Our children are counting on us to provide them with a quality public education.
Arizona is one of the leaders in the school choice movement. Still, the majority of parents choose to send their children to neighborhood district schools, which are at the heart of their communities.
As a community, we need to preserve and strengthen these schools. Not only do they make our community stronger, they educate the majority of our most vulnerable students.
The AZ Schools Now!, a coalition of public school advocates, states in its guide How State Legislators Voted on School Funding that passing Prop 123 this past May only restores 18 percent of the funding cut since 2008.
In 2017, our state lawmakers have hard choices to make about the ongoing challenges of a shortage of qualified teachers, obsolete textbooks and technology, and aging school buildings. After 20 years of tax cuts and increases in tax credits, our state faces a serious challenge in how to meet our obligations to provide for education, public safety, child safety and health care.
I am on record as saying, “Politicians in Phoenix continually tell us we can’t afford to invest in our families and our children’s future. Yet we can’t afford not to.”
As a state, we want to increase our levels of academic achievement and our high school graduation rates. How do we start? Family income is highly correlated with academic achievement. Students experiencing the stresses of poverty have lower rates of academic achievement.
This should concern us in a district where 19 percent of the students live in poverty and in a state where 25 percent of our students live in poverty. The Legislative District 25 2016 profile from the Children’s Action Alliance notes there are 50,375 children in our legislative district, with 9,500 of those children living in poverty.
In my 20 years of working in public schools, I have witnessed that children disadvantaged by poverty are poorly prepared for the learning that must take place from kindergarten through high school to adequately prepare for responsible adulthood.
Children in low-income households are more likely to experience chronic stress, which impacts their ability to learn at school. For the most part, these children are educated in neighborhood schools.
I was not aware of how penny-wise and pound-foolish the majority state lawmakers have been until I started to learn more about our state budget and tax policies. The Children’s Action Alliance’s A Guide to Arizona’s Budget and Taxes (azchildren.org) gives us information about the level of support we offer our most vulnerable families and children to prevent homelessness, abuse and neglect.
One example of an unintended consequence of cutting funding for a preventive service is Child Care Assistance, which is a voucher paid for with tax dollars to help low income working parents afford child care. The number of low-income families receiving this assistance dropped by more than 12,000 families from 2008 to 2014, and, at the same time, the number of reports of child neglect grew by more than 8,000.
The 2016 Legislative Session was notable in that the freeze on Kids Care finally was lifted. Our incumbent representative voted against lifting the freeze and another bill to improve continuity in Child Care Assistance. I would have voted for both of these measures.
Arizona families worry about the increasing costs of public higher education. I want Arizona’s students to have the same opportunities our children were given by the State of Arizona.
We were able to move to Arizona and start a small business in 1994 because our son received a scholarship to the University of Arizona, which awarded him in-state tuition of less than $1,900 per year. Now, the University of Arizona’s annual in-state tuition and fees cost more than $10,000. More funding for universities to reduce tuition costs would be an economic generator for our state.
Arizona needs a new direction in state government, which guarantees quality public education from preschool through college, works for fair tax reform and limits dark money influences. These are the reasons I am a candidate for the Arizona House of Representatives.
Please email me any of your questions or concerns at rahnk25@gmail.com. Thanks for listening.