Arizona education bill exposes the myth of local control

Dr. Don Covey
Dr. Don Covey

On Wednesday the Arizona House Education Committee considered a bill that would alter the way school board members are selected when a vacancy occurs on a board. The bill failed to pass out of committee, but it succeeded in bringing attention to the myths of local control and the corrupted vacancy appointment process.

The truth is that there is little local control over the school board selection process. The vacancy appointment process has been co-opted by the Arizona School Board Association and the teachers unions.

The bill would have shifted the powers to fill vacant school board seats from the county superintendents of public instruction to the members of school boards. The bill brought attention to a glaring hole in Arizona’s educational structure. From the Arizona Legislature to the federal government, Arizonans are denied local control through a variety of tactics either deliberate or unintentional.

Few Arizonans have ready access to their legislators. By the time a bill comes to committee, only a small group of people even knows of its existence. Before the Legislature convenes in January every year, the bills that will be considered have been conceived, and written in some form. They are then vetted by Legislative counsel. The general public is only made aware of the bill – usually through sensationalistic headlines – long after the opportunity to weigh-in in any meaningful way – has passed.

The bills are crafted at the request of industry lobbyists, small handfuls of associates and a few constituents with their specific needs in mind. Too often, little thought is given to the unintended consequences to other industries, organizations, and communities. Few Arizonans have representatives like Petersen, who are willing to fight for them against the entrenched educational apparatus.

Local control in the development of bills is very local indeed – localized to constituents with ready access and influence. Unless you have a lobbyist working for you, which most parents, taxpayers and even small parent groups do not, you will not know what changes are coming to your community schools until long after the ink is dried on the bill.

There is a legal maxim that ‘Hard cases make bad law,’ which is generally interpreted to mean that it is better to craft a law to address common situations than ones that address uniquely horrible situations specific to a group or entity.

The Higley School District situation, which formed the basis of the bill proposed by Rep. Warren Petersen, is not so unique. But the bill only nibbles at the edge of the problem. For any meaningful changes to our struggling charter and traditional schools to occur, there must be a change in the county superintendent of public instruction’s candidate requirements, and the office as a whole.

Currently the county school superintendent offices around the state are filled with educrats, who do the bidding of the Arizona School Board Association, which is under the control of the National School Board Association, which is essentially under the control of the Council of Chief State School Officers and the National Association of School Superintendents.

It is through the NSBA that most school districts find their superintendents. Superintendents are recycled through the NSBA’s National Affiliation of Superintendent Searchers, and sold to unsophisticated school board members. Years ago, one long time Phoenix Valley human rights activist compared the selection process to the “Rabbinic circuit, where they clean up their resumes, and ship them off to the next unsuspecting congregation.” School Board members are taught by the ASBA, NSBA and the never-ending list of acronyms, to work only in support of the superintendent. Independent thought is frowned upon, and independent thinkers are pushed out.

Before they are pushed out, they are encouraged by the superintendent to attend the ASBA re-education orientation, or if more than one member is uncooperative, as was the case in the Tucson Unified School District a couple years back, a facilitator will visit the entire Board for a retraining.

In Arizona, when vacancies do occur, the spots are either filled by special election or county superintendents of public instruction. As a matter of fact, an inordinate number of school board seats are filled by the county superintendents rather than voters.

The vast majority of Arizonans do not even know that the offices exist, much less that they have so much control. The school board member selection process allows them to wrap their tentacles around many school boards.

The secretive process employed by most superintendents allows only for limited input by the public. Petersen had wanted that power to be granted to school board members, which in some districts, like TUSD would mean that there would continue to be virtually no parental or taxpayer involvement at all. However, in other districts, parents might have better access to, and by extension, more influence over individual school board members than they have with the deliberately invisible county superintendents.

Fortunately, it is still early enough in the process to secure more protections for the stakeholders and increase transparency in the process.

[The TUSD Board, as evidenced by the past election, is created and driven by money from Washington D.C. and Congressman Raul Grijalva, the Co-Chair of the Progressive caucus and proud associate of the Communist Party. The TEA (teachers union), which represents less than a majority of teachers, shares some control. Parents, teachers and taxpayers have little say in anything that happens on nearly any level.]

