Tomorrow, the teachers of Arizona Walk Out.
Here is a report from the front lines by Linda Lyon, president of the Arizona School Boards Association.
She says that the state is about to be hit by the perfect haboob. A mighty storm.
Archives for category: Arizona
Jessica Marks, Teacher of the Year in Arizona, wrote a guest post for Tim Slekar’s blog “Busted Pencils.” She recounts her journey from being fired at KIPP as a terrible teacher to winning accolades on Arizona. And now, on the verge of walking out, she wonders what she should say to the public.
“On Friday, April 27, I will be giving a speech to a ballroom crowded with 300 people, explaining what it meant to have spent the last year as 2017’s Yavapai County Overall Teacher of the Year.
“”It’s been quite an honor. A flag was waved over the nation’s Capitol in my honor. A declaration about my contribution to education was read on the floor of Congress. I was showered with free vacations, free tuition, and thousands of dollars in prize money. People recognize me at the grocery store.
“And only about four years ago, I was fired from a teaching job. My principal then told me that, on a scale between one and four, I was a 1.5.
“I wonder if he realizes his great loss.
“I wonder, what do you put in a speech that will be published in the paper the next day, read by everyone in your small town, and put under a microscope by everyone who wants to squash the Arizona walk-out movement?
“I have a lot to say and, for the first time, I’m in a place in my life where I am not afraid to say it out loud and sign my name to every hurtful word.
I wonder where I should begin?
“I could talk about how far I’ve come. I mean, after I was fired, I wanted to give up teaching altogether and water plants at Home Depot . . . but Home Depot wouldn’t hire me. I was too broken. Too worn out, exhausted after months of 16 – 20 hour days at KIPP Austin: Academy of Arts & Letters. I’d suffered relentlessly, both at the hands of the students and at the hands of the administration. The kids stole from me, destroyed my things, and threatened me. The administration had pointed video cameras at me all day long to document and criticize everything from my handwriting on the board to my clothing. I was trying to teach messages about endurance and foster a love of learning in students that hated school and couldn’t read or write in English. I failed miserably. KIPP discarded me.
“I came home to Arizona after being fired at the pleading of my family and my left-behind boyfriend. I felt lucky that anyone would want me at all, me being so tarnished and useless. My friend told me to apply at a local middle school because “they would hire anyone.” They hired me.
“I gave every bit of my heart and energy and determination to those students. Now, just a few years later, I’m recognized as one of the best educators in the entire state…
“I could use my few minutes on the stage as a platform to speak up for the deplorable conditions of Arizona’s education system. My textbooks are 25 years old. I don’t have one desk that is not mutilated or broken. Every Post-It, pen, or pencil that I use in the classroom has been provided by myself or the generosity of my students’ families. At the beginning of the year, my classes were packed with 36 – 40 students in each one.
“I have had two students try to kill themselves this year. Two of my students have moms who were murdered. I have students living in their cars and motels. My students have withdrawn from school so they can go to prison. We don’t have a social worker on campus. We DO have a school psychologist (though she is TERRIBLY overwhelmed, diagnosing learning disabilities all day and writing IEPs) and three school counselors – but their job is to make sure every student can graduate on time – not give private therapy about traumatic events. But we are having success! I build lessons and create learning with no budget and no help! My students trust me, even though I was a failure before. We rise.”
Linda Lyon is the new president of the Arizona School Boards Association. She is familiar with the Legislature’s disdain for local control and their contempt for the public schools that 95% of the children in the state attend.
She writes here about the Governor and the Legislature’s empty promises, which have precipitated a likely statewide walkout.
”It is clear that there are many different approaches to achieving a goal that all seem to now agree on – Arizona’s teachers must be more adequately compensated. After all, teachers’ working conditions are students’ learning conditions. That in itself, is no small achievement. But, if we can’t deliver on that goal, it doesn’t matter how much we agree.
“A major stumbling block to “peaceful” resolution is obviously the lack of trust the public education community has in Governor Ducey. As Laurie Roberts, of The Republic, writes, “Ducey didn’t create the crisis in Arizona’s public schools. But in the first three years and three months of his four-year term, he didn’t do anything to fix it. Didn’t recognize that while he and his pals were focused on ways to boost private schools, the public schools – the ones attended by 95% of Arizona’s children – were suffering.” Roberts goes on to say that, #20by2020 (Ducey’s plan) may make for a “trendy hashtag”, but teachers know the funding for Arizona’s public schools is still almost one billion below where it was in 2008 when inflation is considered. And that doesn’t even include the billions in capital funding the state has withheld. The result Roberts says, “is 25-year-old biology books and roofs that leak. The result is rodents running amok and schools unable to afford toilet paper.” The result is a set of poorly paid teachers and support staff who are tired of being ignored and are now shouting “Can you hear us now?”
