I’ve been writing a lot lately about how, since Prop 123 passed, Ducey sidesteps the issue of education funding every time he’s asked what his “next step” will be. He wants the next step to be for people to stop pestering him so he can get back to cutting education funding in next year’s budget—or if he has no other choice, continue with the same bottom-of-the-barrel funding which has been the norm for too many years—but we’re not likely to hear him say that out loud.
This shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone. As I’ve written in a number of posts, I never expected Ducey to spend a penny more on education after Prop 123 without a fight, nor did other pro-education folks like me who held their noses and voted for what we considered to be the least bad option. There’s only one way to get more money for education out of the majority of elected Republicans who are dead set on dismantling our system of public education, and that’s to keep up the pressure.
Remember, Ducey and his cronies didn’t create Prop 123 because they liked the idea of increasing education funding. It was only when they realized public opinion was turning against them that they concocted a plan that would add some money to education without touching the budget. It’ll take far more public pressure to make them actually commit to more money for education this time, because it will have to come from the state coffers, not the state land trust. Success is far from guaranteed, but if there’s no fight, I can guarantee Ducey’s “next step” will be to step away from the funding issue as quickly as he can.
Ducey didn’t suggest Prop 123 because he wanted to put more money into education. He and his buddies were perfectly happy to continue ignoring the court’s ruling that they have to replace the money they illegally stole from the schools, and to continue cutting the education budget year after year. But in February, 2015, they had the fear of God The Voters put into them courtesy of a Morrison Institute poll. The poll found that voters wanted more money for education, even if it meant more taxes.
Nearly two-thirds of Arizonans, including more than 50 percent of Republicans, would be willing to pay an additional $200 in state taxes annually to better fund K-12 education.
Those are frightening polling numbers if you’re Ducey and the Republican leadership. If voters want more money for schools, and they say they’re willing to pay more taxes to fund it, that threatens the Republican agenda of slashing the budget and cutting taxes for their buddies. They feared, if they continuing to stonewall the court order, they might find themselves with a voter rebellion on their hands. People might start listening to Democrats and moderate Republicans. Anti-public education conservative legislators could find their jobs threatened at the ballot box. They had to do something.
The most obvious next step would have been to make a good-faith effort to put more education money in the state budget even if it wasn’t as much as the courts demanded, but they were having none of that. The budget Ducey signed in March, 2015, cut K-12 spending overall, including a $30 million hit to JTED. Republicans continued to worry about the results of that Morrison Institute poll which said that public opinion had turned against them on education funding, but at the same time, they weren’t about to commit more budget money to education. They were in a bind.
In June, 2015, Ducey proposed a way to make an end run around the problem: Take money from the state land trust fund and use it to add $300 million a year for education. He said he wanted to put the issue on the ballot in November, 2016.
It was a brilliant maneuver. If people voted to take money from the state land trust, Ducey could say he solved the funding problem without digging into the budget surplus or the rainy day fund—and without raising taxes—and he could go back to his budget cutting, tax cutting ways. If it was voted down, he could say voters really weren’t committed to increasing education funding, so come budget time in 2017, he could cut the education budget once again and shift the blame to the voters.
The education establishment didn’t give its support to Ducey’s plan when he first presented it in June. They were still hoping that talks to settle the lawsuit would bear fruit. But they didn’t dismiss it either. They left their options open.
In August, 2015, attempts to settle the lawsuit over education funding reached an impasse. Once again, the court announced that the state owed the schools $330 million a year and demanded it pay up. Once again, the legislature appealed the decision.
And once again, Republicans worried that public opinion would turn against them if they didn’t do something. Even those two stalwart opponents of education funding, Senate President Andy Biggs and House Speaker David Gowan, knew they had to get in front of the issue. Minutes after the impasse was announced, they put out their own funding proposal, which involved stealing money from other parts of the budget and combining it with money taken from the land trust funds. That meant there were two funding plans on the table from Republicans who never saw a cut in education funding they didn’t like.
A month later, the Democrats, sensing an opportunity, announced their own funding proposal which was based on increasing the state’s education budget instead of digging deeper into the state land trust like the Republican plans.
