Diane Douglas, Superintendent of Public Instruction, had a 20 minute interview with reporter Derek Staahl Monday about the potential teacher walkout. The interview had a number of noteworthy moments, but the jaw dropper was when Douglas went beyond speaking out against the walkout and said public servants should not unionize.

Douglas said during the interview that she doesn't like the idea of a walkout, insisting she's only thinking of the children.

"Stay on the job. Stay in your positions. Show up for work on Thursday. Continue your negotiations with the governor and the legislature. . . . I think there are solutions to this problem, but hurting our families and our children are not one of them."

Douglas wants to call it a strike, not a walkout, because that allows her to add, "In Arizona it is not legal for teachers to strike." Sounding like a third grade teacher addressing her unruly class, she said there might be consequences if the children — I mean, the teachers — don't behave. If they went out on strike, she wouldn't punish them herself, but the principal — scratch that, the State Board of Education — might take action, and you children — I mean, you teachers — wouldn't like that, would you?

"One of the ramifications could be decertification. . . . If they walk out, and I’m not advocating for one way or another, but if parents or citizens file a complaint at the department, we have an investigations unit, and I’ve ensured the board this morning, we will investigate anything that comes. . . . It may not be decertifying them. It may be a letter of censure within their file that goes on their record and is reported to the national database, and if they choose to leave and go teach somewhere else, it can be something that follows them. I would encourage cooler heads to prevail."

Then came Douglas' statement against public servants unionizing. I have a feeling she went a bit farther than she meant to here — I think she meant to say she was against strikes by government workers, not unions — but I'm fairly certain those were her true feelings coming out of her mouth, and it'll be pretty hard to call them back in again.

Here's a golden oldie. See if you remember it. "Teachers shouldn't complain about their pay. They make more than the average worker. When they retire, they live off their generous state pensions. And look at all that vacation time they get. Their cushy pay and perks come courtesy of the teachers union which squeezes money out us taxpayers while it protects bad teachers and doesn't give a damn about the kids."

Did I leave anything out? I don't think so. I know the talking points by heart. I heard them every year when teacher contract time rolled around. The anti-teacher rhetoric grew louder and more frequent over the years as conservatives ramped up their anti-tax, anti-teacher, anti-union, anti-government agenda. The bashing of high paid teachers and their mercenary union became a year round mantra.

Funny though. I haven't heard those talking points much during the past few months. You'd think if there was ever a time to pull out the big "lazy, overpaid teachers" guns, it would be now, what with the demands for higher teacher salaries rolling from West Virginia to Oklahoma to Kentucky to Arizona. Why did all the conservatives stop using what had always been a sure fire winner?

It looks like they got the memo. Literally. A three page memo titled "Messaging Guide: How to Talk about Teacher Strikes" was put out by the State Policy Network, an umbrella organization that pulls together ideas from conservative think tanks and disseminates them to member organizations in all 50 states.

The memo begins by telling conservatives to ditch the "pampered teacher" line.

"A message that focuses on teacher hours or summer vacations will sound tone-deaf when there are dozens of videos and social media posts going viral from teachers about their second jobs, teachers having to rely on food pantries, classroom books that are falling apart, paper rationing, etc. This is a time to sympathize with teachers."

In other words, "We've been out-messaged. We're busted!" All the lies about pampered teachers don't work anymore. Those crafty teachers took unfair advantage by using actual evidence to prove they're underpaid and schools are underfunded. Bummer!

Oh, and don't bring up school choice, another standard conservative answer to anyone who complains about public school salaries and funding.

"It is also not the right time to talk about school choice — that's off topic, and teachers at choice-schools are often paid less than district school teachers."

Ix-nay on the Oice-chay, got it?

So how should conservatives go about bad-mouthing schools and teachers?

With teacher walkouts starting on Thursday, educators statewide are wearing red, waving Red for Ed signs and smiling at honking cars in front of their schools every morning, across Tucson and much of the state, demanding better public education funding.

Statewide, 57,000 votes were counted from public school teachers and staff, and 78 percent voted to walk out, according to Arizona Educators United and Arizona Education Association.

Marea Jenness, a Tucson High Magnet School teacher and leader in the Red for Ed movement, is excited about the vote. She’s been living paycheck to paycheck for years while waiting for a movement like Red for Ed.

“This is just the opportunity of a lifetime, to fight for our schools and public education in Arizona,” she said.

Red for Ed, led by the grassroot group Arizona Educators United, or AEU, has been pressuring Gov. Doug Ducey and the state legislature for weeks to give teachers 20 percent raises, among other things.

“A decade of severe budget cuts have left our classrooms in disrepair, our teachers demoralized and our students shortchanged,” said AZ Schools Now, a nonprofit advocating for better investment in public schools. “Governor Ducey has within his power the ability to end this walkout by collaborating with Red for Ed and the leaders of both parties to find sustainable, permanent and equitable solutions for our schools. Anything less is unacceptable.”

