Trump’s Massive ED Cuts 😡 |
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This week, the Trump administration made massive cuts and layoffs in the US Dept. of Education — stifling its ability to support public schools and our students. The Trump administration is gutting resources that help students learn, threatening to strip teachers of necessary funding, and abandoning its responsibility to ensure every child has access to a quality education. And they’re attempting an end run around Congress, despite Trump’s Education Secretary Linda McMahon saying shuttering the Dept. of Ed is the duty of Congress.
Why does it matter? Make no mistake — this is not just an attack on “bureaucracy,” and it’s not in any way going to make anything more efficient. Let’s call this what it is: a direct assault on millions of students, teachers, and families. Trump’s actions have already triggered mass layoffs, with thousands of Dept. of Ed employees losing their jobs overnight. Many of those laid off are lawyers who work to oversee and protect the civil rights of America’s students. Others run programs to fund school meals, after-school tutoring, and major programs like IDEA for students with disabilities and Title I for low-income students.
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💥Mayes files suit against Trump’s ED Cuts: AZ Attorney General Kris Mayes joined a lawsuit with 21 Democratic attorneys general who sued the Trump administration on Thursday over its firing of more than 1,300 Dept. of Ed workers, saying that the dismissals were “illegal and unconstitutional.” The cuts to the department’s staff will cause a delay in “nearly every aspect” of K-12 education in their states, the attorneys general said in their suit. Therefore, the coalition is seeking a court order to stop what it called “policies to dismantle” the agency, arguing that the layoffs are just a first step toward its destruction. The attorneys general argued in their Education Department suit that the executive branch “does not have the legal authority to unilaterally incapacitate or dismantle it without an act of Congress.”
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What are the impacts for Arizona?
This means federal education funding streams are left in limbo, and local principals, school board members, and superintendents will be left scrambling as schools across the country face enormous uncertainty about the resources they rely on to get kids what they need. In a state as dramatically underfunded as Arizona, any cuts or freezing of federal funds is a death knell for public schools. Arizona could lose $957,000,000 a year in Title I, IDEA, Impact Aid, and other grants.
👀 Watch as Brahm Resnik explores what the gutting of the Dept. of Ed will mean for Arizona — and Supt. Tom Horne stakes his claim that he should be in charge of allocation of any federal funds “returned” to the state. Whether the Legislature or the ADE assumes this role, we can be sure that funding will not be equitably distributed — and funding will most certainly be funneled to private schools via vouchers.
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It’s about vouchers and privatizing schools (of course).
The Trump administration is falsely framing dismantling the Dept. of Ed as “returning control to states.” In reality, that means block grants, one of MAGA’s scams to defund schools. We’ve seen this playbook before: block grants voucherize funding, allowing politicians to slash public education funding while diverting federal funds to private schools with no accountability. Block grants are a scam that will defund public education and leave struggling schools even worse off, depriving students — especially those in underfunded urban, rural, and suburban communities — of the support they need to succeed.
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🏫🎒🧑🏫 All the news you need to know from this week in one quick read: |
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😡 New ESA Voucher Handbook Fails to Add Accountability: Superintendent Horne’s revised parent handbook has missed a key opportunity to improve accountability for taxpayers in the off-the-rails, $1 billion ESA voucher program. The newly proposed version of the handbook imposes absurd limits that further the already rampant waste of taxpayer dollars in the program. For example, the handbook suggests a limit of $4,000 for musical instruments, $2,500 for PE equipment, and $500 for appliances over 3 years. It also allows for $2,500 playgrounds and $3,000 Smart Boards per child, while Arizona's public schools struggle to fund basics like copy paper. Arizona taxpayers want their public funds to go to public schools where these costly goods can be used year over year, giving an actual return on investment — not to fund personal refrigerators, home gyms, playgrounds, pianos and kayaks for the whole family.
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🙄 ‘Jesus is better than a psychologist’: Arizona Republicans want chaplains to be in public schools. That’s right — after gutting funding for K-12 schools (and their mental health programs and professionals) and accusing public school teachers of “indoctrinating” students, Republican politicians are pushing to bring religious chaplains into the same schools to provide counseling to students. “I think Jesus is a lot better than a psychologist,” Rep. David Marshall, R-Snowflake, said during a House Education Committee hearing. We’d like to keep the wall up between church and state, thankyouverymuch.
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Here are some quick but critical actions you can take to support public education and stand up against the MAGA attacks on students, educators and public schools. |
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Tell Congress to Protect Public Ed:
Contact your US Senators & Representatives to urge them to protect the US Department of Education and the MILLIONS of vulnerable students who rely on the protections and funding it provides.
📧 EMAIL: Use our one-click email tool: bit.ly/SaveUSEdDept
☎️ CALL: Use this easy click-through calling tool: bit.ly/SaveDeptEd |
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What's Happening at the AZ Leg? |
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⏱️Deadline incoming: It's March at the legislature! We can expect lawmakers to hear many bills in committees over the next two weeks. The deadline for House bills to be heard in Senate committees and Senate bills to be heard in House committees is next Friday, March 28. Lawmakers must publish their committee agendas 5 business days before the hearings, which means bills must be on agendas by the end of this week to have a chance of becoming 2025 law (at least by conventional means).
