Teachers and parents at 23 schools across Tucson have planned stand-out/walk-in demonstrations supporting the #RedForEd movement Wednesday morning, May 8.
The teachers and parents, affiliated with the group Arizona Educators United, want to remind the community, the Legislature and Gov. Doug Ducey that many #RedForEd funding demands havenβt been met, according to organizer Elizabeth Reeves.
βWe are still very concerned about education funding in Arizona β that the problems have not been solved,β Reeves said.
The following schools have scheduled stand-out/walk-ins:
- The Arizona State School for the Deaf and the Blind and Manzo Elementary are joining forces Wednesday morning.
- Bloom Elementary.
- Borton Magnet Elementary.
- Carrillo K-5 Magnet.
- Canyon Del Oro High.
- Challenger Middle.
- Coronado K-8.
- Davis Bilingual Magnet.
- Desert View High.
- Gale Elementary.
- Mansfeld Middle Magnet.
- Myers Ganoung Elementary.
- La Cima Middle.
- Miles Exploratory Learning Center.
- Roberts-Naylor K-8.
- Tucson High.
- Lulu Walker Elementary.
- Emily Gray Junior High.
- Marana High.
- Marana Middle.
- Nash Elementary.
- Rincon/University High.
- Twin Peaks K-8.
During the demonstrations, teachers and parents will stand outside their schools or at intersections nearby to show their solidarity with #RedForEd and the causes it stands for. Community members are welcome to participate in the demonstrations, Reeves said.
Parents from the parent-teacher organizations at La Cima, Lulu Walker and Sam Hughes Elementary will also be handing out information about #RedForEd to other parents during student pickup and/or dropoff.
βThis is something thatβs portrayed as a teacher issue β¦ but as a parent and someone in the community, this is something we all bear a responsibility to try to fix,β Reeves said.
Arizona has only addressed one of the original five #RedForEd demands, she said: teacher pay, with Duceyβs 20x2020 plan to boost teacher salaries by 20 percent next fiscal year.
But teacher pay still needs improvement and only scratches the tip of the iceberg, as far as our stateβs education funding downfalls go, she said.
Schools need an influx of capital funding to repair aged infrastructure and replace old books, Reeves said.
And they need to be funded more equitably, she added, referring to Duceyβs plan to expand the stateβs results-based funding program, which gives schools additional funding if their students score well on the stateβs AzMerit accountability exam.
βWe need that money,β Reeves said. βWe canβt defer any more time.β
Photos: RedForEd anniversary rally downtown
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Steven Ernsky, a student teacher who just finished up his term in the classroom and expects to graduate in a few days, tried to get passing motorists to honk as 200 teachers, librarians, aides and specialists gathered for a rally along Congress and Granada to remember the anniversary of last year's RedForEd protests, Wednesday, April 24, 2019, Tucson, Ariz. Striking teachers walked out of class rooms last year in an attempt to get legislators and Governor Doug Ducey to agree to a 20% increase in teacher pay and a 1$ billion infusion into education funding. Ducey responded with a plan to increase salaries by 20% by the 2020 school year. RedForEd began with a statewide movement and strike in West Virginia won a 5% raise.
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Terry Leonard spins while dancing to 99 Red Balloons being played to rally the the 200 or so a gathered along Congress and Granada to remember the anniversary of last year's RedForEd protests, Wednesday, April 24, 2019, Tucson, Ariz.
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Nanette Longchamp, third grade teacher in the Sunnyside school district, sports her homemade skirt with a education take on Martin Luther King Jr.'s I Have A Dream speech and a quote by Nelson Mandella at a rally along Congress and Granada to remember the anniversary of last year's RedForEd protests, Wednesday, April 24, 2019, Tucson, Ariz.
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A TUSD school bus speeds by the 200 or so rallying along Congress and Granada to remember the anniversary of last year's RedForEd protests, Wednesday, April 24, 2019, Tucson, Ariz.
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Eduardo Placencio with United Steel Workers Local #937 uses a bull horn to get the chants going at a rally along Congress and Granada to remember the anniversary of last year's RedForEd protests, Wednesday, April 24, 2019, Tucson, Ariz.
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Trista Tamura spins her RedForEd decorated umbrella as about 200 rally along Congress and Granada to remember the anniversary of last year's protests, Wednesday, April 24, 2019, Tucson, Ariz.
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About 200 gather for a rally at Congress and Granada to remember the anniversary of last year's RedForED protests, Wednesday, April 24, 2019, Tucson, Ariz.
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Some of the 200 protestors wave to passing drivers at a rally along Congress and Granada to remember the anniversary of last year's RedForEd protests, Wednesday, April 24, 2019, Tucson, Ariz.