“This next week is going to be a cliff-hanger for our entire state. One thing is fairly certain. If Governor Ducey and our GOP-led Legislature hasn’t yet adequately “heard” our teachers and other education advocates, incoming shouts from all corners of our state, will no doubt drown out their ability to focus on much else. This issue isn’t going away and our lawmakers better start thinking outside the box they’ve cornered themselves in.”
Dana Goldstein writes in the New York Times about the looming teachers’ strike (walkout) in Arizona, a right to work state, where most teachers do not belong to the Arizona Education Association. The state has cut $1 Billion out of the K-12 education budget since the 2008 recession, and is currently among the lowest-spending states in the nation on education. The tax-cutting Governor Doug Ducey has promised a 20% raise by 2020, but has offered no new taxes or revenue source to back up his promise. The New York Times is fortunate to have Dana Goldstein working the education beat because she is knowledgeable, having written “The Teacher Wars,” a history of the teaching profession in the U.S.
She writes:
Arizona educators voted late Thursday in favor of a statewide walkout, as teacher protests over low pay and school funding continued to sweep across the United States.
The spread of the protests to Arizona from West Virginia, Oklahoma and Kentucky, all Republican-dominated states with weak public sector unions, signaled the depth of frustration from teachers and parents over years of education budget cuts.
The movement first arose in West Virginia, where teachers walked off the job in February, winning a $2,000 raise. In Oklahoma, the threat of a walkout garnered a $6,000 raise for teachers, but they still picketed the Capitol for nine days, calling for additional school funding that mostly did not come. In Kentucky, teachers have rallied outside the State Capitol to protest changes to their pension plans and to demand more money for schools.
“It’s clear that our educators are inspired by what they’ve seen in West Virginia and Oklahoma and Kentucky,” said Joe Thomas, president of the Arizona Education Association, the state’s largest teachers’ union. “They see educators rising up and lifting their voices for their students, and doing so in a way that can’t be ignored.”
The vote in Arizona followed weeks of protest across the state and promises from the governor to raise salaries. The Arizona Education Association and Arizona Educators United, a group of teachers who organized independently on Facebook, said that 78 percent of the teachers and school workers who cast ballots supported a walkout.
The groups said the walkout would take place on April 26 if legislators and the governor did not meet their demands, not only for a raise for teachers but also one for school support staff. They also called for an end to tax cuts until Arizona’s per-pupil spending reaches the national average.
Unlike West Virginia and Oklahoma, Arizona has never before had a statewide teacher walkout, and has experienced only a handful of districtwide strikes over the past four decades.
The state has cut approximately $1 billion from schools since the 2008 recession, while also cutting taxes. It spent under $7,500 per pupil annually in 2015, the last year for which census data was available; only Utah and Idaho spent less.
As in the other states where teachers have picketed, many districts in Arizona are facing teacher shortages in subjects like math, science and special education, with principals reporting that staff members are moving to deeper-pocketed states to earn up to $20,000 more per year, or to work in better-funded classrooms.
Noah Karvelis, an elementary school music teacher and the founder of Arizona Educators United, said he was sympathetic to the disruption that widespread school closings would cause students and parents. But, he said, that should not forestall a walkout.
“If we maintain the status quo, that is way worse than missing a couple of days of school,” Mr. Karvelis said at a news conference outside the union headquarters in Phoenix. “The biggest disservice any of us could do for our students right now is to not act in this moment.”
Across Arizona, tens of thousands of teachers, parents and students, clad in red, participated in protests outside schools on April 11. Gov. Doug Ducey said he was “impressed” by the movement, which calls itself #RedForEd. He promised to provide teachers with a 20 percent raise by 2020, and to restore school budgets to pre-Recession levels over the next five years. He said he could do so without raising taxes, because the state’s economy is improving and existing state programs could be cut.
But many teachers rejected that plan, or said they distrusted Mr. Ducey, a first-term Republican.
“You don’t rob Peter to feed Paul,” said Kassandra Dominguez, who teaches kindergarten and first grade in the Pendergast school district, near Phoenix. “That’s so wrong, and I wouldn’t want that money.”
