Today, 17 Republicans joined all 28 present Democrats to pass HCR 2039. Now the spotlight turns to the AZ Senate to pass the matching Senate Concurrent Resolution 1050, also by a 2/3 majority.
The Democratic House Caucus released the following statement:
“It was inspiring to see our entire caucus step up once again for our public schools, which are the backbone of our communities across the state and the lifeblood of our growing economy,” said House Democratic Leader Reginald Bolding, D-Laveen, who co-sponsored HCR 2039 along with House Speaker Rusty Bowers. “The catastrophic result of inaction would have been unthinkable and unforgiveable. Thank you to the parents, educators, business leaders and members of our caucus who spoke up about this every day since December. Your voices mattered and made the difference.”
Bolding added, “However, this is not the end. In order to avoid this unnecessary drama every year, we need to remove or reform the outdated 1980 spending cap. No other aspect of the state budget has an artificial set of brakes – applied 42 years ago – that hold our investment in our kids and our future to the lowest in the nation.”
Rep. Jennifer Pawlik, a classroom teacher and the ranking Democrat on the House Education Committee, has helped lead the call for action for the past five weeks. In her floor remarks during the vote, she noted the anxiety and frustration of parents, educators and business leader as they repeatedly pressed for action and a “clean” resolution with no caveats.
“As we are now all very familiar, the override is a temporary fix that will allow schools to spend the money that has already been allocated. Schools have not done anything wrong, and they certainly have not overspent their budgets,” said Pawlik, D-Chandler. “Today, I am pleased to be able to vote on a clean bill that will allow schools to begin the fourth quarter of the school year with the funding they budgeted for last spring. And I’m grateful that the students’ learning won’t be interrupted due to widespread school closures.”
Of course, the passage of the Resolution by 2/3 majority (rather than unanimous as in past years) also means that 14 Republicans voted against allowing our public schools to spend the money already budgeted and allocated to them and in favor of forcing those schools to strip their budgets, or even shut down:
These legislators are the worst of the worst enemies of our public schools and should have to own and defend this vote against our children. Let them know how you feel about their choices: Barton, Burges, Carter, Chaplik, Diaz, Fillmore, Finchem, Grantham, Griffin, Hoffman, Nguyen, Parker, Payne, and Pingerelli deserve to pay a price for their betrayal of our children.
Join Save Our Schools and join the fight to protect Arizona’s public schools and the over 90% of our children who attend them.
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The bill is stalled in the Senate because Senate President Karen Fann cannot recruit enough Republicans to pass it. Democratic Senator Jaun Mendez is out on paternity leave, so she needed seven GQP votes. Sen Mendez drove to the Capitol and was prepared to vote to waive the cap from his office, which meant she only needed six GQP votes. She doesn’t have the votes.
Jim Small of the AZ Mirror points out, https://twitter.com/JimSmall/status/1493713475054432259?cxt=HHwWhsCrzbqf3ropAAAA
Another way of saying this: There are at least 10 Republican senators who don’t want to let schools spend the money they gave them.
If you thought going to remote learning suddenly in 2020 was a bad thing, closing schools full-stop on March 1 is a bona fide disaster.
Good point from Jim Small at the AZ Mirror, https://twitter.com/JimSmall/status/1493676408425500672?cxt=HHwWgMCq2fKxzbopAAAA
Every one of them voted to give this money to schools last year.
Now they won’t lift a constitutional limit to actually let them spend that money on teaching our children.