Douglas still misses the mark on #RedForEd
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State Superintendent Diane Douglas is once again demonstrating why a number of her fellow Republican leaders are standing up …
… and supporting someone else for the job of overseeing the state’s schools.
Douglas has generally been a nonentity when it comes to fixing what ails Arizona’s public schools.
Long before Gov. Doug Ducey suddenly sprinted to hop aboard the education bandwagon this spring — knowing his re-election depended on it — Douglas recognized that schools need a cash infusion.
“As a state, do we want the best education system in the United States, or the cheapest system we can get by with?” she asked in 2016, while unveiling her $680 million plan to raise taxes to pay for teacher raises, school repairs and new buses.
The reaction to her plan: crickets. Nobody listened, largely because Douglas early in her term squandered whatever potential power she had by engaging in petty feuds and turf battles with Ducey and the state Board of Education — and then, later, by her silence.
She was a virtual nonentity in the debate over both voucher expansion and Prop. 123.
She wasn’t silent when teachers walked out this spring. In fact, she pitched a fit, warning #RedForEd teachers not to strike.
The fact that they did — though they called it a walkout — is now solidly stuck in her craw.
And so, she says, teachers must be punished.
The state Board of Education was all set to talk this week about how it could discipline teachers who walked out, but quickly backed off once it became public.
It is, after all, bad optics to ponder punishing teachers for a movement that at long last has made public schools a priority in this state.
Besides, what are you going to do, fire them all?
Douglas, however, is not backing off. While Ducey astutely says it’s time to move on, Douglas says she’s not willing to let teachers off the hook for what she believes was a violation of their contract.
“If nobody’s ever willing to take action, then I guess we just say striking’s legal in Arizona, so, Legislature, pass a law that says public servants can strike,” Douglas told Capitol Media Services’ Howard Fischer on Tuesday.
Douglas wants the school board to consider what it can do to discipline the teachers, noting that children “may have been almost irreparably damaged” by the walkout.
“What does it mean when someone strikes and breaks the law?” Douglas asked. “What does it mean when all
our teachers walk out?”
I’d say it likely means that they were fed up, finally, with a decade of neglect that left teachers fleeing the classroom and students “irreparably damaged” — not by six days of no school, but by 10 years of a substandard investment in their education.
I’d say it likely means that new leadership is needed in this state — leadership that focuses more on the 95 percent of Arizona students who attend public schools and less on creative ways to siphon public money to private schools.
You’ll see that debate playing out in state and legislative races all over Arizona later this year. In the superintendent’s race, Douglas has drawn a stunning four Republican challengers, along with two Democrats. More stunning still? The endorsements from key Republicans are going not to the incumbent, but to Tracy Livingston.
Senate President Steve Yarbrough has endorsed Livnigston. So has House Speaker J.D. Mesnard, who cited her experience as a teacher as making her “uniquely qualified” for the job.
Sen. Sylvia Allen and Rep. Paul Boyer, who chair the Senate and House education committees, have endorsed Livingston. So have two former state superintendents, Lisa Graham Keegan and Jaime Molera.
Livingston, the wife of Rep. David Livingston, hails from the same conservative wing of the party as Douglas. Just with actual education credentials.
She’s a longtime teacher who previously served on the Peoria school board and now sits on the Maricopa County Community College District board.
Livingston has said that while she didn’t support the walkout, she doesn’t believe the teachers should be disciplined.
Other Republicans running are former U.S. Rep. Frank Riggs; Bob Branch, a professor at Grand Canyon and Liberty universities; and Jonathan Gelbart, who was director of charter school development for Basis schools before resigning to run for state superintendent.
On the Democratic side are Peoria teacher Kathy Hoffman and Tempe Councilman David Schapira, a former teacher, legislator and assistant superintendent at the East Valley Institute of Technology.
Then there is Douglas, who served two terms on the Peoria school board and once taught a class on how to make stained glass.