The battle over Prop 123 rages on in the MSM, on Facebook . . . everywhere. No need to re-argue the issue here. It's been argued nearly to death by me and others, and by now most people have made up their minds. So far as I know, there's no polling available to predict the outcome. Anyone's guess is as good as mine. But a question as big as the May 17 outcome is, what happens May 18?

The May 17 vote must be seen as the beginning, not the end of the discussion about school funding. Whether the proposition goes up or down, whether some of the money voters demanded for schools in 2000 is restored immediately or in a few years or is tied up in endless lawsuits, at best it's a financial first step in what must be a concerted effort to give our schools the money they need to improve the quality of our children's educations. If passed, Prop 123 will put back about 70 percent of the funds taken illegally from schools. In other words, best case scenario, we'll still be 30 percent below the woefully low educational funding levels of 2009. This is nothing new. It began when the Republicans took over the state's government in 1966 and continued as they solidified their power. (At the end of the post is a graph of the decline in per student funding from an earlier post.)

I'm not sure what form the post-May 17 pressure will take, though there are some early signs of activism. I know right from the start, people have to stand in the way of Ducey's victory lap if Prop 123 passes, or refute his "It looks like voters don't want more money for education" lecture if it fails. Ducey wants to put the funding issue behind him as quickly as he can, and that can't be allowed to happen. 

This week I resigned from the Arizona Education Association, Retired Chapter. I have been a member of AEA since I began teaching in Arizona in 1980. The reason for this resignation was their support for the deceptively worded and band aid proposition 123. I’ve read it thoroughly and it changes the state’s responsibility for funding K-12 and secondary (college level) education. This proposition mitigates state funding by changing the state constitution to lower their disbursements from the general fund for education. This frees up money for tax breaks to large corporations (who funnel monies toward re-election campaigns to elected officials thru lobbying and anonymous organizations).

This proposition also rapidly depletes the state trust lands which were given to the state in 1912, upon entering statehood, by the federal government. This was to be used as a supplemental fund, to help with inflationary costs. It is currently sold at 2.3 percent of principal. Under proposition 123, it will be sold off at about 7 percent a year, diminishing the principal of the fund.

Even though proposition 123 funnels some money towards education, there is no guarantee that the state legislature will continue funding education adequately. When proposition 301 was passed, the tax monies generated for education were not used as a supplement for inflation. Instead, the state legislature subtracted that same amount of money from the education budget. This was a classic bait and switch ploy, with the result of schools, teachers, and students suffering. What needs to be done is for the state to pay the 330 million dollars that the court has ordered it to pay for the schools. This proposition is nothing more than a distraction! We need to elect pro public school representatives to the state legislature and fire those legislators who would destroy public education.

I would like to end with two quotations: The first is attributed to Abraham Lincoln, our first Republican President. “You can fool all the people some of the time, you can fool some of the people all of the time, but you can’t fool all the people all of the time.”

The final quote is from St. Francis of Assisi. “Start by doing what’s necessary; then do what’s possible, and suddenly you are doing the impossible.”

Let’s vote no on Proposition 123 and elect pro education candidates to our state legislature!

Thank you,
Marty Drozdoff

Dear Tucson Weekly:

As a concerned parent/grandparent, public education advocate and TUSD board candidate, I am very worried that the YES campaign on Prop 123 will dominate the media landscape and push through a dangerous and divisive proposition. How, you may ask, can a public education advocate vote AGAINST school funding? My answer is that I do not believe that this is school funding. This is an end-run around having to comply (first) with Proposition 301 legislation that was the will of the voters and (more recently) with a court order demanding compliance with that legislation. Prop 123 is being pitched to us as education funding by a governor who calls himself the "education governor" while presiding over a state that has defunded, for all intents and purposes, universities, technical education and K-12 school districts.

My point of entry into the subject is my brand new granddaughter, Emma, who I hope will have a broad and diverse public education here in TUSD. However, she will not be entering the system for about 6 years, which means that in a very concrete way she will experience the outcome of Proposition 123—an outcome which could be quite horrendous (just ask anyone who lost a home in 2008 if ever-increasing investments is something we can place all of our faith in....) She will never be educated in a public school with more than 49 percent of the budget; if she is, a trigger is tripped and all bets are off. Sorry, little Emma, guess the dream and the state's constitutional responsibility to educate you were just a fantasy!, Meanwhile, my granddaughter’s uncle, my youngest son is a high schooler who will have the huge opportunity to move from number 50 to number 48 in the nation in terms of school funding should Prop 123 be passed. Yes, teachers may receive a raise, but possibly at the cost of future employment, if public education is privatized. (The funds are "undesignated" so it is not even a given that they will in fact be used for teacher raises) Many fear that this Proposition is a "first step" to privatization, and nothing else.

I would like to know, after twice being fooled, just how much trust should we place in either our legislature or our governor? Why twice fooled, you ask? The first time was when the taxpayers supported extra taxation to go to public schools, and the 2008 economic downturn forced a compromise and the legislature canceled payments and used the money for general fund needs. The second time was when we the public all lined up AGAIN to designate a permanent 1/2 cent tax increase to take care of school funding, (to resolve the dire situation that our schools were left in by the first foolishness) only to have the election stolen by this very governor and his dark money friends. So my question here is, who is to be trusted and why?