At the end of October, 2015, Ducey called a special session of the legislature, and it passed what became Prop 123, to be put in front of the voters on May 17, 2016. This time the education establishment, seeing nothing but endless delays in the court funding battles, backed Ducey’s plan.
When the next legislative session rolled around in January, 2016, Ducey and the Republican legislative leaders were no friendlier toward education than they had been before. True, they reversed the previous session’s $30 million cut to JTED, but not because they wanted to. The public pressure was intense enough, it forced their hands. When they finally released their budget proposal, it included a $21 million cut to education, which would have passed if a few of the more education-friendly Republicans hadn’t refused to vote for the deal. The final budget was basically revenue neutral when it came to education, but only because the leadership lost its bid to cut funding.
On May 17, Prop 123 passed, though whether it will actually be put into action still remains to be seen.
So here we are, at Ducey’s “next step.” Every indication is that he has no intention of increasing the education budget. In 2015 and 2016, he and his legislative buddies did everything they could to decrease spending, and there’s no reason to believe they’ll do anything different next year. Ducey wants to pat himself on the back for Prop 123 and move beyond the distractions of the education funding debate to the conservative agenda he really cares about.
There’s a lesson Arizona’s pro-education forces can draw from what they’ve seen in 2015 and 2016. Ducey and the legislature only created Prop 123, reversed the $30 million JTED cut and kept the 2016 education budget intact rather than cutting it because of public pressure. If people want to see funding increases in the future, which will have to come from the state coffers since there’s no way to go to the land trust well again, the pressure has to increase. Reporters need to insist that Ducey and every Republican legislator go on record about whether they plan to ask for increased education funding in the next budget. Voters need to do the same. And Democrats, elected and otherwise, as well as the education establishment, need to make as much noise as possible to keep the funding issue alive. Getting more money from the legislature is possible, but it will only come about with intense, unrelenting pressure. Fear of the voter is one of the only ways to focus, and change, a politician’s mind.
This article appears in May 26 – Jun 1, 2016.
This is wrong on so many levels that I am just going to move on without making numerous assumptions that are baseless in facts as is done above. You sold your soul, now let the adults fix it.
“Nearly two-thirds of Arizonans, including more than 50 percent of Republicans, would be willing to pay an additional $200 in state taxes annually to better fund K-12 education.”
What absolute bullsh*t … there is no way that is an accurate, unbiased poll result. People in Arizona are voting down huge expenditures like this.
Safier, when are you going to get it thru your thick, left wing skull that throwing more money at education is going to fix it????
What I’d really like to know is why Ducey spends so much money in Maricopa County vs Pima County. Never mind, lobbyists.
Why in any right wing skulls do they think throwing money at rich tax payers when this State has huge needs, might somehow make this State better. If the entire State burned down, Ducey and company would not raise one tax to rebuild it.
“Republicans worried that public opinion would turn against them if they didn’t do something.”
So why, with public opinion turning against the Republicans and their leadership running scared, would Democrats back the improper “SOMETHING” (123) Ducey and “the Republicans” came up with, which was NOT a real solution to the problems with education funding in this state? Why collaborate with the opposition in their scheme to release through the wrong means the public pressure that was building up against them? Your wordy explanation reads like a desperate attempt to redeem actions on the part of “Democrats for 123” fellow travelers that, in the light of the Proposition’s passage by such a slim margin, appear clearly and unequivocally as disastrous mistakes.
Democrats who “held their noses” and voted for 123 are responsible for spoiling the possibility of unifying the base to get the right things accomplished. They’ve divided the base and disgusted those who might have been their allies. At the same time, many of the Democrats who supported 123 are pushing the re-election of two of the three members of a conspicuously bad TUSD board majority whose relentless scandals and leadership fiascos of the last three years give the term “public education” a bad name among the tens of thousands of constituents whose misfortune it is to have their children’s “education” delivered through this district.
