Target: Arizona Governor Doug Ducey
Since 2008, our K-12 public schools have been suffering from drastic cuts—more than 1.5 billion dollars—made during the recession. Ten years removed and our classrooms are still missing more than a billion dollars, and we have no plan to get us back to pre-recessionary investments much less a level that nears the national average.
The result of this underfunding is a teacher shortage that has left thousands of Arizona students without the most basic classroom necessity: a full-time teacher. An entire generation of our kids has had to “make do” with overcrowded classrooms, outdated textbooks and technology, and a loss of critical support staff such as reading specialists and counselors. This is simply unacceptable.
To: Arizona Governor Doug Ducey From: [Your Name]
I’m asking you to immediately convene a working group with the majority and minority leaders of both parties to tackle our public education funding crisis.
We cannot continue to punt on our responsibility to uphold our state constitution’s directive for equitable and sustainable funding for our public schools. Our schools need substantial and dedicated revenues to solve this crisis, and they need those revenues now.