My "Take it with a grain of salt" graphic is getting a workout lately. I used it when Glenn Hamer, President and CEO of the Arizona Chamber of Commerce and Industry, said education is a big winner in the state budget. I used it again with a report saying district schools have higher graduation rates than charter schools. I should have used it when I posted about U.S. News & World Report's Best High Schools list which always puts BASIS schools in the top ten. Sometimes the claims are purposely deceptive (I'm looking at you, Glenn). Other times they're true but don't mean much. Caveat emptor, folks.

Today I want to extend my heartfelt congratulations to the nine high school students in the Tucson area who were named National Merit Scholars out of a pool of 15,000 finalists. It's a genuine honor for each individual. All of them should be proud. Their parents should be proud. Their schools should be proud.

But separately and with less applause, I want to note where the students go to school. Over half, five out of nine, go to TUSD's University High. Four other schools have one each: Catalina Foothills High, The Gregory School, BASIS Oro Valley and BASIS Tucson North. That's a pretty spectacular showing for UHS and TUSD, especially considering that Catalina Foothill is the only other school district in the area with even a single student chosen. TUSD and UHS, pat yourselves on the back, take a quick bow and move on.

The next time someone tells you charter schools are superior to district schools—because, "Look at BASIS!" "Look at Louisiana!" "Look at [fill in the blank]!"—and has FACTS and FIGURES to back it up, tell them charter schools have a significantly lower graduation rate than district schools, and hit them with some FACTS and FIGURES of your own.

And, by the way, even if both of you have good data, more often than not the comparisons don't mean a hell of a lot when it comes to showing that charters are better that district schools or vice versa.

The seventh annual report on U.S. graduation rates just came out. According to the report:

"Seven percent (7%) of regular district public schools, or roughly 1,000 schools nationwide, were low-graduation rate high schools."

"Thirty percent (30%) of charter schools were low-graduation-rate high schools."

The study is chock full o' stats. Here are a few more. District schools have an average 85 percent graduation rate, while charters have an average 70 percent graduation rate. And if you look at virtual schools—online schools where the students work from home, like the K12 Inc. schools (such as Arizona Virtual Academy), 87 percent are low graduation rate schools, with a shockingly low 40 percent average graduation rate.

If I were anti-charter, which I'm not, and wanted to score points, which I don't, I'd say, "See? All those district schools that the 'education reform'/privatizer folks love to complain about are doing a better job graduating students than the charters they praise to the skies." But that's ridiculous, because these stats, like so many used against district schools, don't lend themselves to direct comparison.

KidsCare is ailing, but help may be on the way. I posted yesterday that it only takes six Republicans to join together and hold a bill hostage, then make demands before they agree to vote for the bill. In this case, fourteen House Republicans joined Democrats and voted to insert language reviving KidsCare into an unrelated bill. Credit where credit is due, they did the right thing. The problem is, it still has a few people standing in the way. Earlier in the session, Senate President Andy Biggs shut down KidsCare legislation, which he knew had the votes to pass, by standing in the way of it getting a hearing. And then there's Ducey's signature. There's no saying what measures these two ideologues might take when faced with the prospect of providing health care for 30,000 children at no cost to the state.

This recent Republican move isn't as bold as withholding votes on the budget until KidsCare is reinstated. If it fails in the Senate or doesn't get Ducey's signature, that means it's too little, too late. I'm hoping this works. We'll see.

Initially, I was concerned that the KidsCare reinstatement was attached to SB 1457, a private school voucher bill. However, it's not one of the big bills that substantially increases funding or the number of eligible children. The bill allows a student who already qualified for one of the Empowerment Scholarship Accounts (aka Vouchers on Steroids) due to a disability to continue receiving funds through the age of 22 if it's determined that the disability still exists. Honestly, I don't know enough about this to have a strong opinion one way or another. I remember in the school district where I worked, some students with disabilities could continue attending high school well after they turned 18, so it isn't an unprecedented move. This sounds like one of those times where the benefits of the compromise far outweigh the possible drawbacks.

Glenn Hamer, President and CEO of the Arizona Chamber of Commerce and Industry, had to talk about how wonderful Arizona's just-passed, reprehensible budget is. After all, it probably has his fingerprints all over it. He wrote a column titled, Education a big winner in state budget.

Um, what?

To appreciate how devious and deceptive Hamer is willing to be, before you read his opening, you have to know that if Prop 123 passes and does what it says it will, it'll mean $300 million more for schools next year. Ready? Here goes.

The Arizona state Legislature has passed a $9.6 billion budget for fiscal year 2017. The spending package is an excellent one for education. This budget and passage of Proposition 123 will result in $300 million more for K-12 than we expected to have at this time last year.

Right. Also, this excellent post of mine and two dollars will buy you a cup of coffee.

