PHOENIX — Gov. Doug Ducey named five new members to the state Board of Education on Friday in his effort to reshape the 11-member panel more to his liking.
Ducey is taking advantage of the fact that his predecessor, Jan Brewer, left two positions unfilled. And the state Senate never took up Brewer’s nomination of two others who have continued to serve, allowing him to withdraw the names and substitute his own.
Finally, the board term of University of Arizona President Ann Weaver Hart also is up. But the governor is limited to filling that post with another university president.
The move comes just three days before the board meets to discuss the AzMERIT tests it approved in November. These are tests linked to the Common Core academic standards Ducey vowed during his campaign to repeal.
Friday’s move gives Ducey a chance to deliver on that promise.
By law, board members can start serving — and voting — the moment they are nominated.
And if Ducey’s new appointees vote the way he wants, they could change the balance of power on the 11-member board. The sixth vote is Diane Douglas, the state’s superintendent of public instruction, who also campaigned to repeal Common Core.
Gubernatorial press aide Daniel Scarpinato acknowledged his boss wants a board “aligned with the governor’s viewpoint on education.”
Scarpinato sidestepped questions of whether Ducey, in making his picks, is seeking those who will vote to kill Common Core.
“There’s an effort to ensure that we have a board that is in line with this governor’s agenda that he was elected on to have Arizona standards and to improve educational outcomes in the classroom,” he said. “And so he’s picked individuals that fit with that.”
Ducey is making sure no one has a question about his agenda: The governor will be at Monday’s meeting to lay it out for them.
“One thing that he will be talking about Monday is the need to have high standards that are Arizona standards,” Scarpinato said. “So he will be reflecting to the board the need for us to be looking at those standards.”
Scarpinato said he did not sit through the interviews and cannot say whether the governor actually asked applicants for their views on Common Core.
“He was interested in their views on a range of issues regarding education,” Scarpinato said. “I don’t believe there was one issue that he was deciding this is based on.”
One of his picks clearly is in favor of scrapping the standards the board adopted in 2010. Jared Taylor, a member of the Gilbert Town Council, is listed by the governor as “an active advocate for Arizonans Against Common Core.”
What the governor’s press release does not disclose, however, is that Taylor also is the principal of Heritage Academy, which runs charter schools at three locations. Yet he is being named to a board position reserved by law for a “lay member,” as the board already has another charter school administrator: its president, Greg Miller.
Others named to the board include:
- Chuck Schmidt, associate executive director for the Arizona Interscholastic Association. He also is listed as having taught high school social studies at Valley Lutheran High School.
- Chris Deschene, a former Democratic state representative from the Navajo Nation. He is a Marine veteran and has a law degree.
- Tim Carter of Yavapai County, named to the position that has to be filled by a county school superintendent. He previously was a principal at Prescott High School.
- Michael Crow, president of Arizona State University, filling the slot reserved for a state university president.
Scarpinato called the picks “a rather diverse set of individuals who bring a range of experiences and a range of perspectives.”
Miller said he does not know where his new fellow board members stand on Common Core.
“I don’t know,” Miller said. “Anything beyond that would be supposition on my part. And until they’re given an opportunity to define who and what they are and what their opinions are, it’s not for me to say.”
Deschene said he has no position on Common Core versus any other set of academic standards. And he said Ducey did not ask him specifically to help him kill Common Core.
“He just said, ‘Can you work on these core issues on helping our kids?’” Deschene said. “I said, ‘Yes, I can.’”
The former state legislator, who made an unsuccessful bid last year for president of the Navajo Nation — he was removed the ballot after it was ruled he lacked fluency in the Navajo language — said he knows that Common Core has been under discussion.