As of Tuesday morning, Ducey hadn’t yet met with either AEU or the teacher’s union Arizona Education Association, although both groups requested to negotiation with the governor.
Arizona educators are currently among the lowest paid in the country. And in response to mounting pressure, Ducey agreed last week to provide 20 percent raises for teachers as well as some additional education funding, but that did not meet all the Red for Ed demands.

“No one wants to see teachers strike,” Ducey said. “If schools shut down, our kids are the ones who will lose out. We have worked side by side with the education community to give teachers a 20 percent raise by 2020. I am committed to giving teaches this raise, and I am working to get this passed at the legislature.”

In a Monday radio interview, Ducey said he doesn’t understand why teachers are walking out when he’s giving them what they want.

But teachers in the movement say that Ducey’s offer falls well short of their demands.

“We’ve been pretty uniform in our message,” said Jason Freed, president of the Tucson Education Association. “Everybody is pretty in agreement that the current plan he has is not a workable one.”
Freed said the educators never wanted a walkout. They want to “get what’s right for kids, educators and schools.”

Teachers in the movement are skeptical that Ducey will find the money for his promised raises if he wins reelection later this year. Apart from their own paychecks, educators are also demanding wage increases for all education support staff, scheduled annual teacher raises, education funding restored to 2008 levels, and no new tax cuts until per-pupil spending reaches the national average.

Educators’ strike will start on Thursday, April 26, across Arizona, according to leaders in the Red for Ed movement.

Votes from all public school teachers and classified staff who chose to participate were tallied last night. Arizona Educators United and Arizona Education Association said they counted more than 50,000 ballots and about 78 percent voted to strike.

Marea Jenness, a Tucson High Magnet School teacher and leader in the Red for Ed movement, said she’s excited about the vote.

“This is just the opportunity of a lifetime, to fight for our schools and public education in Arizona,” she said.

The Red for Ed movement, led by the grassroot group Arizona Educators United, or AEU, has been pressuring Gov. Doug Ducey and the state legislature for weeks to give teachers 20 percent raises, among other things.

Arizona educators are currently among the lowest paid in the country. And in response to mounting pressure, Ducey agreed last week to provide 20 percent raises for teachers over a three-year period as well as some additional education funding, but that did not meet all of AEU’s demands.

“No one wants to see teachers strike,” Ducey said in a prepared statement. “If schools shut down, our kids are the ones who will lose out. We have worked side by side with the education community to give teachers a 20 percent raise by 2020. I am committed to giving teaches this raise, and I am working to get this passed at the legislature.”

Apart from the 20 percent raises for teachers, educators are demanding wage increases for all education support staff that’s competitive with other states, scheduled annual raises for teachers, education funding restored to 2008 levels, and no new tax cuts until per-pupil spending reaches the national average.

Jenness organized one of the first local Red for Ed rallies, which resulted in more than 1,000 educators and allies marching out of their downtown schools earlier this month. She said Tucson High is going to have minimal staff during the strike, mostly administrators and some custodians and cafeteria staff, to make sure the students still get breakfast and lunch. She also said there will be limited bus service.

“We’re prepared to stay out longer than the state is prepared to watch kids not graduate,” Jenness said. “The state of Arizona and the Legislature is going to have to deal with the crisis they create.”

Another complication of strikes is that any day of school closure will have to be made up in order for students to complete grade requirements. Therefore, students who are ready to graduate will still need to complete days they miss.

The Marana Unified School District put out a statement yesterday, signed by MUSD Superintendent Doug Wilson, that said the district hopes such extreme measures as a strike will not be needed.

“Our educators would much rather have the state legislature and Governor implement solutions to address salaries and public school funding,” the letter read. “District Administration and our Governing Board do not support a walkout or any activity that disrupts instruction and negatively impacts our students and families; however, we continue to support advocacy toward greater funding for public education and salaries”

MUSD said the schools will stay open as long as they have enough staff to supervise students. But if they don’t, they will be forced to close, a measure that would be district wide rather than school by school.

The Amphitheater Public Schools district also sent out a letter saying they may be forced to close schools if there are not enough staff to adequately supervise the children. But Amphi will look at school closure on a case by case basis rather than district wide.

Catalina Foothills Unified District also said they may have to close schools if there’s not enough staff to supervise students.

The many fans of Antigone Books can put their fears to rest—almost. The store will not be taken over by a chain. Three young employees of the popular indie Fourth Avenue bookstore have won a loan from the Small Business Administration to buy the business.

“These three women are smart, passionate and hardworking,” says Kate Randall, who with Trudy Mills has operated the 45-year-old store for the last 30 years and owned it for 28. “They have what it takes. They’re also community-minded and they really care about independent bookstores and local businesses. We’re really excited.”

