Two people told me they took a robocall poll a few days ago. Apparently there were four questions. Two were a variation on the question, “Do you think the Arizona Superintendent of Public Instruction position should be elected or appointed?” The other two asked what the respondent thinks of Diane Douglas and Doug Ducey.
Well, that was fast. The poll is clearly a response to the fight over last week’s firing and reinstatement of two Board of Education employees, which means it must have been created over the weekend. My understanding is, robopolls are cheap, quick and easy to put together, meaning they don’t take much in the way of time, effort or deep pockets, so lots of people could be behind it. Logic tells me it’s people in the Ducey camp. They would be most interested in testing the waters to see if they could make the Ed Supe a gubernatorial appointee, as the position is in many states, so they would never again have to face choices like, say, the anti-Common Core and loose cannon Douglas or the progressive, Democratic David Garcia.
So, is Ducey money behind the poll? Is it the Arizona Chamber of Commerce? The Lisa Graham Keegan/Craig Barrett coalition? The “shadow faction of charter school operators” Douglas wrote about, headed by Board of Ed president and founder of Challenge Charter School Greg Miller working in tandem with the Arizona Charter Schools Association? All of the above?
It would be very interesting to learn the answer.
Fun Facts About Challenge Charter School: Greg Miller, president of the Arizona Board of Education, is the CEO of Challenge Charter in Glendale. According to the school’s 2012 tax form, he made $121,875 that year, as well as $26,956 in “Retirement and other deferred compensation.” His wife, Pamela Miller, Executive Director and Vice President, made the same salary and deferred compensation. Their daughter, Wendy Miller, Principal and Secretary, made $99,167. The school spends about 20 percent of its budget on administration.
(Semi-interesting sub-note: Gene Glass of the National Education Policy Center and I often post about the same subject without knowing it, especially when it comes to Arizona issues. After I finished this Fun Facts note, I discovered Glass wrote about the Millers Monday: Education in Two Worlds: Arizona Has No Concept of a “Conflict of Interest.“)
This article appears in Feb 19-25, 2015.
Shame on you Safier! These numbers are outdated and inflated just as they were when you attempted to slander Challenge Charter School and the Miller family in the past. Integrity is important in education and in journalism!! Challenge files as a public entity allowing you or anyone to view this tax information…Wouldn’t it make more sense to question some more corporate charter structures for which there are no numbers because they hire private companies “employed by” the charters in effect making their numbers private. I am NOT worried about a school that has kept all of their numbers public… I AM worried about a reporter who uses this type of venue to bully folks when his true agenda is left over hostility because his own political network of buddies got taken off the Board and replaced by Mr. Miller. Isn’t that what these bad feelings are really about? You weren’t interested in slandering the Democratic charter Board rep that had the seat prior? But that’s because the game is different when it is your friend? Me thinks the pot is calling the kettle black again. I would be happy to speak to anyone about the lies in this slander. Feel free to contact me to do so, Wendy Miller
I see a lot of charges of lies in Ms. Miller’s response, but no facts to contradict what was written.
An excellent post from Gene Glass. Thanks for the link. As he says, “Arizona simply doesn’t recognize things called conflicts of interest.” Sadly, the problem is not just with our school systems – public, charter and privates subsidized with public funds. Cronyism and lack of professionalism undermine both good governance and service delivery in our non-profit sector as well, which is handling more and more of our social services.
It will be interesting to see how the results of the current public policy choices play out in the decades to come. Within the next few years, my family will be watching from a distance, having relocated to a state where the majority of the legislators are able to demonstrate mastery of Public Policy 101 and Ethics 101. More and more of our professionally educated and civically engaged friends are coming to the same conclusion: it was a mistake to move here; there’s nothing that individuals can do to correct the deficiencies in the education and social service systems in a state where the majority of the legislators don’t understand the knowledge bases relevant to the formulation of law and policy, and the majority of the population shows its unwavering commitment to ignorance in every election cycle.
