A Capitol education

More bills, please ... A judge says no ... And a good idea, bad reason.

We’re deep into the legislative session, and the Arizona Capitol is once again a battleground of big ideas, bad ideas and the occasional spectacle.

Are you a school administrator trying to keep up with the latest Capitol hijinks? A teacher wondering if they’re about to add another mandated lesson to your already packed schedule? A parent just hoping your kid’s school doesn’t get turned into a battleground for the culture wars?

We got you covered.

We’ve been tracking every education bill with our legislation tracking service, Skywolf, and let’s just say — a lot is happening. Our education tracking list is now up to more than 200 bills!

So what’s actually worth paying attention to? Let’s break it down.

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Are lawmakers doing anything to make schools safer?

There are a lot of ideas floating around but the big push is to expand the scope of the School Safety Program to pay for safety officers, safety technology, training, and infrastructure improvements. The mirror¹ House and Senate bills would require schools to develop safety plans with local law enforcement and emergency response agencies. It would also ensure that school blueprints and floor plans are not public records.

The House version of the bill has already cleared the full House on a near party-line vote², while the Senate Education Committee is hearing the Senate version today.

Can anyone unglue the kids from their phones?

Lawmakers are trying, and they’ve got a couple of ideas. One bill would require schools to establish rules to “limit” cellphone use, but still allow for educational uses. Another would take a stricter approach, requiring schools to make kids deposit their devices in a secure location.

There’s also a bill that’s gaining traction that would require schools to teach students about online scams, predators and password protection.

But something tells us the kids need less instruction in that realm than the teachers, parents and lawmakers.

What new lessons will get crammed into the curriculum?

Oh, the usual mix of necessary and politically motivated history lessons. This year’s batch includes:

• A push to emphasize the history of communism – specifically aspects like “atrocities committed in foreign countries by communist regimes” and “a comparative discussion of political ideologies, such as communism and totalitarianism, that conflict with the principles of freedom and democracy.”

• A mandate to teach about the achievements of Asian Americans.

Is there more culture war nonsense?

It wouldn’t be an Arizona legislative session without it. This year’s edition includes several of the same old fights, this time under different bill numbers:

• New attempts to ensure teachers don’t have to use a trans kid’s preferred pronouns.

• A renewed push to restrict which bathrooms trans students can use.

We’ll also throw in a new attempt to break down the walls between church and state by letting schools use religious chaplains instead of licensed counselors.

So no anti-vaccine bills this year?

Oh yeah, there are a few. The one we’re keeping an eye on would require any information that schools send out about mandatory vaccines to include information about Arizona’s opt-out policy. Arizona is one of the few states that allows parents to opt out of student vaccines based on their “personal beliefs,” as well as for religious beliefs.

Are lawmakers scheduling any book bannings this year?

You know it! And it’s a bipartisan idea.

The Republican version attempts to regulate "sexually explicit materials" in school libraries. The Democrat version wants to ban textbooks that "reflect adversely” on a person’s race, ethnicity, sex, religion, disability, sexual orientation or gender identity.

Either way, Toni Morrison’s "The Bluest Eye" is probably out.

Why does Michael Crow make so much money?

Legislators are asking themselves the same question.

They’ve got a couple of bills to make sure Arizona university presidents are just as comparatively underpaid as Arizona elementary school teachers.

One of those bills would cap university presidents’ salaries at 20 times that of lawmakers, which would be about $500,000 based on lawmakers’ current base salary. But as we previously noted, some lawmakers earn close to $100,000 including per diem and mileage reimbursements, so the university president's pay cap could be as high as $2 million per year.

Another bill would cap university presidents’ pay at $500,000 with no more than a 15% bonus on top of that salary. Neither bill applies to universities’ multi-million dollar sports coach contracts.

Speaking of college sports, there’s also some movement on a bill to prohibit athletic associations and conferences from preventing universities from paying student-athletes for the use of their name, image or likeness.

Isn’t there some kind of giant K-12 funding cliff coming up?

You’re probably thinking of Prop 123, and yes, it expires in a few months.

After that, the state will lose about $300 million per year that it’s currently drawing from the state land trust to fund education.

Republicans and Democrats each have mirror versions of bills that attempt to extend that deal, but none of them have had a hearing yet. And it’s getting pretty late to attempt to send that to a May ballot before its July 1 expiration date.

If they can’t reach a deal in time, lawmakers and the governor say they’ll backfill those funds so schools don’t feel a hit. But that’s $300 million per year in revenue for schools that we’re foregoing by not reauthorizing Prop 123 immediately.

Lot of blocking going on: A federal judge blocked President Donald Trump’s proposed cut to cure-creating medical research grants – at least for now. The administration wanted to cut “indirect costs” in National Institutes of Health grants, which pay for everything from microscopes to labs to support staff. That would total more than $250 million to Arizona universities, the Arizona Mirror’s Jim Small calculated, and Arizona’s medical research community is freaking out. And researchers at the University of Arizona started getting “stop research” letters from NIH and the U.S. Department of Education, the Daily Star’s Prerana Sannappanavar reported.

So it’s not all bad?: As Trump threatens to dismantle the U.S. Department of Education (which only Congress can do), the Republic’s Alexandra Hardle breaks down what that might look like. The Department of Education oversees everything from billions in federal funding to FAFSA applications to civil rights complaints and $2 trillion in federal student loans.

Hammer about to drop: After weeks of announcements, but few details, about layoffs, officials at Mesa Public Schools said they plan to eliminate 147 district-level positions, KTAR’s Kevin Stone reports. The layoffs are needed because the district is facing a nearly $17 million budget deficit, which officials attributed to a drop in enrollment. The district’s governing board discussed its rapidly declining enrollment at its meeting Tuesday evening.

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Playing hooky to work: About twice as many Arizona public school kids are chronically absent now than before the pandemic, KTAR’s Balin Overstolz writes based on a new report from the Helios Education Foundation that found about a third of elementary and middle school students miss more than 10% of school days. Absenteeism hits Indigenous, Black and Latino students harder than their white peers, but school districts like Murphy Elementary say they’re dropping absentee rates by having principals stage interventions with families to get at the cause of the problems, which is often family life or financial related.

Help if you need it: Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Horne cut a deal with a telehealth company to provide therapy and mental health services to students in rural Arizona, the Republic’s Alexandra Hardle reports. School districts can get more info through the company, Cartwheel. There’s no waitlist, the company accepts all insurance and uninsured families will be covered by the state Department of Education.

Memories: The Orme School, a nearly 100-year-old ranch school near Verde Valley, may shutter its doors if it can’t fundraise $6 million by May, AZFamily’s Mason Carroll reports. Beyond roping and riding, the school teaches art, algebra, and foreign languages to working-class kids, and it’s one of the last ranch schools in the country. You can donate here.

While President Donald Trump and Elon Musk consider attempting to shutter the U.S. Department of Education and other important institutions to settle the national debt, U.S. Republican Rep. David Schweikert went semi-viral for his prop-studded rant about why that won’t solve the national debt problem.

It’s worth a watch.

But it’s not that he’s opposed to the idea – in 2023, Schweikert supported an amendment that would have eliminated the department.

1. Mirror bills are identical versions of the same bill introduced in both the House and the Senate. The idea is each bill can go through both the House and Senate at the same time, thus saving time and “fast-tracking” them to the Governor’s Office. Pro tip: You can spot mirror bills because they have the same short title and one of those short titles will have a period. Superpro tip: You can learn that and other fun facts about the structure of legislation by reading the Legislative Council’s Bill Drafting Manual.

2. Rep. Kevin Volk was the only Democrat to support it.