Following up

No story left behind … Pulling her pen back out … And they really took it off-road.

One of the biggest complaints we hear from news readers is that reporters often cover a topic and then move on, never to return.

Well, as we looked back on our reporting over the past few weeks, we found a lot of interesting stories that need updating.

Today, we’re getting you back up to speed on some of the highest-profile stories in Arizona education.

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Debate heats up

Last week, we wrote about Republican lawmakers trying to tie Arizona’s school voucher program to renewing Prop 123.

The debate over the measure took off last week as details started to emerge, alongside adamant opposition from Democratic lawmakers and Gov. Katie Hobbs.

The GOP plan includes a $4,000 pay raise for teachers who spend the majority of their time in the classroom and meet certain benchmarks. It also would enshrine school choice in the state Constitution if voters approve the ballot measure.

The leverage here is that schools desperately need the $300 million that Prop 123 provides every year. And that funding source is about to run out.

Republican Sen. J.D. Mesnard, one of the architects of the plan, said he is trying to deliver “wins” for everybody invested in education, AZFamily’s Dennis Welch reported.

Mesnard said he and his colleagues are still finalizing the proposal, but one of their main goals is to protect “all the options parents have,” including public school districts, charters and vouchers, the Arizona Capitol Times’ Kiera Riley reported.

Republican Rep. Matt Gress, the head of the House Education Committee, argued Hobbs and her allies are “trying to eradicate” school choice, which “worries a lot of Arizona families,” Capitol Media Services’ Howard Fischer reported.

Hobbs has her own plan, which would take even more money from the land trust. She wants to fund salaries for teachers, support staff, and capital projects, among other goals.

Hobbs’ spokesman said tying school choice to Prop 123 was a “complete and total nonstarter.”

Democratic Sen. Catherine Miranda said Republicans are “taking an unpopular issue and bundling it to a popular issue in an attempt to tie the hands of voters.”

Hobbs and lawmakers can argue over the language of the ballot measure, but in the end, it will be up to voters to decide.

And the margin for error is tiny. Voters narrowly approved Prop 123 in 2016.

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Crossing the finish line

Three weeks ago, we wrote about other states following in Arizona’s footsteps by creating their own school voucher programs.

The big one was Texas, where Republican lawmakers waged a years-long battle to get a voucher program across the finish line. At the time, Texas lawmakers were on the cusp of voting on a $1 billion a year voucher program.

Last Saturday, Gov. Greg Abbott signed a bill into law that provides $10,000 for most families, including wealthy ones, to send their kids to private school, the Texas Tribune reported.

“Gone are the days that families are limited to only the school assigned by government,” Abbott said, while Rep. James Talarico, a Democrat who opposes the voucher program, said, “remember this day next time a school closes in your neighborhood.”

The program starts next year, and a lot of details still have to be worked out, including what lawmakers will do if costs balloon, like they did in Arizona. The annual cost in Texas could reach nearly $5 billion by 2030.

Notably, Texas lawmakers included some accountability measures that are tighter than the ones in Arizona’s voucher program.

Under the new law, Texas officials will file an annual report detailing test results from students who use vouchers, demographic data about who’s getting vouchers, and how the program affects public and private school enrollment.

We found very little of that information about Arizona’s voucher program in the most recent quarterly report to the Arizona State Board of Education or the quarterly report to Executive and Legislative Leadership.

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Shot across the bow

In early April, we wrote about state lawmakers considering an anti-DEI bill.

The bill would have stripped state funding from universities and colleges that offer DEI programs or courses.

It led to an interesting discussion on the House floor as Democratic lawmakers debated their Republican colleagues about what DEI actually meant. (Spoiler alert: they didn’t agree on anything.)

Lawmakers ended up approving the bill, but Hobbs vetoed it last week, saying state universities and community colleges “play a vital role” in Arizona’s economy and quality of life.

“Jeopardizing their state funding with a bill that lacks clarity attacks their future stability and would lead to negative effects on the state’s workforce and economy,” Hobbs wrote.

When she vetoed another DEI-related bill, this one to ban state agencies from using DEI in hiring, training, and promotion of employees, Hobbs delivered a low-key zinger that we just have to mention:

“This bill is Detrimental, Ineffective, Nonsensical, and Objectionable,” Hobbs wrote in her veto letter.

If you’re wondering why Hobbs decided to capitalize those words, it might be because it spells out DINO, the commonly used acronym for the Committee on Director Nominations.

The bill’s sponsor was Sen. Jake Hoffman, who runs the DINO committee that drives Hobbs up the wall by blocking her picks to direct state departments.

That’s just one of the fun little tidbits you’ll get when you subscribe to the Education Agenda.

After a brief hiatus while Hobbs and GOP lawmakers were fighting over funding for disability services, Hobbs is back to signing bills into law.

