As lawmakers continue state budget negotiations, Arizona teachers gathered at the state Capitol to urge them to protect Proposition 208 and denounce a proposed flat income tax and tax cap.
The proposals would be paid for with the state's surplus cash. Nearly all teachers said in a recent AEA survey that this is not the best use of the money. The teachers union also worries that the proposals may threaten the changes they were expecting to make through the new tax surcharge on wealthy residents that raises new funding for schools.
“That tax cut is on the backs of Arizona public school students and that is not fair to the educators who have worked tirelessly during a pandemic," said AEA treasurer Angela Philpot.
Instead of these proposals, Deer Valley kindergarten teacher Kelley Fisher believes the state should use the billions of dollars it has in surplus and rainy day funding to address the ongoing teacher shortage, ensure every school has a counselor and provide full-day kindergarten. Right now, the state only funds half-day kindergarten which Fisher says is not enough.
“Kindergarten is where we catch any discrepancies that a child may have that we need to help them and give them extra support and without full day kindergarten we really can’t do that," Fisher said.
Chandler science teacher Katie Nash is also concerned with language that was added to the K-12 budget bill from a previously failed bill that would ban discussions of “controversial topics” in school. The bill does not clearly define what controversial means.
“Controversial to one person may be different to someone else and without any sort of guiding document to decide that it makes it really easy for someone to say, ‘I don’t agree with what they said,'" she said.
Nash worries such a policy could have a chilling effect on educators and could potentially worsen Arizona's teacher shortage. State Sen. and teacher Paul Boyer cited the same concern when he sided with Democrats and voted against a previous bill that attempted to implement the same policy.
Other Republican-led states have already passed bills with similar language.
