#RedForEd advocates slam wording changes for school-funding ballot measure

Angie Forburger | The Republic | azcentral.com

More than 100 supporters of the #RedForEd education movement gathered at an unusual Saturday hearing at the state Capitol after a judge ordered a Republican-controlled legislative committee to rewrite the ballot wording for the education income-tax-hike proposal.

The committee of state lawmakers approved a more concise description of Proposition 207, making changes that many local teachers and education advocates said were biased and unrepresentative of the measure.

"It's frustrating," said Natalie Peck, a physical-education teacher at Boulder Creek Elementary School in Phoenix. "We come here on a Saturday, trying to do the best for our students, and you’re talking to people who don’t want to be impartial about education."

Prop. 207, also known as the Invest in Education measure, would bring in $690 million in additional funding for Arizona public district and charter schools.

It proposes to raise income-tax rates by 3.46 percentage points to 8 percent on individuals who earn more than $250,000 or households that earn more than $500,000. It also would raise individual rates by 4.46 percentage points to 9 percent for individuals who earn more than $500,000 and households that earn more than $1 million.

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The legislative committee is charged with developing nonpartisan language to describe ballot measures in informational pamphlets once a measure qualifies for the ballot.

Dozens of teachers and education advocates packed a July hearing in opposition of the initial ballot language, which leaders of the Prop. 207 campaign said overexaggerated aspects of the tax and had biased wording.

Leaders of the Prop. 207 campaign later successfully challenged the wording in Maricopa County Superior Court, requiring the committee to go back to the drawing board.

“It’s the same thing over and over again," Peck said.

After the three-hour hearing, the committee voted to move forward with the new wording, specifically removing the opening paragraph of the proposition that details what the funding is for and eliminating an early reference to the teachers and students.

The changes, which went beyond what was suggested by the court, sparked disappointment in many of the "Red for Ed" supporters who have been a part of the movement to get the measure on the ballot for months.

Joshua Buckley, chairman of the Prop. 207 effort, described the revisions as “even more biased than the original version.”

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Ronda Olson, a librarian, said the wording doesn't reflect what thousands of people pushed to get on the November ballot.

“For being invested in the Red for Ed movement, going out gathering signatures, talking with voters, getting the support from voters, and then coming here, the layout of what is going into the voters guide is not really reflective of what we put out there,” she said.

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Others added that the language was "unclear," leaving voters wondering what the proposition puts forth.

"It's disappointing," said Donna Perea, who teaches first- and second-grade students in the Roosevelt School District. "We were hoping that it would be in clear language that the voters would understand."

As November nears, teachers and supporters continue to preach to voters the importance of remembering what — and who — they are voting for.

"When people are voting, they need to be really, really smart about it,” Peck said. "It really is affecting the children."

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