Look at the situation in the plain light of day, and call it for what it is. You helped to make it, with your apologetics for 123 and your unflagging support of bad leadership in the public district serving 40-something thousand students. Perhaps you should do something old-fashioned and politically incorrect: admit fault, at least to yourself if to no one else. As November 2016 approaches, change your ways and refuse to promote bad leadership in public education. Endorse candidates who have some hope of governing our public schools responsibly and honestly. If we then get some effective reform of the largest local public school district applying tax-sourced funds, you might have better prospects for success in unifying the Southern Arizona Democratic / progressive base behind your proposed campaigns to put pressure on the folks in Phoenix who have recently, in the campaign to pass 123, been your allies.
David predicts three different scenarios. But the third scenario is flawed.
First, if Repubs do nothing: “They feared, if they continuing to stonewall the court order, they might find themselves with a voter rebellion on their hands. People might start listening to Democrats and moderate Republicans. Anti-public education conservative legislators could find their jobs threatened at the ballot box. They had to do something.” Sounds great to me. Second, if Prop 123 passed, people would credit Repubs with increasing funding and third, if Prop 123 failed, then people aren’t committed to increased funding.
I suggest that the first scenario is the way that education supporters would have reacted to Prop 123’s defeat and that is why we were willing to deny immediate increases in order to fix a broken system. The pro-education “yes” voters denied us this opportunity. Rather, they accept as business as usual that our legislature will violate its constitutional obligations year after year. All education supporters want to vote in a new legislature. But the best way to get that done is if people ” start listening to Democrats and moderate Republicans. Anti-public education conservative legislators could find their jobs threatened at the ballot box. ” That is a scenario for change.
After 8 years of Obama Democrats are tired and disappointed. Their turnout was lower in the primary (for HRC and Sanders) than was the Republican turnout for Trump (by almost one million votes). But this is the way America works, 8 years of this, 8 years of that, and then we wonder why no progress is made solving the big problems. We don’t know where we want to be led, and we are not electing leaders.
Trump in “16. Let’s give it a try.
Linda I was just reading something similar about Trump getting a record primary vote turnout in excess of 13 M. Unless HRC can harness all the Sanders voters she does not stand a chance. And they don’t appear to want be harnessed just yet. They want to see what they can get before they commit. But when she goes socialist she will lose blue dog and Reagan Demos.
This is going to be wild times.
http://www.pimadems.org/2016/04/27/vote-no…
The fact is Pima County Democrats threw the Teachers under the bus when they voted against Ducey “spending more money” on them!
Pima County Democrats are against giving teachers a raise that is a fact, proven by their lack of support for Prop. 123.
Shame on them.
There has been the exact same polling support for more education funding for over 24 years – two generations of school children. Yet, despite their frugality, Republicans have maintained control of the legislature every year.
Why? Because they were knowledgeable about the fact that money does not produce outcomes in education. Zero correlation between money and outcomes. But, policy does produce results. Arizona eighth grade Hispanics rank 11th in the nation in 8th grade math; Blacks rank 1st (that is not a typo); our White eighth graders rank 6th and Arizona combined math and reading academic gains from 4th grade 2011 to 8th grade 2015 were the highest in the nation.
Why? Because Arizona has school choice and, unlike most other states, parents can choose a school that works for their child. Republicans, for the most part, support expanding school choice and Democrats don’t.
School choice appears to be very healthy for children. In 1992, the year school choice started in Arizona, our juveniles committed 70 murders. In 2012, the latest year of FBI juvenile records, our children committed only 7 murders. That’s an astonishing change because our population has doubled since 1992 and is decidedly more at-risk now than then.
The most important school choice element is unanimously opposed by Democrats – empowerment scholarship accounts. Allowing students to get a public education at any school has the potential to completely eliminate juvenile crime and double the productivity of our school system – truly achieving the dream our founding fathers had for this nation – that we are all created equal. The beliefs of Democrats are the problem, not the solution.
I would welcome federal tax credits for choice in education. Results could only improve with more families getting access to choices. The public school model has been brought down to it’s knees. Mainly because of political tinkering. Now even some of the good teachers are tainted.
David Safier, that horse is dead. Quit beating it.
So former Ed Supt John Huppenthal now comments here about education and spending. Good for him that he is no longer anonymous. Bad for us because he is still like Typhoid Mary on the Titanic.