Mills and Randall bought the business in 1990 and have run it ever since. They put it up for sale nearly two years ago.

The three purchasers, Morgan Miller, Kate Stern and Melissa Negelspach, who’ve collectively racked up 15 years working in the store, hope to take ownership in May. But they can’t get their hands on the keys just yet.

They need $32,000 to seal the deal, and they’re hoping to close the money gap through crowd-funding. They’ve just launched an Indiegogo site at igg.me/at/antigonebooks to raise the cash at igg.me/at/antigonebooks. The campaign is already looking good. In the first hour that the site was live on Thursday afternoon, supporters contributed $1,020.

The loan is in place but it comes with upfront costs, the three report on their site. And with plans to take possession of the store in the slow retail season beginning in May, they also need start-up capital to make sure they can pay the staff from day one and continue buying inventory.

They’re already familiar with Antigone’s business procedures. Miller, who holds an MFA in creative writing from the UA, has trained under Mills as the store’s book buyer and took over the job last fall. She’s been with Antigone three years.

Ten-year Antigone veteran Negelspach has learned the ropes of the lucrative gift section of the store from Randall. Currently the assistant buyer, she’ll move up to the chief gift buyer. And Kate Stern, a two-year employee, is already the event planner, a job crucial to Antigone’s trademark array of book readings, book clubs, parties and partnerships with The Loft Cinema and the Food Conspiracy Co-op.

The teacher demonstrations, walk-ins, walkouts and strikes around the country are playing pretty well with the public. That surprises and encourages me. Republicans have led a decades-long onslaught against teachers, beginning in earnest with the "Our schools suck!" rallying cry from the Reagan administration in its 1983 report, "A Nation At Risk." It was a blatantly political scare screed about how terrible our schools—and by extension, our teachers—are. So terrible, they might as well be a Commie plot to destroy our country. Here's the money quote:

"If an unfriendly foreign power had attempted to impose on America the mediocre educational performance that exists today, we might well have viewed it as an act of war."

It's been wall-to-wall anti-public education, anti-teacher, anti-teachers union grandstanding from Republicans ever since.

And yet, public sentiment over the past month has been generally favorable to teachers' demands for better pay and increased school funding. If a savvy politician like our own "[not] Education Governor" Ducey is forced to concede that teachers might have a point, that maybe they deserve a pay raise twenty times higher than what he proposed a year earlier, you know Ducey knows the public is siding with teachers.

I guess the Republican onslaught hasn't been as successful as they hoped. Oh, it's had an impact. In the late 1980s, I was honestly shocked by the growing level of anger directed against my profession—generally parroting conservative talking points — the likes of which I hadn't experienced in my previous 20 years of teaching. But in spite of that, teachers still garner a great deal of respect.

A few recent polls tell the tale. A story in Education Week pulls together the numbers.

Dr. Auggie Romero, principal of Pueblo High School, got screwed by the TUSD board majority when it decided in a 3-2 vote not to renew his contract at the April 10 board meeting. Very likely, current and future Pueblo High students lost out as well.

The story behind the vote against Romero is both simple and complex, depending on how it's told, and it tends to come out differently depending on who's telling it. Let me try and reduce the story to its essentials.

Two years ago, Romero changed the course grades of 6 seniors at Pueblo High from F to D in the last days of the school year, which allowed them to graduate (Actually, one student didn't graduate because he failed another class). In doing so, Romero violated state law and TUSD district policy, both of which state that a principal is not allowed to change a grade given by a teacher. On the surface, that's the primary issue which led the board majority to decide not to renew his contract, though they didn't discuss the issues much before the vote. More on the reasons behind their decision later.

However, the story is more complicated than that, as you learn when you read the 13 page report on the grade changing incident produced by the law firm, DeConcini, McDonald, Yetwin & Lacy. You can read it on the KGUN9 website.

According to the report, the six students complained to Romero that the teacher had not allowed them to make up work they had missed, which led to them failing the class. The report substantiated their claim and said the teacher violated district policy by refusing to allow them to complete the make-up work. Romero gave the students the opportunity to complete the assignments they missed. After their work was graded, each of the students had enough points to pass the class. That's when Romero changed their grades from F to D in violation of state law and district policy.

The law firm's report came to the conclusion that "Dr. Romero was not flouting the law or policy intentionally. I think he believed that the students in question were in fact denied the opportunity to complete the assignments and that, by allowing them to do so, he was simply providing them the opportunity that their teacher should have provided to them under district policy." The report recommends "Dr. Romero be directed not to change students' grades in the future, regardless of the reason." It also recommends that Romero be counseled on better ways to handle similar situations in the future. No further actions are suggested.

