Jen Samuels is excit­ed. She is a teacher in the Par­adise Val­ley School Dis­trict near Phoenix, Ariz. and was up ear­ly today, although she will not be in her class­room. Today Samuels and thou­sands of her fel­low teach­ers are out on strike, and up to 50,000 edu­ca­tors and their sup­port­ers are expect­ed to march to the Ari­zona state capi­tol in near­ly 100-degree heat.

“My mini­van will be filled with teach­ers,” Samuels tells In These Times. ​“We are dri­ving to a light rail sta­tion, tak­ing the train to the sta­di­um where the Ari­zona Dia­mond­backs play base­ball, and then march­ing 1.7 miles to the capitol.”

Samuels’ hus­band will be fol­low­ing along behind her, so that her three young chil­dren can attend the march. Schools will be closed across the state in sup­port of the walk­out, with many observers believ­ing this will become the largest teacher strike in recent history.

Over 800,000 stu­dents in both tra­di­tion­al pub­lic schools and char­ter schools and are expect­ed to be impact­ed by the walk­out, as their schools will like­ly be closed until an agree­ment over pay and class­room fund­ing is reached between teach­ers and Arizona’s gov­er­nor and leg­is­la­tors. So far, Repub­li­can Gov. Doug Ducey has pro­posed a 20 per­cent raise, to be grad­u­al­ly phased in by 2020.

Strike orga­niz­ers, though, includ­ing the grass­roots group Ari­zona Edu­ca­tors Unit­ed, say that the 20 per­cent pay raise meets only one of their five demands, and effec­tive­ly cuts non-licensed school staff out of the deal because only teach­ers’ salaries would see an increase. The teach­ers’ demands are avail­able online and include a pledge that tax­es not be cut in Ari­zona until ​“per-pupil spend­ing reach­es the nation­al average.”

This mes­sage doesn’t appear to have reached Gov. Ducey, how­ev­er, as he signed a tax break into law on April 25, just hours before teach­ers were set to strike. In a deal that could cost Ari­zona $12 mil­lion in annu­al tax rev­enue, Gov. Ducey signed off on a no-tax pledge designed to attract a buy­er for a coal pow­er plant on the Nava­jo Nation. Samuels says that, to her knowl­edge, Ducey has still refused to meet with edu­ca­tors in per­son and has so far only invit­ed school super­in­ten­dents to the table.

Arizona’s invest­ment in pub­lic edu­ca­tion — from its per-pupil spend­ing to its teacher pay rate — is hov­er­ing near the bot­tom for all fifty states, accord­ing to numer­ous sources. This has led to an edu­ca­tion cri­sis that has been exac­er­bat­ed by Arizona’s near­ly bound­less pur­suit of school choice schemes — includ­ing school vouch­ers — that have helped steer mon­ey away from pub­lic school districts.

In August, 2017, Gov. Ducey signed a mas­sive expan­sion of the state’s vouch­er pro­gram into law, sig­nal­ing his sup­port for the use of pub­lic funds for pri­vate schools. Moves like this, crit­ics allege, have helped land Ari­zona where it is today, with thou­sands of edu­ca­tors and their sup­port­ers don­ning red, the cho­sen col­or of their Red for Ed cam­paign, and ral­ly­ing at the state capitol.

For Anne Ellsworth, a par­ent and Epis­co­pal priest based in Tempe, it was the 2017 vouch­er expan­sion bill that led her to get involved in the fight for Arizona’s pub­lic schools. The bill was orig­i­nal­ly pro­posed by Repub­li­can state leg­is­la­tor Deb­bie Lesko who claimed that divert­ing pub­lic mon­ey to pri­vate schools would ​“save tax­pay­er mon­ey.” In response, Ellsworth became part of a grass­roots, pro-pub­lic school group called Save Our Schools, and hasn’t looked back since.

Save Our Schools just won the right to have an anti-vouch­er expan­sion ref­er­en­dum placed on the Novem­ber bal­lot in Ari­zona. For Ellsworth, this is all about the peo­ple of Ari­zona ris­ing up to express their col­lec­tive sup­port for the state’s pub­lic schools.

“I am com­ing at this as a par­ent who cares deeply not only for my own chil­dren, but for all the chil­dren that attend Ari­zona schools,” Ellsworth says. But there’s more. ​“As a priest, I believe our bud­gets are moral doc­u­ments. I believe cler­gy need to be vocal about hav­ing our leg­is­la­tors pass leg­is­la­tion that cares for our sick and our poor.”

What Ari­zona needs, Ellsworth insists, is not a short term fix like the one she says Gov. Ducey has offered, but instead new rev­enue streams ded­i­cat­ed to sup­port­ing schools, stu­dents and edu­ca­tors. ​“Ari­zona gives away approx­i­mate­ly $14 bil­lion in tax exemp­tions, and our state brings $9.8 bil­lion into our gen­er­al fund. The gen­er­al fund mon­ey is how we pay for our schools, but we are giv­ing away more than we are col­lect­ing, through cor­po­rate tax cred­its and exemptions.”

Don’t let any­one ever tell you there is no mon­ey in Ari­zona, Ellsworth says. Instead, what she sees is a gov­er­nor behold­en to out­side mon­ey from groups such as Amer­i­cans for Pros­per­i­ty (fund­ed by the Koch Broth­ers) and the Amer­i­can Fed­er­a­tion for Chil­dren, a pro-vouch­er group affil­i­at­ed with Edu­ca­tion Sec­re­tary Bet­sy Devos.

“There is no respect for the will of the peo­ple right now,” Ellsworth argues, not­ing that she first request­ed a meet­ing with Gov. Ducey last year and nev­er received a response. Today, she will be at the capi­tol with her chil­dren. As she reflects on what’s hap­pen­ing, Ellsworth frames the Ari­zona walk­out as a des­per­ate mea­sure for pub­lic school advo­cates from across the state. ​“This is tru­ly the last straw,” she says. ​“All pos­si­ble chan­nels of com­mu­ni­ca­tion have been exhausted.”