The Candidates for Governor stance on education issues

The last two debates for governor — because they are the only debates to which “Cathi’s Clown” Doug Ducey has committed — are tonight and Monday night.

Tonight’s debate on KSAZ-TV, FOX Channel 10, at 6:00 p.m., is on education only. Monday night is a television studio debate on Arizona Horizon, KAET-TV, Channel 8, at 5:00 p.m.

The Arizona Republic today provides a primer for the education debate tonight. Plans for Arizona school funding short on details:

The candidates will square off in a debate on education issues tonight at Camelback High School.

Ducey backs Republican legislative leaders’ plan to appeal the court decision, which calls for payments to start this budget year. An appeal will buy time, Ducey said, to work on his education priority: a vague plan to provide money to excelling schools [read “charter schools”] so they can build more space and eliminate wait lists.He also wants to rework the state’s education-funding formula.

DuVal says he would immediately provide the funding, noting there is money in the state’s “rainy-day fund” to cover the first $317 million installment. How he would pay for it beyond the coming fiscal year is unclear.He rejects any appeal of the lawsuit, saying there have already been too many delays in fully funding the schools. His priority is restoring the school budget to where it was before the recession hit and lawmakers cut funding by nearly 19 percent over four years.

The two also part ways on a proposed settlement from the school districts that sued over the funding. If the state agrees to immediately increase basic funding to the K-12 system by $317 million a year, the schools say they would forgo an estimated $1.6 billion in back payments they’re due for the years when the Legislature underfunded them.

DuVal says he would take the offer. Ducey wouldn’t, but said he would be open to negotiation.

They also differ on the Common Core educational standards.

DuVal says the state should continue with the national standards. Ducey said he would replace them with standards tailored to Arizona. However, acknowledging the standards are already being used in Arizona classrooms, Ducey said the state would have to stay with them until he could get together with parents, teachers and business leaders to craft a “preferable” alternative.

Ducey: Reduce wait lists

Ducey’s main education plank is reducing wait lists at schools — primarily charter schools — that lack space to accommodate the additional students. He wants to find a way to get money to those in-demand schools.

But his emphasis on funding wait lists has left many familiar with school finance scratching their heads.

His speeches have veered from a focus only on wait lists at charter schools to district schools as well.

Last week, he defined it this way: “For charters, it’s capital needs. For district schools, it’s space and it’s about capacity and it’s about operating costs.”

Yet charter schools do not receive state funding for capital needs such as new classrooms. To do so would require changing state law and securing a source of funding.

Ducey said that’s precisely why he wants to revamp the state school-funding formula: He believes it could produce efficiencies that would free up money to eliminate wait lists.

In a debate earlier this month, Ducey threw out the idea of using empowerment scholarship accounts, which pay for private schooling for disabled children, to provide the money for school con­struction.But those accounts can’t be used to build classrooms.

Ducey would again need to change the law in order to spend the money on infrastructure: “It’s not something you could just change administratively,” said Charles Tack, a spokesman for the state Department of Education.

After he mentioned the plan in the first gubernatorial debate earlier this month, Ducey acknowledged that his idea needs to be fleshed out. But, he said, “I think there is a flexibility around those dollars … I want to see those kids go where they and their parents want them to go.”

The Legislature earlier this year rejected a bill that would have expanded the scholarship program to thousands more students in low-income areas.

That was before the Arizona Court of Appeals and Arizona Supreme Court gutted the Arizona Constitution and cleared the way for public tax dollars to go directly to private and parochial schools. Arizona Courts disregard the Constitution, authorize the the privatization of public education in Niehaus v. Huppenthal, No. 12-042 (Ariz. App. Ct., Div. One Oct. 1, 2013) (.pdf). The Arizona Supreme Court declined to review the Court of Appeals decision.

Tea-Publicans like Doug Ducey are salivating at the prospect of finally realizing their long held dream of dismantling public education and replacing it with a for-profit private education system paid for by public tax dollars. Ducey’s campaign adviser, Cathi Herrod from the Center for Arizona Policy,  already has legislation ready to go in January.

Ducey said as Arizona’s economy grows, more money will flow into the school system. As the current state treasurer, he is quick to note the state is on firmer financial footing now than during the recession, and he believes the current money earmarked for education might be enough to fund his plan if better spent.

“I think we have $9 billion in total federal, state and local dollars in the system that can be effectively spent,” he said, when asked if he believes the schools are adequately funded.