But TUSD is a hard case and once again; making any changes to law based on its unique character would be a mistake.

What is not unique is the role of the county superintendent. Petersen’s constituents in the Higley School District were trying to challenge the abuse of power by Maricopa County Superintendent Don Covey. Covey’s abuse of power is well-known across the state. Unfortunately, other superintendents use his tactics and practices as a template for their own disenfranchising policies.

See: Superintendent Covey oversteps legal authority

In 2011, after the death of TUSD board member Judy Burns, members of Tucsonans United for Sound Districts TU4SD) surveyed county superintendents regarding their replacement process. When Covey was asked about the limited role of the public in the process, he asked in response, “Why do you think the public needs to be involved.” This last week, when asked about his secretive process, Covey said, “The public can ask questions of the superintendent, isn’t that enough? Don’t you think we consider what the public has to say?”

The answer to that is clearly “no,” or Petersen would not have constituents coming to him for a legal remedy.

When Burns was replaced, the community selection panel convened in private. As per instruction, they offered Pima County Superintendent Linda Arzoumanian the names of three candidates after interviewing them in private. According to sources close to the panel members, Arzoumanian did not choose the pick with the top score. Instead she chose someone she preferred. That member served the remainder of Burn’s term and did not keep his spot in the following election.

A.R.S. 15-301 spells out the requirements of the office and its responsibilities. The County Superintendent is elected for a four-year term on a partisan ticket. A current teaching certificate is required to hold the office. This requirement guarantees that the position will be filled by an educrat.

Those educrats speak in edubabble to defend their unwillingness to make changes on the county level to increase public involvement. Unlike Petersen, who knew enough not to trust the edubabble spewed by Covey, most lawmakers rely on the educrats to educate them.

They see the “R” or “D” next to a superintendent’s name and believe it is some indicator of an ideology to which they may or may not subscribe. It isn’t – educrats are educrats – they have no other agenda than to preserve failing systems and their own jobs within those systems.

Aside from overseeing special school elections and appointing board members to vacancies, county school superintendent’s responsibilities include providing fiscal services for school districts, serving as superintendent of county accommodation schools, and establishing and administering service programs as requested by school districts.

The newly elected Governor has mandated that school districts begin to spend less money on administration and spend more money in the classrooms. That mandate could succeed if and only if we eliminate the teaching certificate requirement for county superintendent candidates.

We must overhaul the office and then elect individuals who are willing to think outside the box develop cooperatives, like the one first proposed by TU4SD, made up of local school district which can utilize economies of scale for their transportation, payroll, and other administrative costs that are sapping classroom resources. Districts can then focus their energy and cost of the things their stakeholders want them to control; policy, curriculum, classroom instruction, school site administration, etc.

To begin to make those changes, we must understand that local control of education is mostly a myth. The truth of the matter is that a sizeable portion of education dollars come from the federal government. Those federal dollars come with strings attached. The funds are performance specific and leave little wiggle room or opportunity for local control.

Many complain that the problem with Arizona’s schools stem from a lack of funding. They argue that the State simply does not spend enough on education. According to the National Association of State Budget Officers’ State Expenditure Report, Examining FY 2012 State Spending, the percentage of Arizona’s total budget spent on K-12 education in 2012 was 20 percent. The national average was 20.2 percent.

Stakeholders must focus on those things we can and do control. We must wrestle control away from the bureaucrats. We must demand transparent and inclusive processes.

To that end, legislators and other elected officials can begin to hold town halls and field hearing to discuss the issues behind the laws they are developing. They must be proactive in drawing the public into the process. The past few years the legislature has become increasingly secretive. Much of that is in reaction to a hostile press that despises anything the chambers-of-commerce or unions despise.

It is understandable that lawmakers do not trust their stakeholders to defend the policies and laws they want enacted. The general public has been generally overwhelmed with their own issues to get involved. But they can’t get involved if they don’t know about it.

Someone is going to have to make the first move and since lawmakers consider themselves leaders, it only seems like it should be them.