Alternate proposals for raising school budgets include increasing an education sales tax from six-tenths of a cent to one cent, or closing corporate tax loopholes.
The average teacher salary in Arizona is about $47,000 per year, according to the National Center for Education Statistics. But starting salaries are much lower, and many teachers leading the protest movement are in their 20s and 30s.
Ms. Dominguez, 27, earns $38,250 per year, and says that because of low education budgets, she has had to pay out of pocket, or raise money from private donors, to buy her students science supplies, chairs and snacks. She voted in favor of a walkout. Her district had lost a total of $1.6 million over the past five years because of budget cuts, according to administrators, and the school board had come out in favor of the #RedForEd movement.
In San Tan Valley, an exurban area an hour southeast of Phoenix, Mary Stavely, an elementary schoolteacher, said she had also voted in favor of a walkout. Ms. Stavely, 34, earns $36,800. Thirteen of 38 teachers at her school, Circle Cross Ranch K-8, are planning to resign at the end of this academic year, she said, because of factors like low pay and a lack of rental housing in the area.
“It directly affects students” when teacher turnover is high, Ms. Stavely said, because children “lose morale and the connections that were made” with caring adults. Ms. Stavely, a single mother, is currently living with her parents, and said she has considered looking for a higher-paying job. Still, she said she had spent her spring break going door to door to recruit parents to enroll their children at her public school. Arizona has aggressively expanded charter schools and private school vouchers in recent years, leading to enrollment declines — and potential budget cuts — for some traditional schools.
More than 57,000 educators filled out a ballot in the Arizona walkout vote. There are approximately 90,000 certified teachers in the state, but only 20,000 members of the Arizona Education Association, the union. As in the other red states that have had recent teacher protests, union membership is optional for Arizona educators, and labor organizing is new for many of them.
Among those who oppose a walkout is Jim Segar, 64, a colleague of Ms. Stavely’s at Circle Cross Ranch K-8 and a physical education teacher.
Mr. Segar said the proposal from Mr. Ducey was the best teachers could realistically hope for. “You can’t get everything at once after years of neglect,” he said. “I think people would be crazy to walk or strike now.”
Arizona teachers have voted overwhelmingly to walk out in response to state budget cuts over many years. Here is news from Linda Lyon, president of the Arizona School Boards Association.
Arizona, like West Virginia, Oklahoma, and Kentucky, is a “right to work” state.
Here is the press release from the Arizona Education Association.
“Today, the Arizona Education Association (AEA) and Arizona Educators United (AEU) announced in front of AEA headquarters, that 78 percent of 57,000 Arizona educators voted to walk out of Arizona’s schools – citing 10 years of drastically underfunded schools resulting in overcrowded classrooms, crumbling infrastructure, and low wages for educators. Facebook video | YouTube video
“After years of starving our schools, some classes are stuffed with kids, while others sit empty because there isn’t a teacher to teach,” says AEU organizer and Littleton elementary music teacher Noah Karvelis. “The #RedforEd movement has provided educators the opportunity to voice what action they want to take in an historic statewide vote.”
“This vote was not an easy decision for educators,” says AEA Vice President and Isaac Middle School teacher Marisol Garcia. “As I turned in my ballot today, I thought about my son, my colleagues, and my students. By voting today, I am standing up for my son and all students in Arizona and the public schools they deserve.”
“We’re using textbooks from the 1990s because there’s no money for books. That’s just one of the reasons we’re fighting to make Arizona’s kids, schools and educators a higher priority in the governor’s office,” says AEA President and Mesa government teacher Joe Thomas.
“As educators, the students are at the center of everything we do. Every student deserves a chance at a quality education, and access to services like nutrition, health, and after school programs.
“The decision to walk out also comes on the heels of weeks of #RedforEd walk-ins and a disingenuous budget proposal from the governor that claimed a raise that excluded support professionals like counselors, bus drivers and cafeteria workers – and was not supported by actual funding.
“Education isn’t just a job, it’s a calling. That’s why we’re walking out,” said Noah.”
Ed Berger, retired teacher, lives in Arizona and fights for the return of honest government.
He writes:
Arizona Government Does Not Match The Decency And Will Of Its People
We live in Arizona. We are decent, law abiding, citizens. So why is Arizona considered one of the most corrupt states in America? Why is Arizona often the example of how Democracy can be subverted? Why is our state out of sync with its population? What is wrong? Arizona government does not match the values of our citizens.