Well “gcb1” …I apologize that I am not a shady “reporter” but rather I am actually RUNNING an elementary school so it’s pretty busy over here. As I stated in my comment, feel free to call the school. In fact, come by the school and see how hard all of the Millers, and the rest of our amazing team of educators, are working and how many wonderful things are happening for children. While we walk around, I would be happy to use that time to dispel this very one-sided opinion loaded with its’ own non- transparent motives. I can also connect you to a lot of parents from the past 19 years this school has been serving kids that would be happy to share why this environment is special to them.
The “Wild West Has Lost Its Charms”, FYI – it is in the AZ Constitution that a charter operator sits on the State Board of Ed…which is an UNPAID volunteer position. Not a conflict of interest. The Board itself voted Mr. Miller to be President. What an honor! Obviously there are, in fact, a lot of people who trust in his educational leadership.
Again…anyone is welcome to visit Challenge Charter School (and enroll as we do follow open enrollment practices!), a Title 1 Rewards school meaning we are doing an above average job of helping the very subgroups Glass implies we are segregating. How can anyone find value in an article clearly so biased and malicious? And then speak to ignorance…?!
Growth of students from the bottom percentiles to the top percentiles is also how a school becomes a Blue Ribbon School which we are. There are only .002% of those in the Nation. We can’t fake that. They are selected by the US Department of Education, not behind closed doors at a “ShadowFaction” conspiracy meeting.
Based on the unjustified attacks on our character, isn’t it interesting that I am the only one commenting here willing to do so using my own name?
Wendy, I’m confused about your accusation that I used inflated numbers. Anyone can see the salary numbers on the 990 form submitted in 2012, Page 7 — http://990s.foundationcenter.org/990_pdf_a… . I would be happy to use more current numbers, but the 2012 return is the most recent I could find on the internet. If the salaries of the three Millers have changed significantly since then, please let me know by providing me more recent 990s.
The 20 percent administrative cost comes from the financial report the school submitted to the state. On your FY 2014 report, page 7, it lists Administration Expenses of $765,118 and Total Expenses of $3,882,327. That comes to 19.7 percent, which I rounded up to 20 Percent.
If my numbers are incorrect, please explain where I made mistakes, with some evidence. I would be happy to correct my figures if they are in error.
That’s all I said about the school: The salaries for you, your father and your mother, and the percent spent on administration. I made no comments about the quality of education at the school.
As for my Democratic buddies on the Board of Education — I have no buddies there, past or present. Honestly, the only member I can name on present or past Board of Education (other than your father, and if I knew his name before it was brought up recently, I had forgotten it) is Mary Gifford, and that’s because I did lots of research on K12 Inc. and its Arizona online charter, Arizona Virtual Academy. If you will tell me the name of the Democratic charter rep you mentioned who was on the Board, I’ll do what I can to find similar figures about salaries and the percent his school spends on administration and put them on this comment thread.
David gave you a fair offer, Wendy. Take him up on it. I too ran an elementary school with 600 students in it and I was the only administrator, responsible for 60 adults and their evaluations on an annual basis. My salary upon retirement was $57,000. Little different, isn’t it? Paid by public money, just like yours.
David, apart from calling David Garcia a “progressive,” this is a darn good column. Your assessment of the Arizona situation is essentially correct. Il Duce(y) has been trying to replace the elected Superintendent of Public Instruction with a shadow group of for-profit charter school operators and privatizers.
What you might want to asses is how, right now, the Obama administration is supporting these same for-profit charter operators as they move forward in their efforts to cherry-pick the top students from neighborhood schools and leave all the tough-to-educate students in their neighborhood schools. You also might want to check out the national debate over the reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act where a Republican-crafted draft that will replace the annual over-testing of students in public schools, referred to by Lily Eskelsen Garcia of NEA as “toxic-testing,” with far fewer mandated federal tests during a student’s school years. President Obama opposes any bill that does not continue his emphasis on annual testing of students.
Marty, I don’t know if you read my posts regularly, but I regularly complain about Obama and Arne Duncan’s education policies. Repeatedly. And I did a person-to-person interview with Lily Eskelsen Garcia when she was in town. She was supporting Garcia, by the way.