He has ruled out tax increases, an echo of the successful campaign he led in 2012 against a ballot measure to continue the temporary penny sales-tax hike and spend the money on schools. At the time, Ducey said if voters would reject Proposition 204, he would join with parents, teachers, business leaders and others to craft a better plan to fund education. That never happened.

Two years later, he’s talking again about a group effort.

DuVal: Comply with court

DuVal has made education his top campaign issue. Not only has he proposed immediately paying schools to comply with the court order, but DuVal has also said he would seek out “every discretionary, additional dollar” and direct it toward Arizona schools.

He doesn’t see much additional money for schools in the first year or two of his administration, noting the state’s grim financial forecast [the delusional Doug Ducey believes “the state is on firmer financial footing.“]  The legislative budget office is forecasting a $282 million deficit for the current budget year, and a $765 million hole for the following year. But he’s optimistic that before the end of the next governor’s four-year term, the financial picture will brighten.

Aside from hoping for a speedier economy, DuVal doesn’t have a long-range funding plan. Like Ducey, he rules out tax increases. [This is unfortunate posturing for the election. He knows this is unsustainable.] Unlike Ducey, he sees no sense in reworking the school-funding formula as a way to put more money into the schools.

“Changing the funding formulas is like rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic if the Legislature keeps ignoring them,” he said. “We need to reinvest in our schools now, not use changes to the funding formula as an excuse to keep delaying reinvestment in our children’s schools.”

The current funding formula, created in 1980, provides money to operate the schools. There is no funding formula for school repairs and construction, despite a 20-year-old court ruling that directed Arizona to create a system that would evenly distribute such funding to school districts. [Republicans have controlled our lawless state legislature and ignored the lawful order of the Court during that entire 20 year period.]

But the larger issue is the state’s tax structure, which isn’t generating enough money for Arizona’s needs. The formula doesn’t generate more money for schools, it’s simply the tool to distribute funding, said Chris Thomas, general counsel for the Arizona School Boards Association.

Unlike the candidates, Thomas has a quick answer on where to find increased funding: postpone or cancel corporate tax cuts scheduled to take effect in upcoming years. Those cuts total $295 million for the next fiscal year, growing to $538 million by fiscal 2018, according to estimates made in 2011, when the Legislature approved the reductions. DuVal hasn’t considered the idea, his campaign said.

For DuVal, school funding will be restored as state revenues grow. He won’t cut other major programs to free money for schools. But any spare change will go to his priorities: stopping the exodus of teachers and reducing class sizes.

“We now have the largest class size in the country, on average,” he said. “This teacher flight thing is really under my skin. It’s slow and insidious.”

One bad year in a student’s education can carry into the next year, putting the student behind, DuVal said. Having a revolving cast of teachers, especially in the early years, can lead to such results. He said he’s seen the effects of what he calls a leaky education pipeline from his years on the Arizona Board of Regents.

“The remediation costs at the universities of our K-12 graduates is astronomical,” he said, a stark testament to the work that’s needed to improve schools.

DuVal said keeping teachers doesn’t necessarily require more money, although pay is always an issue. He would promote policies that promote teacher success, such as smaller class sizes, more money for school supplies so teachers don’t have to pay out of pocket, and recognition of successful teachers using the bully pulpit of the Governor’s Office.

“It’s changing our rhetoric in the public space where we don’t demonize teachers,” he said.

Those are examples of the incentives the state should create to encourage innovation and competition. “You don’t get that with poverty and cutting,” he said. “You get that with incentivizing.”

Note: Fred DuVal is hamstrung on tax revenue issues by Prop. 108 (1992), a citizens initiative by right-wing groups that amended the Arizona Constitution adding Article IX, which requires a two-thirds vote of the legislature for passage and three-fourths vote to override a governor’s veto of any legislation that would provide a net increase in state revenues through certain changes in taxes, tax rates, tax deductions, fees or assessments, or that results in a reduction or elimination of a tax deduction, exemption, exclusion, credit or other tax exemption feature in computing tax liability.

Prop. 108 is the source of all our fiscal ills in Arizona. It is anti-democratic because it empowers a tyranny of a minority of anti-tax zealots to hold sound fiscal policy and long overdue tax reforms hostage to their right-wing ideological extremism. Repeal of Prop. 108 should be a top priority in the next legislature. Put it on the ballot! Restore democracy and simple majority rule to tax policy.