businesses do not pay taxes, they are passed on to consumers, the taxpayers, who ultimately get the bill.
Tell TUSD to sell all of those closed schools, but they won’t because they would be afraid of more competition to their pathetic attempt at education. Enpower parents, give them vouchers so they can choose their schools and not be trapped in the subpar public schools in this state, and save money for the taxpayers.
Vouchers are not the answer.
We need to drop the Deuce.
Well, TDB, you had your chance during the last election but YOU obviously blew it. Since you recognize the problem now is your chance to fix it at the next one.
I think the author misses the point. His statement about early childhood education does NOT contain any evidence of a desire to fund it. I rather see an effort to get people to see how important it is and have people pay for that early education.
He is telling those people that care, to make sure you do better than public schools from the start.
Education does not start and stop in the public school system. You folks need to get out more.
NY Post Jan 2010…
Head Start, the most sacrosanct federal education program, doesn’t work.
That’s the finding of a sophisticated study just released by President Obama’s Department of Health and Human Services.
Created in 1965, the comprehensive preschool program for 3- and 4-year olds and their parents is meant to narrow the education gap between low-income students and their middle- and upper-income peers. Forty-five years and $166 billion later, it has been proven a failure.
The bad news came in the study released this month: It found that, by the end of the first grade, children who attended Head Start are essentially indistinguishable from a control group of students who didn’t.
@Ducey It would appear that his statement may in fact be wrong. early childhood education is not critical. Let the kids be kids. Instead of your livelihood.
Ducey does know education is important, that’s why he’s doing everything he can to put a stop to it!
We should give Scrooge McDucey another six months worth of rope to hang himself and then begin the process to #RecallScroogeMcDucey.
Ducey is a puppet of the DARK MONEY that got him elected and will be there to suppport him the next time. Make no mistake about it, everything he does is payback to them.