What can we do to make our elected representatives reflect the decency and will of the people? We must vote to remove those who corrupt the democratic process and their elected positions by accepting Dark Money.
Let’s examine a recent Senate/House vote. House Bill 2153 was passed into law over the objections of community leaders and citizens of all political parties and went into effect April 2, 2018. It prohibits any local government requirement to identify contributors to local political campaigns. Seventeen Senate members and thirty-three House members approved this measure and Governor Ducey signed it into law. This runs counter to initiatives by many communities acting in the public interest to expose Dark Money and its’ use to buy and place representatives and government leaders. They want to stop the covert, negative and destructive methods of oligarchs that bypass the citizen’s right to elect representatives they have vetted and chosen.
This is a current example of how the will of the people was ignored. To clean AZ government, we can study how representatives voted on key issues like this one, share their deeds, and get the bad ones gone. What We The People now have is a list of the seventeen senators and thirty-three house members who sold us out.
Prescott is still reeling from the effect of Dark Money in recent elections. In the race for District #1, few know that DeVos money (Dark Money) went to support a candidate this community rejected. With access to DeVos money and the use of gerrymandering, the citizen’s candidate was undermined and defeated. His opponent won and now owes DeVos bigtime. The recent mayoral election in Prescott is another example of how democracy is subverted by money and power. Those elected to represent us in the legislature are too often there because they owe allegiance to those who want our government to serve them, and not the people.
When one is aware of this fact, we can begin to understand how tens of millions of our taxpayer dollars have not only been mismanaged but have gone into the pockets of privatizers and profiteers. For many years, our legislature has passed and supported laws that do not allow accounting or transparency for how taxpayer public dollars are spent by charter schools. They have also done away with conflict of interest rules that would make it a criminal offence for legislators to use public money and position for personal gain. In addition, they have done away with democratically elected schools boards in favor of private corporate boards to oversee charter schools. Real public schools have elected school boards. But those who control the legislature have eliminated the tools of transparency and accountability that protect our investment in public education from being siphoned off from the needs of children and into the pockets of privateers.
This has been done to our state. Captive and bought members of the legislature have created uncounted millionaires by directing our money to friends, family, and those they support ideologically. This has been done out of pure greed. Ideologically it is done to starve and damage our public schools because they are “government schools” and have not yet been privatized for profit, not for kids. These are our schools, the ones over 80% of AZ citizens want to support and improve.
These are two on the many examples of the subversion of the democratic process. Yavapai County is reported to be a Republican stronghold. Some say people here always voted a straight “R” ticket. That may have been true years ago. Today Yavapai County is not Republican or Democrat or Independent. The citizens of this county have learned that the state government is not GOP, but rather a Koch, Goldwater Institute, APS, ALEC assembly of people who often describe themselves a Libertarians, which roughly translated means, ‘We have the right to rape, rip, and run if it serves us. We have the right to access for our personal gain the taxes citizens pay. We believe in privatizing all public resources, including prisons, schools and government functions.’ If one votes a straight “R” ticket what they are getting is a “Koch” ticket. Times have changed and now the legislature and governor are owned by forces that serve only themselves. Too often our politicians dance with the ones who ‘brung’ them.
So how do we win back the respect of other Americans and our decency as a people?
#1 We identify the legislators and political leaders that are owned by outside forces. We do this by examining their voting records and red tag all who have voted for laws that restrict financial accountability, shield members from conflicts of interest, and favor those who profit from privatizing prisons, schools, and public services.
#2 We share our information, educate our friends and neighbors, and support candidates that, regardless of political party affiliation, represent us and our community.
#3 We vote after vetting the candidates.
Arizona has a government that is devoted to low taxes. It’s schools are underfunded and its teachers have the lowest salaries in the nation because the governor and the legislature doesn’t want to raise taxes to pay for public services like education.
“Gov. Doug Ducey inked his approval Monday to extending the 0.6-cent sales tax for education until 2041 as an education group that helped pressure for legislative action is mapping out what it plans to do to get some new money into classrooms — including a possible strike.
“Noah Karvelis, a music teacher at Tres Rios Elementary School in Tolleson, said the “Red for Ed” demonstrations that may have helped push lawmakers and the governor to approve the extension will continue. But he said teachers are hoping for a broader agenda, including a demand that the tax cuts that have been annual features of the Ducey administration as well as of predecessor Jan Brewer come to a halt.
