Leaders wouldn’t help, so Invest in Ed filled the void
For years, educators asked lawmakers and business leaders to join them in solving Arizona’s school funding woes. They didn’t, so Invest in Ed stepped in.
In a surprise unanimous decision, the Arizona Supreme Court reversed the lower court ruling on the Invest in Ed Initiative, leaving it on the ballot.
This ruling should be applauded as it upholds the rule of law in Arizona, including the constitutional right to citizen initiatives, provided they comply with increasingly stringent rules.
Invest in Ed will face fierce headwinds from business organizations, politicos and others who believe it is “a nefarious attack on the rich and bad for business.”
Yet for too long, many Arizona business and political leaders have been caught in a self-reinforcing, knee-jerk loop that sees any tax increase, even tax
increases that build long-term infrastructural improvements for our state’s future, as negative, regardless of the merits of the expenditures or their longterm consequences.
Nowhere has that self-reinforcing loop been more evident than in the failure of the state to adequately fund our public education system.
Since 2009, the Arizona Legislature has defunded education to the tune of $4.6 billion. According to a 2017 report from the WP Carey School of Business, “Relative to the national per student average, the shortfall in state and local government revenue for K-12 education was substantial in Arizona in FY 2015. To have matched the national per student average, spending would have needed to have been $4.5 billion higher.”
We all remember the 2017 lawsuit over Proposition 301 – you know, the state’s failure over six years to provide roughly $1.6 billion in legally required public education funding – and Prop. 123, which despite being billed as a proeducation funding mechanism, contained very little new funding, but served as a settlement of that lawsuit.
Front and center to the decline of education funding is the Legislature’s enthusiastic support of school vouchers – used mainly by wealthier Arizonans – once capped at $10 million yearly, that now takes $135 million out of our public education system yearly and growing.
So now we understand the reason Arizona teachers, parents, students and citizens braved the 100-plus degree heat this summer during a global pandemic to collect more than 18,000 signatures to put Invest in Ed on the ballot.
The initiative calls for a 3.5% surcharge on incomes above $250,000 per individual and $500,000 per couple. It will cost $35 for every $1,000 made over $500,000. Moving up the economic ladder, if a couple makes $1.5 million, it will cost roughly $35,000 yearly in additional tax.
It is subject to reasonable debate whether this is an ideal way of restoring money into the system for teacher pay, counselors, aides, and career and technical educations. And perhaps there are better ways of getting there. But that is a moot point now.
Business leaders know we’re far behind where we need to be, and that we need a world class education system to compete; a system that provides for highly trained teachers, manageable class sizes and support services to guide our students.
For years business leaders have been asked by education leaders to build a broad-based coalition and stand with them to lobby the state Legislature to raise revenue for our underfunded public education system, and for years, the Legislature and business leaders have failed to come together to address it.
This failure of leadership has created a vacuum, and the Invest in Ed Initiative filled it.
Many Arizona students struggle in underfunded and overcrowded schools, our rural school buildings are crumbling, and this pandemic has revealed the significant lack of critical technology – especially for our limited income students. We are clearly not investing in our education system to raise up the brightest minds among our youth, so they are able to thrive and become the very best Arizona has to offer.
The U.S. Business Roundtable’s 2019 Statement of Purpose signed by more than 181 CEOs across America stated, “It’s time to think beyond shareholder value and think about our own communities.”
We must envision an Arizona where our students can attend colleges and universities, where they can innovate within technology sectors, build new businesses and become the best nextgeneration business leaders this country has to offer.
Allowing Arizona to remain one of the lowest funded states in teacher pay, while our national public education rankings remain at the bottom, has created a vacuum that has been getting larger and larger, year over year.
The Invest in Ed Initiative filled that vacuum.
If we don’t agree with its details, it is on us. We refused to do the hard work required and have allowed that vacuum to grow. If this initiative fails, and if the vacuum of leadership in education continues to grow, then another initiative should and will fill it.
Allowing Arizona to remain one of the lowest funded states in teacher pay, while our national public education rankings remain at the bottom, has created a vacuum that has been getting larger and larger, year over year.