Arizona charter school linked to top education lawmaker gets an F

Poor grades aplenty for lawmakers’ schools ... One Arizona state senator got a public tongue-lashing last week after a school she helped found came home last week with an F on its report card.

Sen. Sylvia Allen, R-Snowflake, was called out primarily due to her position as chairwoman of the Senate Education Committee. But she is by no means the only lawmaker connected to schools with less-than-perfect grades. (She is the only one in the group tied to a school with an F, however.)

It seemed only fair that we take a look at all lawmakers connected to a district or charter school:

» Rep. Lela Alston, D-Phoenix, serves on the Phoenix Union High School District Governing Board. Its schools’ grades ranged from A-C, with three schools under review.

» Rep. Paul Boyer, R-Mesa, is chairman of the House Education Committee and a teacher at Great Hearts’ Veritas Prep. The school’s score is under review.

» Rep. Doug Coleman, R-Apache Junction, is a career and technical education teacher at Apache Junction High School. It got a C.

» Rep. Eddie Farnsworth, R-Gilbert, is executive director of the Benjamin Franklin charter schools. Its primary schools got two Bs and a C. The two high schools’ grades are under review.

» Sen. Martin Quezada, D-Phoenix, serves on the Pendergast Elementary School District Governing Board. Its school’s grades ranged from B-D, with two schools under review.

» Rep. T.J. Shope, R-Coolidge, is president of the Coolidge Unified School District Governing Board. Its schools got a C and three Ds.

School grades are under review in cases where the school is either appealing the preliminary grade they were given or the grade remains in question.

Boyer said as a teacher and not an administrator or board member, he can’t take credit for the typically high performance of Veritas. He said he just works to do the best job he can with his students.

Shope said some people may be taking the scores too seriously. He sees it as just one of many things parents can use to determine the best school for their child.

“Everybody likes to get worked out about the A-F,” he said. “I don’t put an over-amount of weight on it.”

He said Coolidge schools actually performed better than expected due to improved test scores from prior years.

“We’re not happy with Ds, but when you compare it over the previous years, we’re showing improvement,” he said. “I hope they continue to improve next year.”

In 2016, the Legislature passed and Gov. Doug Ducey signed into law legislation that made school letter grades a state requirement.

Allen sponsored the bill, and Boyer was a secondary sponsor. It passed both the House and Senate unanimously.

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Tailor-made for a campaign flier ...

U.S. Rep. Martha McSally impressed more than just her constituents in her first term in Congress.

The Arizona Republican ranked as the ninth-most-effective GOP lawmaker in the House of Representatives between 2015 and 2016, according to a ranking based on how their bills fared.

The ranking is part of the Center for Effective Lawmaking, a joint datacrunching effort by professors from the University of Virginia and Vanderbilt University. Their system considers how far in the legislative process bills get, and factors in whether the bills are largely ceremonial, substantive or game-changers, among other things. The resulting scores are compared against others in the lawmakers’ party.

McSally came in first among Republican newcomers and had the highest score of Arizona’s delegation. Two of the 20 bills she sponsored that the Center considered became law. All her bills were labeled as substantive by the Center.

One involved the treatment of cremated remains for those in Arlington National Cemetery. The other directs U.S. Customs and Border Protection to fast-track employment for qualified veterans.

“I think it reflects the approach I’ve taken since I’ve been in the House of Representatives,” McSally said of her ranking. “If I see a problem that needs to be fixed, and if it actually takes an act of Congress to be fixed, because not everything does … then I try to define achievable objectives that can actually make it across the finish line.”

McSally’s more recent activity in Washington, notably her vote supporting the House GOP’s deeply unpopular health care bill, have helped make her among the most vulnerable members of the current Congress.

U.S. Rep. Raúl Grijalva was Arizona’s top-rated Democrat, coming in 15th among his party’s members.

The system, developed by Craig Volden of Virginia and Alan Wiseman of Vanderbilt, ranks members of both the House and Senate back to the 1970s.

U.S. Sen. John McCain ranked 18th among the Senate’s 54 Republicans. U.S. Sen. Jeff Flake finished 27th. Here’s how Arizona’s delegation stacked up:

Republicans (out of 250)

» McSally, 9

» Matt Salmon, 106

» Trent Franks, 110

» Paul Gosar, 125

» David Schweikert, 175

Democrats (out of 193)

» Grijalva, 15

» Kyrsten Sinema, 28

» Ann Kirkpatrick, 118

» Ruben Gallego, 127

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Organ donors save lives ... One of Arizona’s top elections officials has a favor to ask of his cohorts at the state Capitol: Can you help me find a kidney?

Tom Collins, executive director of the Citizens Clean Elections Commission, has a degenerative kidney disease and expects to start dialysis early next year.

Collins is on the waiting list for a kidney transplant, but it can take three to five years — or longer — to find a donor match. The average life expectancy on dialysis is five to 10 years, according to the National Kidney Foundation.

But Collins, who’s quietly lived with the disease for a decade, recently received an outpouring of help in his quest to find a donor.

It started Tuesday with a Facebook post from the people who know Collins best: his parents. Friends started sharing the post, and before long, politicos at the state Capitol caught on.

Arizona lawmakers, lobbyists, attor-

neys and other political types have since widely shared Twitter and Facebook posts asking people to help Collins.

Collins, known for his intense demeanor, said he’s felt overwhelmed by the support. He said he told his mother he wasn’t sure he deserved it given thousands of people are waiting for transplants.

“She said, ‘It’s not really up to you to decide if you deserve it or not. It’s up to God what will happen,’ ” he said.

Collins’ situation caught the attention of many at the Capitol after Samuel Richard, a lobbyist with Creosote Partners, tweeted about it. Richard said Collins is a vital force pushing for transparency in statewide elections.

“I think that the landscape of the Capitol community would definitely be a lot different without him in the boxing ring on a daily basis,” Richard said. “He prosecutes ideas to their fullest extent.”

Collins said he hopes his story will encourage people to become organ donors and to consider donating a kidney to anyone on the waiting list.

Even if a potential donor doesn’t match Collins’ blood type (Type O), their donation could benefit him. The Mayo Clinic has a paired donation program that allows patients with an unmatched donor to find another unmatched patient-donor pair who can, essentially, swap organs.

Collins said he feels humbled by the experience.

However, he said, he plans to be just as outspoken about defending the role of the Clean Elections Commission as ever (the Governor’s Office and the Legislature have sought to shrink the commission’s role).

“I’m still going to irritate people who don’t like Clean Elections,” Collins said with a laugh. “And I’ll do it (defend the commission) with as much energy as I have.”

To learn about kidney donation, visit the Mayo Clinic’s website at www.mayoclinic.org or call 800-344-6296.

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Quote of the week

“To fear the world we have organized and led for three-quarters of a century, to abandon the ideals we have advanced around the globe, to refuse the obligations of international leadership and our duty to remain ‘the last, best hope of earth’ for the sake of some half-baked, spurious nationalism cooked up by people who would rather find scapegoats than solve problems is as unpatriotic as an attachment to any other tired dogma of the past that Americans consigned to the ash heap of history.”

— John McCain, U.S. senator, in a speech accepting the National Constitution Center’s Liberty Medal.

Compiled by Republic reporters Dustin Gardiner, Ronald J. Hansen, Dan Nowicki and Alia Beard Rau. Get the latest at politics.azcentral.com.