School board recommends 10 priority items for ASBA political agenda

Maricopa Unified School District governing board members selected 10 educational items Wednesday night which they believe are priority issues for the Arizona School Boards Association (ASBA) to pursue in any special session on education and in the 50th session of the Arizona legislature.

After reviewing the lists received from school boards throughout the state, the ASBA will determine its final set of Top Ten Priorities for the year.

In settling upon its list of 10 recommendations, the governing board discussed several of the 114 potential priority items that the ASBA offered for consideration.

Jeff Kleck, superintendent of the Maricopa Unified School District, said that his administration originally whittled the list down to 35 potential items, and then to 10 recommended items, for the governing board to consider. “We had 35 we thought were fairly significant,” Kleck said. “Going from 35 to 10 is difficult.”

Here is the list of ASBA political agenda priorities for 2011 that the Maricopa governing board voted 5-0 to support:

1. Under the heading of Advocacy for Children and Student Needs: Seek and support legislation that adequately encourages, assists and financially supports the curriculum and instructional needs of Arizona’s public schools to ensure college and career readiness of all students.

2. Under the heading of Local Control/Governance: Oppose unfunded and burdensome legislative mandates.

“The bottom line is if you’re going to tell us that we’ve got to do something, you’ve got to come up with the money for it,” Kleck said in supporting the item as a priority.

3. Under the heading of Accountability: Advocate for continued local control of school improvement plans created and implemented for underperforming schools.

4. Also under the heading of Accountability: Encourage the Arizona Department of Education to conduct research to determine the N number that is statistically valid. “An N number, whenever you take a survey, is the number of people that you have to survey in order to say your survey is valid,” Kleck said.

5. Under the heading of Taxation/Revenues: Oppose Arizona’s Proposition 13 initiative. Kleck said that Proposition 13 would result in a limitation of property taxes that would lead to a reduction of funding for school districts.

6. Under the heading of Funding: Advocate for a complete revision of the school finance formula.

7. Also under the heading of Funding: Seek and support legislation to eliminate the Budget Balance Carry Forward limit in the M&O funding calculation.

8. Also under the heading of Funding: Seek and support the reenactment and funding of voluntary, full-day kindergarten.

9. Under the heading of Personnel: Seek and support legislation that provides increased funding for school personnel salaries.

“Our teachers are working hard, losing pay,” Kleck said.

10. Under the heading of Federal Concerns: Advocate for increasing the federal investment in public education to meet the federally-imposed mandates and subsequent cost increases for special education (IDEA) and implementation of the No Child Left Behind (NCLB)/Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA).

“Again, that’s one of those things where if you’re going to tell us to do something, we need the money,” Kleck said.

The governing board decided to approve nine of the 10 priority items that were recommended by Kleck. Board members opted to replace a Taxation/Revenues item (to seek and support legislation requiring the Arizona State Legislature to pass a state budget for the ensuing fiscal year no later than April 1 of the previous fiscal year) with an additional funding item (to seek and support legislation to eliminate the Budget Balance Carry Forward limit in the M&O funding calculation).

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