“But that’s not going to happen.
“Gubernatorial press aide Daniel Scarpinato said his boss remains committed to a tax break for military retirees, exempting the first $10,000 of their pensions from state income tax. The figure is currently $2,500, the same as for retirees from other government agencies.”
“That carries a price tag of $15 million a year when fully implemented.
“Scarpinato said Ducey is not interested in other cuts this year. But he said that the future of other tax breaks making their way through the legislature, including a reduction in taxes on capital gains being pushed by House Speaker J.D. Mesnard, R-Chandler, will have to be part of whatever deal Ducey reaches with GOP legislative leaders.”
Karvelis says he is earning less than $30,000 a year and is carrying $30,000 in student debt.
Arizona aleady has a 5% sales tax. Sales taxes are the most regressive form of taxation.
“While Democrats supported the extension, they made it clear that none of this does anything to meaningfully lift teacher salaries from at or near the bottom of the various national rankings. Several said that additional $64 million translates to about $18 a week per teacher, before taxes.”
Arizona Governor Doug Ducey agreed to a 20% pay raise for teachers by 2020 after previously offering only 1%, on top of last year’s 1%..
Teachers are wary.
“The Associated Press notes that the educators “were also seeking increased pay for support professionals, a permanent raise structure, and a freeze on corporate tax cuts until per-pupil spending reaches the national average.” Ducey’s proposal didn’t include more spending on those items.”
“On Wednesday, Arizona teachers staged a statewide “walk-in,” demanding an increase in pay and more funding for schools overall. And, organized by a recently formed advocacy group, Arizona Educators United, teachers had also discussed the possibility of staging a walkout if Republican lawmakers refused to reinstate about a $1 billion in cuts in state education funding over the last decade.
“The governor’s proposal includes a 9 percent increase that would go into effect this fall, bringing the median teacher salary in Arizona to $52,725.
“Ducey also pledged to give teachers a 5 percent increase in the fiscal year 2020 budget, and another 5 percent in the year after that.
“Those increases, coupled with the 1 percent increase teachers were given last year, would add up to the 20 percent raises and make the average teacher salary $58,130, Ducey said.
“As Casey Kuhn, reporter for NPR member station KJZZ wrote, Arizona teachers are among the lowest paid in the country, according to federal data. Average salaries last year were actually $8,000-$9,000 less than 1990 salaries when adjusted for inflation.”
An article I read today but will post tomorrow said that Republicans planned to link the pay offer to their voucher expansion proposal, which educators and parents have been fighting and which will be the subject of a statewide refendum, unless the Republicans find a sneaky way to keep it off the ballot.
Governor Ducey refuses to meet with teacher leaders to discuss their demands, as teachers prepare for mass walkouts to protest cuts in funding and low salaries.
“The governor’s statement comes less than a week after a request by Noah Karvelis of Arizona Educators United and Joe Thomas of the Arizona Education Association “to begin a negotiation process to resolve the #RedForEd demands.” Those include not just a 20 percent salary increase to compete with neighboring states, but also restoring education funding levels to where they were a decade ago.”
Ducey has offered a 1 percent raise, added to an earlier 1 percent raise.
I have said it before, and I will say it again. Giving letter grades to schools is stupid. How would you feel if your child came home from school with only a single letter grade? If you are a parent, you would be furious. Rightly so. Every child has strengths and weaknesses, is good at this, not so good at that, getting better at this, not interested in that. Can you sum up a child as an A child, a B child, a C child, a D child or an F child? I don’t think so.
Yet, following the bad ideas spun out of Jeb Bush’s brain, red states have adopted the letter grading strategy for entire schools. Schools that have strengths and weaknesses, areas in which they are doing magnificently, and areas where they can improve. Every school consists of millions of moving parts, yet the letter grade assumes that a single letter can sum up the school. This is truly stupid.
Reporter Lily Altadena spent time in a D rated junior high school in Arizona. What she describes is a good school with a good principal, and students who are doing their best to do better. Yet the school was rated a D. The principal is heartbroken. The school is her baby. The children are her children. Yet the school is stigmatized as a D school. What will parents think? Will they pull their children out and send them to the fly-by-night charter school down the street or across town? Will the school fall into a death spiral?
The letter grades correlate with the school’s affluence or poverty. In effect, the school is punished because it enrolls too many high-poverty students.
Only an idiot or a malevolent fool would subject schools to this kind of cruel judgment.
Diane Ravitch's blog 