A Beginning: AZ House Democrats Launch Their First Voter Outreach Town Hall Focusing on Education

A Beginning.

Recognizing that they have to improve their messaging and outreach efforts to their constituents, Arizona Legislative Democrats hosted an education town hall yesterday evening at Memorial Hall off Indian School in Phoenix.

In what will hopefully be the first of these issue oriented outreach efforts, Ranking Democratic Member of the House Education Committee Nancy Gutierrez hosted the first event on public education.

Democratic House Leader Oscar De Los Santos and fellow Democratic legislators Anna Abeyita, Janeen Connolly, Lydia Hernandez, Sarah Liguori, and Stephanie Simacek were also present to respond to questions and mingle with those that attended the event.

In her opening remarks, Gutierrez indicated that future town hall events would focus on housing availability, child care affordability, keeping government out of peoples lives, increasing health care accessibility, champion clean energy programs and combat pollution, and safeguard Arizona’s Democracy.

Save Our School Advocates Kathy Boltz and Raquel Mamani were also featured speakers at the event.

Among the topics discussed at this first town hall event were:

• The goal to fulfill the State Constitutional requirements to fully fund public education from kindergarten through the Bachelors Degree level at a four year university. When Democratic Leader De Los Santos spoke to the audience, he said that was the number one priority among legislators. He and, later Gutierrez, also said that Democrats wanted to also fully fund full day Pre-K and full day kindergarten along with restoring funding for Maricopa and Pima Community Colleges. Other Democrats like Eva Diaz and Consuelo Hernandez have recently introduced measures designed to reduce class sizes and invest in early childhood education.
• Make sure children can learn without being hungry. There was universal praise for Representative Gutierrez’s bill to pay for universal school meals for children that just cleared the Education Committee last week.
• The Arizona Republican Legislative Drive, motivated by the 2024 election results, to focus on educational wedge issues like enacting legislation to stigmatize LGBTQ children, ban books, and make sure every teacher has a gun.

• Reforming an Empowerment Scholarship Account system that, as SOS’s Boltz pointed out provides handouts to the wealthy in a system which allows them to potentially double dip in the School Tuition Organization Tax Credit Program, has virtually no accountability safeguards on expenses (especially those under $2,000,) has been beset by financial fraud issues, creates conflict of interests for certain legislators who have their own schools, and lacks basic transparency and oversight (check out legislator David Marshall’s Calvary Chapel Educational Program in Snowflake,) especially on staff background and the mission of these schools where home and micro schools that seem to want to use public dollars to indoctrinate children toward White Christian Nationalist sentiments. Representative Gutierrez, who expressed dismay that Republicans at the Legislature have gotten around the wording and spirit of the State Constitution, by creating these ESA accounts so they can flow to families instead of private-religious schools, assured attendees that the Democrats would be unveiling their proposals for ESA reform next week. During a response to a questioner on the current school choice system, Gutierrez said, “There should not be winners and losers. Only winners.”

• Providing a stable working environment for teachers that will retain more, reward all, and attract many to the profession. According to Mamani, many of Arizona’s instructors feel paralyzed in their positions, not knowing whether to “fight, flight, or freeze” because they are driven to “exhaustion” and are “beaten” over the head with false accusations of “grooming” and “wokeness.”
• Financial and attendance troubles at public Phoenix area school elementary school districts like Isaac, Roosevelt, and Cartwright. Attending the event was a distressed mother from the Cartwright District who complained that the Superintendent was not being transparent on how passed bond monies were allocated. Fortunately, Representative Hernandez, who is the current President of the Cartwright School Board was there to agree with and address some of her concerns.
• Renew Proposition 123 so $285 million from the State Trust Fund account can still flow to public schools.
• Making sure school board members are actually for the public schools they preside over instead of agents for school privatization.

• What the new Trump Administration might do to public education. Both Gutierrez and De Los Santos voiced alarm at MAGA designs to shut down the United States Department of Education, Unconstitutionally mandate the Governor and Attorney General to cooperate with Federal Immigration Laws, and allow ICE agents to arrest suspects at schools and churches. De Los Santos referred to this as a MAGA “War Path” launching “attacks on our students… our public schools…our families, and vulnerable communities.”
• Improving outreach to people through all facets of social media, including non mainstream sources.

For Democrats to recapture the momentum from MAGA, they will need to focus on improving their outreach efforts like the town hall event at Memorial Hall. While this first town hall did not generate the reception that they would have liked, it represents a beginning in the right direction that can be built on at future gatherings in blue, purple, and red communities.