Save Our Schools Arizona
Weekly Education Report
56th Legislature, 2nd General Session
Volume 6, Issue 31• Week of August 11, 2024
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Public Ed Champ Gov. Walz is VP Nominee 🎉
Kamala Harris has tapped Minnesota Governor and public school teacher and champion Tim Walz as her running mate — and public education advocates across Arizona and the US are celebrating! 🎉 Walz is a rural high school social studies teacher and football coach who has championed and passed robust pro-public education policies and has staunchly defended local public schools, educators, and students.
Walz: A Pro-Public Education, Pro-Student Governor. Walz taught high school in Nebraska, where he also coached junior high girls’ basketball, before moving to rural Minnesota to become a history teacher and football coach at Mankato West High. His wife, Gwen, is a lifelong educator who also taught at the school before becoming a district administrator.
As governor of Minnesota, Walz forged a reputation as someone who makes good policy happen — especially when it comes to public schools. In 2023 he signed a law guaranteeing free breakfast and lunch to all Minnesota students, ensuring no child will have to learn on an empty stomach. Asked whether the policy made him too progressive, Walz joked, “What a monster. Kids are eating, eating and having full bellies so they can go learn… if that’s where they want to label me, I’m more than happy to take the label.”
Last year, the Minnesota governor’s sweeping education-focused budget gave Minnesota K-12 schools a major funding boost, funded unemployment benefits for hourly school employees during summer when schools are closed, and aimed to reduce childhood hunger and poverty by continuing a lapsed federal policy, a $1,750 per-child low-income tax credit. Walz was purposeful about putting the state’s $17.5 billion surplus to work, saying, “We’re going to put it behind our teachers so we can educate our children.”
Walz also signed into law a financial aid program giving free college tuition to students whose families earn less than $80,000 a year.
Taking Strong Public-School Values to the White House. In the interview that kicked off the trend of calling MAGA ideas “weird,” Walz described “strong public schools” as a “shared value” for Americans while decrying book bans. “Who’s asking for this crazy stuff?… Who’s sitting in a bar in Racine, Wisconsin, saying, ‘You know what we really need? We need to ban Animal Farm.’ Nobody is!”
Big Educator Energy
Walz’s relatable everyman image is bolstered by a seemingly innate ability to poke fun at himself. When one Twitter post compared Walz’s appearance unfavorably to Harris’ by asking “how on earth are these two people the same age,” another poster responded, “Because Tim Walz taught high school. Trust me.” Walz joined in the joke, adding: “And supervised the lunchroom for 20 years. You do not leave that job with a full head of hair. Trust me.”
An Example and Lifeline for All Students. Walz also coached the school’s football team, helping turn a winless squad into state champions while earning his players’ trust. “I don’t want to be dramatic about it, but he maybe saved my life,” said one former linebacker who says he hung out with the wrong crowd before Walz showed him care on and off the field that he’d never experienced from a teacher before.
He also offered to serve as the first faculty adviser to his high school’s newly formed gay-straight alliance in the mid-1990s. The first openly gay student at Mankato West High described the importance and impact of that decision: “The fact that he took on that role while also being the football coach was so important. He set an example not just for LGTBQ students but for football players in the locker room at a time where gay people were not well understood. He made the school a safe place for everybody.”
🗳️ Public Education is On the Presidential Ballot. Trump and Project 2025 drew the battle lines by attacking public education and proposing universal school vouchers designed to decimate local public schools. We share the vision Harris and Walz have for America and for moving public schools forward — and so do the #PublicSchoolProud candidates on Arizona’s November ballot!
Election Day is *ONLY 12 weeks* away!!!!
Check out our endorsed legislative candidates and our first round of endorsed school board candidates — then come out and knock doors with us to help spread the word!
💪 Take Action! See the “Take Action” section for ways to plug in to canvasses, phonebanks, and other ways to help. We CAN get this done — if everyone does their part!
Voucher Watch
Arizona Center for Investigative Reporting’s Maria Polletta released a deep dive into Arizona’s universal voucher program, highlighting how it has informed Project 2025 — the far right policy playbook for a second Trump presidency: “When it comes to overhauling public education, the sweeping right-wing manifesto borrows heavily from Arizona’s playbook.”
As Polletta points out, Project 2025 lays out an “aggressive roadmap for dismantling the federal Department of Education, rethinking funding for low-income students and those with disabilities, and broadly diverting public school dollars to less-regulated alternatives like private schools and homeschooling” — aka, ESA vouchers.
Polletta notes, “That’s precisely how school vouchers work in Arizona… Heritage education policy expert Lindsey Burke, who authored Project 2025’s education section, references Arizona as a school choice pioneer almost immediately. Burke also advocates a change to the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act that would partially redirect IDEA funding to families instead of schools, citing “the way in which parents use education savings accounts in states such as Arizona and Florida.” And she promotes a funding model in which donors receive tax credits in exchange for contributions to nonprofits that provide private school scholarships, much like Arizona’s school tuition organizations, or STOs.”
“Burke and others from the Heritage Foundation, which declined an interview with AZCIR, use conservative buzzwords like ‘freedom’ and ‘choice’ to sell their vision of a new educational landscape that empowers parents to select a ‘set of education options that meet their child’s unique needs.’ But experts in education policy and constitutional law suspect a much different endgame: setting public schools up to fail by stripping their funding while concentrating higher-need, harder-to-educate kids there.”
“The implications for students and public schools and the communities that rely on them are disastrous. And Arizona, unfortunately, is Exhibit A.”
