A comment from a reader in Arizona:
“I live in Arizona, am freshly retired from the US military, and have no children. Even from this vantage point, it doesn’t take much effort to see that Arizona’s under paid, hard working (at multiple jobs), parents are too busy trying to survive to notice that their legislators are feeding their tax dollars to private school corporations, by the buckets! We can write-off on our state taxes more than twice the level of donations to privates chools than public schools. We have until tax day the next year to do it for private schools, and only until Dec 31st of the tax year for public schools. And, we can only designate “extra curricular” activities for public schools, but can give it to the O&M, general educational fund for private schools. This state needs a giant court audit to declare its whole education funding system unconstitutional!”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
I live in AZ too, and feel powerless. 😦 What can we do? Who is organizing against this?
@MsLuchadora
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Magyar,
Join Voices for Children in Tucson. Robin Hiller is a fearless advocate for children.
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Magy,
Also, join the Network for Public Education. You have allies. You are not alone.
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This is indeed a problem in Arizona! I believe your commenter is talking about tax credits – not deductions. Tax credit funds going to private schools means money comes out of the General Fund to pay for the tax credit. Tax credit funds going to public schools reallocate General Fund monies to public schools. This does make a difference in that private schools become an indirect beneficiary of public money – reducing already limited funds even further. Our Supreme Court has upheld this. Public schools are facing an uphill battle in Arizona. Many of our legislators would love to see the State get out of the education business and see it turned over to private schools and charter schools (which are abundant here). It is up to all of us as voters to demand that our elected representatives support public education. I think it is the most critical issue facing our state, and I just hope that the damage isn’t too great by the time we figure it out.
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Absolutely! Education funding in Arizona is a big shell game for the legislature. Arizona’s tax credit system is only one of the problems. In the last session, our legislature greatly expanded their answer to the unconstitutional voucher system, Empowerment Scholarship Accounts (ESAs.) These ESAs divert public education monies to parents to use for their child’s education as they see fit (with few restrictions.) Sounds like vouchers to me!
Our constitution states: “The legislature shall enact such laws as shall provide for the establishment and maintenance of a general and uniform public school system.” Arizona saw the highest cuts in per pupil spending in the nation from 2008 to 2012 with bonds and override the only way to make that up. Unfortunately, the economic climate has not been favorable for voter approved funding increases so there is not a “uniform public school system”, but some “haves” and many “have nots.” We need a complete overhaul of our school finance system to ensure more equity, more transparency, more effectiveness and yes, more uniformity. The current system allows our legislature to play fast and loose with taxpayer money and is just one of the reasons Arizona ranks 46th in the nation in education performance.
I am currently at Arizona School Board Association’s Summer Leadership Institute conference. We’ve had many interesting sessions with plenty of good ideas. The bottom line is though, the Arizona legislature continues to work hard to decimate public education. If those of us capable of fighting their efforts don’t work equally hard to counter their efforts, good ideas won’t matter, it will be too late.
Our state needs leadership in many areas, but none so much as in education. We do have many forces working on education’s behalf: AZSBA, AEA, and Voices for Education just to name a few. They can’t though, do it alone. It will take each of us who cares about public education needs to wake up and take a stand. If not us, who? If not when, now?
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