You can read the rest on your own if you wish, about how generous the legislature was in putting back the money it tried to steal from our schools, and about how the tax cuts for business encourage job creation. As Hamer wrote, "This is a budget that job creators will like."

The ending is another gem, a bookend worthy of the deceptive opening. In yesterday's post, I commented on the first step-second step circle dance being performed by some Republican legislators. Ducey likes to say that Prop 123 is a "first step" in improving education, implying that a state budget increase for schools is the next step. But some legislators pushed the idea that the budget they just passed is the first step and Prop 123 is the second step. Hamer went in the same direction.

A job well done to the Legislature and Gov. Ducey on this budget. Now let’s take the next step and pass Proposition 123.

So if Prop 123 passes and someone asks, "What's the next step you promised?" the answer may be, "You've got it backwards. Prop 123 is the next step. The first step was passing the budget."

Here's an Arizona civics question: Who are the six most powerful political people in Phoenix? A clue. The answer isn't Ducey, Biggs, Gowan, Cathi Herrod and the two Koch Brothers.

The most powerful people in Phoenix are any six House Republicans who band together and refuse to vote for a bill being pushed by Ducey, Biggs, Gowan, Cathi Herrod and the Koch Brothers. The Arizona House has 60 members, so it takes 31 votes to pass a bill. Republicans have 36 seats. That means if six Republicans decide to join with 24 Democrats to oppose a bill, the result is a 30-30 tie, and the bill goes down.

That's what happened to the Ducey-Biggs-Gowan budget proposal to cut $21 million from K-12 education. A group of Republicans joined together and said they wouldn't vote for it. Just like that, the money was restored. That should have been the beginning. Instead, it was the end. The Mighty 6 decided it was enough to bring the education budget back to zero, no increases, no decreases. They folded their tent, voted for the budget and went home.

Apparently, funding health insurance for Arizona children wasn't important enough for six Republicans—any six Republicans, it didn't have to be the same group—to join hands and say, "No KidsCare, no budget." All the arguments were on their side. Every other state accepted the federal children's insurance plan, every one of them, majority Republican and majority Democrat, hardcore conservative and hardcore liberal. The insurance program wouldn't add a penny to the state budget since the Feds pick up the tab. It would boost the state economy to the tune of almost $80 million in federal money. And it would mean 30,000 kids could see a doctor and have their medical needs attended to. And yet, there weren't six House Republicans who would stand up and say, "Our children's health is too important to end the legislative session without guaranteeing them access to health insurance. No KidsCare, no budget."

With the state budget still very much in flux, it looks like there might be enough money to bring the education budget back to zero—no increases, no cuts. The earlier net $21 million cut to education seems to have been negotiated away, though nothing is written in stone until it's written into law. Also unwritten is whether roads and the Health Insurance Trust Fund will have to take a hit to add the money the Republican leadership wanted to steal from the education budget—which, it can't be said too often, is still $350 million lower than demanded by the law voted in by taxpayers in 2000.

Our universities are getting some money added to the budget, though that's certainly not a case of Republicans getting generous with education. What's being added is nowhere near the $100 million taken away from the universities last year, and $5 million of the money is earmarked for the "economic freedom schools" set up by the Koch Brothers.

Meanwhile, according to Howard Fischer's coverage this morning, it looks like there's enough money lying around to increase the budget for a few items. For instance, we have $26 million to create a new Border Security Strike Force. And there's another $17 million for the folks who run our private prisons to put in a thousand more beds.

I haven't seen any news from Monday's legislative session, so this post is based on Friday's budget stalemate, where Ducey and the Republican leadership proposed a budget that would mean a $21 million net loss for our schools, and enough House Republicans balked at the cuts that the votes weren't there to pass the budget. The somewhat-moderate Republican holdouts told the leadership: replace the school money, and show us the new language so we know what we're voting on, and then we can talk about passing the budget.

Leadership looks like it may be ready to make a deal and replace the funds, which means, barring other problems brought up by Republicans, we may be seeing a budget shortly. But if you think the new money is going to come out of the budget surplus, which is $600 million and counting, think again. In the AZ Republican version of robbing Peter to pay Paul, they plan to rob road funds and Health Insurance Trust Fund money to pay the schools.

The increase would be covered with cuts to several areas, including a $9.5 million decrease in the amount the state will get for roads, a $5.2 million cut in the amount counties and cities will get for roads, and a $21 million transfer from the Health Insurance Trust Fund.

This is the heart of the matter. Along with the $600 million, and counting, budget surplus, there's $430 million in the rainy day fund. That's a total of one billion, $30 million. And they're not even willing to round it off to an even billion to give back the money stolen from schools in the current budget proposal (which, or course, is still $350 million lower than the taxpayers demanded in 2000). Nope. If they have no choice but to replace the money they cut from schools, they plan to cut something else so that billion dollar-plus pot of money stays right where it is and keeps growing. That'll allow Ducey to say, "We're taking more tax dollars from the hard working people of Arizona than we need. It's time to give some of it back" — after which he'll whisper, "Give it back to corporations and my rich friends and supporters, that is. Screw the [suppressed laughter] 'hardworking people.'"