— Jessica Levin, litigation director at the Education Law Center
The report finds: “Former U.S. Education Secretary Betsy DeVos’ American Federation for Children, the Koch brothers’ Americans for Prosperity and the American Legislative Exchange Council have all doggedly pushed for expansions in vouchers and other school choice programs throughout the country in recent years, using Arizona as a proving ground.”
“Libertarian think tank the Goldwater Institute, the primary architect of Arizona’s ESA program, has repeatedly said it ‘won’t stop until parents in every state in the nation are empowered to decide what educational path truly meets their children’s needs,’ though it declined to discuss the implications of Project 2025’s voucher proposal with AZCIR… But in most cases, it’s Republican lawmakers, not families, who have pushed hardest to make it easier for public dollars to go toward private alternatives.”
“Every time major voucher expansions have been put to the public, including in Arizona, voters have rejected them.”
Don’t forget to read the full story here: https://azcir.org/news/2024/08/05/project-2025-arizona-education-model/
Around the Horne
ICYMI: The ADE announced earlier this month that $29 million in federal funding would revert back to the government due to a missed deadline. Horne continues to blame his predecessor Kathy Hoffman for the abject failure of his department, but he has been serving as Superintendent for more than a year and a half — when will he stop passing the buck and take responsibility for the mistakes of his administration?
In what has become a pattern, Horne’s ADE has once again left local schools in the dark as they deal with substantial budget cuts as the school year begins. Districts received no explanation for how the cuts were calculated or whether they are being doled out equitably.
Mistaken priorities: It is evident that Supt. Horne has prioritized serving ESA voucher students and expanding the program — instead of serving 1.1 million students enrolled in public schools across Arizona.
Worse, the ADE is cutting funding to Arizona’s highest need students while at the same time spending millions to advertise the ESA voucher scheme. While Horne claims that vouchers have had no impact on public school funding, this simply isn’t true. If the ADE wasn’t squandering taxpayer dollars on voucher advertising, they could backfill these much needed school improvement funds. We’ve said it before and will say it again, but our schools deserve better.
Take Action!
🔥 It’s time to take action to change the future of our democracy! 🔥
See full details and register for upcoming events!
#PublicSchoolProud Phonebanks
Thursday, August 15 – 5:30-7:30pm
Paradise Valley LD 2 w/ Rep. Judy Schwiebert & Stephanie Simacek
Have you taken the Public Ed Pledge yet? It’s easy and helps build our movement of public education voters. In addition, you’ll receive SOSAZ’s Voter Guide prior to the November election! Pledge and share with your friends today!
Upcoming Events!
SOSAZ VIRTUAL Game Night FUNdraiser!
August 28th — 5:30-7pm
Join us for hilarity, games, prizes, dancing and more 🎉
Bad Faith *Virtual* Film Screening & Discussion
Wednesday, September 4 – 6:00-8:00pm
Read about this powerful documentary here.
Shoe Drive for Tempe Students!
August, 17th, 2024 at Tempe High School from 9am to 1pm
- Raising 1,500 pairs of shoes & 1000 backpacks
- Donate HERE – THANK YOU!
Vote 4 Public Ed Shop
NEW SWAG HAS ARRIVED!!
For a limited time, donate to receive a special package with everything you need for the election cycle, including t-shirt, tote bag, car magnet, and newly designed vinyl stickers!
Public School Proud!
Check out some incredible pictures and stories from across the state that make us #PublicSchoolProud!
Know a story you think we should spotlight? Send an email to tyler@sosarizona.org to let us know!
✨ This week we want to give an extra special shoutout to Stephen from Flagstaff Unified! Stephen was diagnosed with Stage Three Anaplastic Astrocytoma brain cancer and was offered the opportunity to have a Make-A-Wish experience. Being the selfless person that he is, Stephen asked for Make-A-Wish to support his Flagstaff Eagles football team rather than himself! Make-A-Wish, with the support of Riddel and the Larry Fitzgerald Foundation, donated 55 brand new helmets for the entire team! He also received a personal message from Larry Fitzgerald himself. We are happy to report that Stephen is now on the road to recovery!
Congratulations to Cesar Chavez High School in Phoenix Union for earning the 2023-2024 PXU Academic Achievement award for all large comprehensive schools AND the 2023-2024 PXU Athletic Program of the Year. Cesar Chavez High School is using this opportunity to remind their community what is so great about local, neighborhood, public schools!! “No need to send your child around a mountain. We send students to universities all across the country from Ivy League to HBCUs and everything in between.” 🔥
Fort Thomas High School welcomed members of their community to share inspirational messages with students to kick off the new school year!
We are excited to announce SOSAZ’s *NEW* Public Education Defense Fund, which will protect Arizona students’ right to a safe, quality, accessible public school in their community.
Every dollar contributed to this fund will go directly towards electing pro-public education candidates up and down the 2024 ballot, from school board to the state legislature.
Donate to SOSAZ’s Public Education Defense Fund Today!
Building a strong Public Education Defense Fund is essential to fighting back against increasingly dangerous political agendas that threaten our students’ right to learn in safety, acquire a truthful understanding of science and history, and succeed in excellent public schools.
Your contributions will help us recruit, elect, and support public education champions running for local school boards and the Arizona state legislature, shifting the balance of power at the Arizona state legislature towards one that will prioritize, fund, and defend Arizona’s public school students, educators, and classrooms.
Thank you for helping us work toward a future where a high-quality, fully-funded public education is available to all Arizona students.
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