PHOENIX — As the legislative session gets underway next week, the state of education could be a hot topic.
Chase Field was filled with lawmakers on Friday, discussing what’s coming this session in a legislative forecast luncheon. The one controversial topic that kept coming up was the Universal Empowerment Scholarship Accounts (ESA).
Oscar De Los Santos, the Democratic Assistant Minority Leader said the program has “come off the rails.”
Governor Katie Hobbs proposed a new plan earlier this week, that in her words, would make the ESA program more accountable and transparent. It’s a plan Democratic lawmakers are behind.
However, Senator Ken Bennett, the Republican chairman of the Senate Education Committee, tells ABC15 he’s open to some, but not all of Hobbs’ ideas.
“Keeping students safe, yes, we need to talk about that. Protecting the rights of students with disabilities,” he said.
Among possible changes to ESAs, other priorities include increasing student achievement, which starts with the teachers. Bennett says his caucus has been looking at raising teacher pay.
“If the voters do reauthorize Prop 123 monies, all those monies go to teachers’ salary instead of just dividing it up into the system instead of how It gets divided up right now,” Bennett said of the Republican lawmakers’ proposal.
On the Democratic side, Senator Christine Marsh says she is open to that bill, but they’ll “have to see.”
One of Marsh’s mirrored proposed bills is in the name of school safety, she said. She wants to keep school blueprints from being released through public records requests.
“In order to at least mitigate, or help with school shootings, so that we can't have somebody who can get the blueprints and the internal workings of a school,” she said.
A few other priorities include looking at reducing the “red tape and bureaucracy” public and charter schools have to go through. Bennett said it would help schools focus more money on the classroom and, in turn, help students academically. Marsh wants to look into absenteeism in schools, with efforts to keep students in school more.
Only time will tell what will come out of the session and trickle into the classroom.
Tom Horne, the Republican Superintendent of Public Instruction, said he’s supportive of the Republican lawmakers’ proposal of getting more money to teachers.
“It’s going to be up to the legislature for proposals, and if they pass something I’ll dutifully follow whatever they do,” Horne said.