💰Budget (not) brewing: The calendar says we're roughly halfway through the 2025 session. Monday marks day 56 of what is supposed to be a 100-day session. However, that hasn't been true in decades. Regardless of who sits in the governor's office, Arizona rarely passes a budget before mid-May. Yet Rep. David Livingston (R-28) said this week that his "goal is to pass a budget and sine die before May 1." He acknowledged that budget negotiations haven’t even started yet, but said budgets "can happen very fast" and implied that Hobbs will quickly agree to Republican lawmakers' priorities. (Republicans first saw Gov. Hobbs' executive budget proposal on January 17.) We won’t hold our breath.
😣Families hung out to dry: Meanwhile, Republican politicians continue squabbling with the governor over the crisis brewing in the Division of Developmental Disabilities (DDD), which has been defunded in part due to over-budget vouchers. The agency is projected to run out of funds by April 30, leaving families of ultra-high-need children high and dry. Last week, Gov. Hobbs cited a “dramatic spike” in spending on Arizona’s ESA voucher program and noted that next year's updated state budget now includes nearly $50 million in unbudgeted voucher spending. Rep. David Livingston (R-28) called the spiraling voucher cost an "adjustment" and part of the normal budget process, then in the next breath said families' needed supplemental DDD funding was a sign of poor fiscal management on Gov. Hobbs' part 🙄 Then, Rep. John Kavanagh (R-3) said the crisis was an “excellent incentive to get the governor to engage in budget negotiations.” It's become clear that Republicans are using kids as political pawns in a game of budgetary chicken. For our part, we'd like to see less voucher drain, and less exploitation of vulnerable families for partisan gain.
😡Another bad ballot measure: This week, with long committee agendas on most days, the full House and Senate voted on fewer bills. However, they still found time to advance HCR2025 along party lines, with only Republicans in support. This copy of a failed bill from last year asks voters to restrict their own direct democracy powers by requiring a supermajority vote on constitutional amendments. As a referral, it would circumvent the governor's veto and proceed directly to our 2026 ballots. The bill now awaits a Senate committee assignment.
🤷♀️What's up with the “block grant” (aka, voucher) bill? Lawmakers refused to pass HB2814 out of the Senate Appropriations Committee on Tuesday. This incredibly harmful bill would allow the legislature to direct federal funding if Trump dissolves the Department of Education, enabling them to redirect Title I and IDEA funds to private school vouchers with no strings attached. When Hildy Angius (R-30) joined all Democrats in opposition (without explaining her vote), the bill failed. Senate Appropriations chair John Kavanagh (R-3) held HCR2015, a copy of HB2814 written as a ballot referral to circumvent the governor's veto, rather than see it fail also — but both bills are back on the Senate Appropriations Committee agenda for this coming week.
🥳A bit of good news: Senate lawmakers refused to advance SB1028, which would have reinstated high-stakes testing to graduate from high school, on the Senate floor this past week. The bill was a priority for state Supt. Tom Horne, who promoted a similar bill last year (which also failed to pass). Republican senators Hildy Angius, Shawnna Bolick and Carine Werner joined all Democrats in voting no, killing the bill.
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Each bill we tell you about from this point forward has passed at least one chamber, putting it that much closer to passage — and making it that much more important that you weigh in!
🛑 Use Request to Speak on the following bills: |
👎NO on SB1036 •👎 NO on SB1097 👎 NO on SB1371 • 👎 NO on SB1534
👎 NO on SCR1009 • 👎 NO on HB2113
👎 NO on HB2167 • 👎 NO on HB2601 👎 NO on HB2610
👎 NO on HB2640 • 👎 NO on HB2814
👎 NO on HB2867 • 👎 NO on HCR2015
👎 NO on HCR2042 • 👎 NO on HCR2057 |
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✅ The SOSAZ 2025 Bill Tracker contains full information about all bills SOSAZ supports or opposes in 2025 and gives you up-to-the-minute information on where these bills stand. |
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Email Gov. Hobbs & your lawmakers to urge them to do their constitutional duty and invest in Arizona’s public schools! Our easy-to-use, one-click email tool is preloaded with SOSAZ’s legislative priorities, but we also encourage you to customize your email for maximum impact. |
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SOSAZ Network Book Club 📖 The SOSAZ Network Book Club meets March 23 to wrap up discussion on Punished for Dreaming: How School Reform Harms Black Children and How We Heal by Bettina L. Love. Our virtual discussion will be led by ASU Professors Dr. Carrie Sampson and Dr. Sharon Kirsch, as well as doctoral student Christina Bustos. SIGN UP HERE to become a new member of our book club and get the latest updates or sign up directly for the March 23 zoom meeting HERE.
Order the book through Changing Hands or your favorite bookseller! |
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Contact Us
[email protected] Save Our Schools Arizona
PO Box 28370
Tempe, AZ 85285
United States Paid for by Save Our Schools Arizona. Not authorized by any candidate. |
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