Ducey’s offer of a 19 percent raise for teachers is a moving target. Here are a few random thoughts, some of which may be out of date by the time this post hits The Range.

Did Ducey Blink?
Ducey didn’t just blink. His knees buckled, he reached for the white handkerchief in his breast pocket, straightened himself out, waved the kerchief over his head, put on his best smile and tried to pretend his offer of a 19 percent raise for teachers is what he wanted to do all along.

It wasn’t. The teachers forced his hand. Instead of demonstrating, patting themselves on the back and retreating to their classrooms, they refused to go away. They were out last week, they were out this week, and they’ll be out next week in ever growing numbers. It’s a rolling thunder sweeping across the nation, from West Virginia to Oklahoma to Kentucky to Arizona, and the storm is building in intensity. First the media covered the spectacle, then it covered the issues. (Lesson learned: If you want media coverage, earn it. Make a spectacle of yourself, then do it again. Say something outrageous, then say it again. That's catnip for journalists.) Nearly all the coverage has been on the teachers’ side, because the teachers are right and because they impressed the nation with their tenacity, their unity, their fearlessness.

If I sounds like I’m proud of the practicing members of my profession . . . you goddam betcha I am.

Did I See This Coming?
Nope. Didn’t even imagine this moment was possible, let alone that it could come this soon.

Should Teachers Cheer?
Absolutely. They won a big victory. They should cheer for a full minute. Hell, this is a biggie, make it ten minutes. Then get back to the business of guaranteeing increased funding levels for teacher salaries, for support staff salaries, for school repairs, for school supplies — for all the stuff the "Dismantle public schools" Republicans who run this state have refused to pay for.

Pima County Supervisor Ally Miller told a radio show host this morning that she’d support a proposed half-cent sales tax for transportation improvements—but only if Pima County Administrator Chuck Huckelberry agreed to resign from the top post.

Miller told Wake Up Tucson host Chris DeSimone that she would break her promise to voters to never support a sales tax if Huckelberry quit because she is convinced that the longtime county administrator has a “stranglehold” on the county and his removal would eliminate what she views as rampant cronyism in Pima County.

“It will eliminate that cabal, it will stop it,” Miller said. “There will be new people coming in. We’re seeing people retire left and right already. And we’re going to get new people in, and I believe the Board of Supervisors may—even if the same people stay in there—they would stand up and start doing their job. Because right now, they’re completely controlled by Chuck Huckleberry.”

Huckelberry told The Weekly he had a counteroffer.

“I’ll resign the day she’s recalled,” said Huckleberry, who expressed skepticism that Miller would follow through on her promise to support the tax even if he did resign.

“She has a habit of being untruthful,” Huckelberry said. “I think she’s lied once or twice before.”

Huckelberry said the offer to pass an ordinance if a county official resigned is something he’s never seen before in his 43 years in government, but he’s not surprised “because I’ve never seen a supervisor represent her district as poorly as Ally Miller.”

He added that Miller is out to create “false narrative” in order to “for purely political purposes to destroy the brand of Pima County. The brand of Pima County, in my opinion, is pretty strong.”

Miller had a few other conditions for her support of a sales-tax hike, including a promise that all the money from the sales tax go to road repair (she took particular exception to the idea that any money be spend on pedestrian walking signals or bike paths) and all projects go out for competitive bid (which is already done, as required by state law).

Wednesday, teachers "Walked In" all over the state. They gathered outside their schools before class, then walked into the building together. Lots of teachers. We'll have to wait for the news coverage and Facebook posts to know how many. The walk-in is in preparation for a possible walkout. Not a strike, not yet. A walkout. A show of solidarity. Maybe a prelude to a strike, maybe not.

The one near-strike I participated in was way back in the 1970s in a district outside of Portland, Oregon. I remember sitting in the band room after school with the rest of the faculty as the school's union leaders discussed our options with us. Unannounced, the principal walked through the door. "If any of you plan to go on strike," he said, looking around the room, "I want you to come to my office and tell me first."

His words set off a mild rumbling of fear inside my 20-something body. But when he opened his mouth to continue, one of the union leaders, a mild mannered older teacher, interrupted him. "We are holding a union meeting," the teacher said quietly but firmly. "It's after school hours, so we're on our own time. You are not allowed in here. I ask that you leave, now." The principal stood still for a few moments, then turned and left. If we weren't absolutely united before, we were when the door closed behind him.

The district settled with the teachers the next day, so the strike was averted. Otherwise, we were more than ready to walk. [This story isn't a knock on principals or administrators in general, by the way, many of whom are very supportive of their staff. It's just this one guy and this one situation I'm talking about.]

That near-strike moment came to mind as I listened to the way our "education governor" has responded to teacher activism. Ducey's tactic, like my principal back then, is divide and conquer.