AZ initiative to raise taxes on wealthy for education knocked off ballot
UpdatedPHOENIX β A measure to boost taxes on Arizonaβs most wealthy canβt go on the November ballot because the description of the measure fails to inform voters of what it really does, a judge ruled late Friday.
In a 20-page order, Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Christopher Coury laid out what he concluded are both misleading statements and full-blown omissions in the legally required 100-word description that is placed on the petitions. Any one of these, he said, would have been enough to disqualify the initiative, which sought to raise $940 million a year for K-12 education.
And taken together, Coury said, the description creates βthe substantial risk of confusion for a reasonable Arizona voter.β
βInvest in Education circulated an opaque βTrojan horseβ of a 100-word description, concealing principal provisions of the initiative,β the judge wrote.
βNo matter how well-intentioned Invest in Educationβs initiative was, its nontransparent description violates Arizona law,β he continued. βConsequently, this self-inflicted shortcoming will prevent voters from considering this initiative β a result that understandably will disappoint and trouble teachers, administrators, some education advocates, and many Arizona voters.β
Joe Thomas, president of the Arizona Education Association, one of the groups backing the measure, called the ruling βbizarre,β βshamefulβ and βpolitical.β He said that initiative backers turned in petitions with more than 435,000 signatures.
βInstead of respecting the voters, Judge Coury inserted his own political views throughout his baseless ruling,β he said in a prepared statement.
Fridayβs ruling is not going to be the last word. Backers of the Invest in Education measure are going to seek review by the Arizona Supreme Court.
But Coury, likely anticipating such a move, said he doubts that would be successful.
He pointed out that the justices threw out a similar measure backed by the same group two years ago, also over the adequacy of the description of the proposed change in tax rates. But Coury said the backers did not learn their lesson.
βInstead of using the phrasing that had been blessed by the Arizona Supreme Court, Invest in Education chose to use different language, as was its right,β he said. But Coury said initiative backers have no one but themselves to blame for ignoring that 2018 ruling.
βWhen a teacher specifically instructs a student exactly how to complete a math problem, and when the student disregards the instruction and does the math problem incorrectly on a future test, should the student receive a passing grade,β Coury wrote. βThe simple answer is no.β
Initiative backers seek to raise $940 million a year for K-12 education by imposing a 3.5% income tax βsurchargeβ on earnings exceeding $250,000 a year for individuals and $500,000 for married couples filing jointly.
It was that description as a βsurcharge,β the judge said, that became a key mistake.
He said some voters might understand that would add 3.5 percentage points on the current top state income tax rate of 4.5%. But others, Coury said, might interpret it to be a temporary tax, or even just a 3.5% increase in taxes when, in fact, the taxes owed on earnings above that point would increase by 77.7%.
The judge also said the description fails to inform voters of the initiativeβs impact on the owners of certain businesses who pay individual income taxes versus corporate taxes.
And then there is what Coury said is the failure to explain in the description how the cash raised would be distributed, including that half would go to βteachers, classroom support personnel and student support services personnel.β
βTo some reasonable voters, devoting 50% of the money generated by the initiative directly to teacher salaries may have sounded too rich; to other reasonable voters, devoting 50% of the money raised directly to teacher salaries may have sounded too modest,β the judge wrote. βThe failure to disclose the distribution in the 100-word description constitutes the omission of a principal provision.β
Coury also said that, given the definition of βteacherβ in the actual measure, βit is highly likely that less than 50% of the money raised by this proposed βsurchargeβ would end up in the salaries of actual classroom teachers as they are commonly understood in the common vernacular.β
He also said the description failed to explain how the measure would tie the hands of Arizona lawmakers, forbidding them from reducing other funding for public education once these new funds started to flow.
Coury brushed aside the fact that each petition had an actual copy of the initiative attached, meaning that would-be signers with questions could have actually read the entire document if they had questions.
He said that those who would choose to go beyond the petition and the 100-word description would first have seen the βfinding and declaration of purposeβ section of the measure. And that verbiage, the judge said, only βmagnifies the significant risk of confusionβ of failing to mention key provisions in the description.
Anyway, Coury said the Supreme Court itself, in its 2018 ruling knocking the earlier version off the ballot, specifically rejected the argument that a confusing 100-word description is permissible simply βbecause the truth may be discovered in the many pages of the initiative.β
This isnβt the only lawsuit this year seeking to disqualify measures from the ballot based on the adequacy of the description.
Separate action has been filed along the same lines by foes of legalizing recreational use of marijuana by adults, giving judges more discretion in sentencing, and a package of health-related measures that includes a 20% pay increase for hospital workers. Hearings on those begin later in August.
About 200 gathered at Congress and Grande to commemorate last year's RedForEd protests and Arizona-wide teacher walk out, Tucson, Ariz.