Over the past week, she signed the following education-related bills:

SB1358: Charter school officials will have access to student records, unrestricted access to campuses, and final decision-making authority about student learning and campus safety.

SB1504: Community colleges will include more information in their annual reports, including projected enrollment for each degree program. They’ll also separate out information by each degree program.

SB1505: Teachers of blind and visually impaired students will have to pass a certification exam in Unified English Braille or an equivalent test from an approved university program.

SB1659: The top official at a school or district can ask the State Board of Education for information about misconduct allegations against current or prospective employees who resigned before the Board completed its investigation.

SB1689: The Arizona Department of Education must notify the county school superintendent and take any necessary actions if the ADE determines a school district has spent beyond its budget limit.

SB1727: Medical schools at state universities must post admissions information online and in promotional materials, including minimum qualifications, fees, deadlines and interview dates. The schools must offer an interview to any in-state applicant who meets admission requirements. In-state applicants will get priority consideration and the schools must report the number of in-state applicants, interviews and admissions.

If you want to read the new laws for yourself, the governor’s website lists them, with links to the bill text.

Lawmakers are trying to hammer out a budget agreement with Hobbs by Memorial Day.

That gives us about three weeks to get a handle on how all this is going to affect Arizona schools.

Besides the Prop 123 debate, the elephant in the room is a possible economic recession in the coming months, which would throw off state officials’ financial planning, Arizona Capitol Times’ Jakob Thorington reported.

Plus, Arizona officials don’t give schools much cushion to deal with a recession. The state government spends a lot less on education than most other states.

While state budget negotiations unfold, officials at school districts are working on their own budgets and trying to figure out how to keep the buses running, manage the loss of students to vouchers, and a virtually endless list of other financial concerns.

And some of them are already in dire financial straits, the Republic’s Caitlin McGlade reported.

An Arizona Auditor General’s Office report showed dozens of districts are in financial trouble, McGlade reported, including those that are growing quickly in the Valley, rural schools with low enrollment, and districts like the Isaac Elementary School District that are facing allegations of mismanagement.

Declining enrollment in Arizona’s public schools, per the Auditor General.

A $2 million shortfall led the Sierra Vista Unified School District in Cochise County to consider closing two elementary schools, which would save $645,000 annually, the Herald/Review reported. One reason for considering the closures, officials said, is the loss of about 1,500 students since 2019.

At the Dysart Unified School District in the Phoenix area, officials are planning to cut bus services for several hundred students next year, 12News’ Joe Dana reported. They’re hoping that move will save about $500,000. And they aren’t happy with state officials, who shortchanged them by $60 million over the past decade.

At the Kyrene Elementary School District, also in the Phoenix area, officials got an earful from parents upset about large class sizes, the Ahwatukee Foothills News’ Paul Maryniak reported. The district superintendent said they’ve been dealing with declining enrollment and revenue by spreading their resources “thinner and thinner and thinner.”

Thanks to this week’s sponsor, Education Forward Arizona! We dig their newsletter. You can sign up for it here.

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It’s graduation season in Arizona — a time for tassels, cheers and well-earned celebrations.

Each diploma marks a milestone for students and families. But those wins also ripple outward — boosting economic mobility, strengthening communities and expanding opportunity statewide.

New data from the Arizona Education Progress Meter shows Arizona is making slow but steady gains in postsecondary attainment.

But Arizona’s high school graduation rate trails the national average — limiting students’ potential and narrowing the talent pipeline. A 20% increase in college enrollment alone could add $5 billion in economic benefits per graduating class.

That’s why Education Forward Arizona, now marking 20 years of impact, continues to invest in students as a strategy for statewide prosperity. Over the past two decades, Education Forward Arizona’s 1,000 scholarship graduates have contributed an estimated $2.2 billion to Arizona’s economy.

Because when students succeed, Arizona moves forward.

To explore the latest data and learn how to get involved, visit EducationForwardArizona.org.

We’ve got a lot of cool kids out there this week.

Rosie Eden, a graduate of Scottsdale Preparatory Academy, was just named salutatorian at Princeton University, where she studies classics.

As the second-best student in her class, she’ll get to speak at the commencement ceremony on May 27.

And after designing their own off-road vehicles, university students from around the world tore through the Marana Pumpkin Patch as part of the SAE Baja International Design Competition.

The engineering students, including some from Arizona State University and the University of Arizona, spent the last year designing their vehicles according to specific rules and then getting creative to make them faster.

Finally, students at Davis Bilingual Elementary Magnet School in Tucson performed mariachi music to celebrate Cinco de Mayo, and keep alive an important part of Mexican culture.

“It makes me feel proud of myself like I’m making people happy and it’s just like, I love playing for other people because they love it too," fifth-grade violinist Wynston Moreno explained.