Gov. Doug Ducey has done a great job making people believe that public education funding in Arizona is just fine, thank you. Even though every educator in Arizona can speak to the fact that it really isn’t.
The governor has done a fabulous job convincing the general public that teaching is easy, that teachers are overpaid babysitters, and that anyone can be a teacher. He, along with the Legislature, has loosened certification requirements to try to solve the teacher shortage. It hasn’t worked — of the state’s nearly 8,600 teacher vacancies this year, more than 62 percent either haven’t been filled or have been filled with people without a teaching certificate. If teaching is so easy and teachers are overpaid, why is there a shortage?
According to the Arizona Office of the Auditor General, the average teacher salary for 2016-17 was $48,372. Expect More Arizona, a bipartisan education advocacy group, reports that the median teacher salary is $42,474. The difference in the two figures indicates outliers that skew the average dollar figure, which leaves teachers wondering who makes that $48,372. Even if most teachers actually made the average, Arizona comes up short when compared to neighboring states.
The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that California teachers average $76,523, Nevada teachers average $56,803, Utah teachers average $55,460 and New Mexico teachers average $56,613. Qualified teachers are voting with their feet, leaving Arizona to seek more competitive pay elsewhere.
According to Ducey, who has also done a good job of pointing fingers to explain low educator pay, Arizona school districts are not passing state funds through to educators, instead using them to fund administrative positions. And, yet, very recently, the Auditor General’s Office found that in 2017 Arizona school districts spent 10.4 percent of operating funds on administration, while the national average is 11.2 percent. The headline in the April 22 Star read, “Analysis debunks claims high admin costs are to blame for low teacher pay.”
But, by far, Ducey’s best efforts are political. Thousands of dollars have been spent recently on television commercials, touting him as the education governor and publicizing his #20x2020 plan. The governor refused to bring any educators to the table during the crafting of this plan, which calls for a 10 percent raise this year, and a 5 percent raise the next two years. Now, many media reports are saying that teachers are rejecting the proposal as not enough, playing into Ducey’s own little “political theater.” Teachers are clearly selfish, rejecting his oh-so-generous-and-magnanimous offer.
Never mind that only a few days before, Ducey was claiming that there wasn’t enough money for any raise higher than 1 percent. Never mind that his plan is unfunded, that the 5 percent raises in the next two years are not guaranteed, and that the plan sweeps funds from other areas that assist Arizona families in need.
Never mind that the only educators who are scheduled to get the raises — if in fact they happen — are only those who have a classroom roster. Left out are special education, P.E. and music teachers, school psychologists, counselors, social workers and every single classified employee, including bus drivers and classroom aides. Educators, all educators deserve a raise, not lip service and gimmicky funding tricks.
If the governor spent half the energy he does in trying to spin his way out of taking responsibility and used it to try and earnestly solve Arizona’s public education funding crisis, maybe we wouldn’t be in this mess.
