“We’re going to eliminate $258 million but going to sit here today and say we don’t have $100 million for public education. It’s B.S. And it boils down to where are your priorities. And I will say that public education has never been a priority for a majority of folks in the Legislature, even when times were good.”
A 2007 survey commissioned by the Arizona Board of Regents and implemented by Dr. Fred Solop, Professor of Political Science and Director of the Social Research Laboratory at Northern Arizona University, indicates that residents grasp the full dimensions of the issue and would even support a tax increase for education -- a point upon which all three state university presidents have called for a public vote. Among the survey’s key findings:
- Arizonans rate “improving the affordability of universities” as second among nine issues presented, just behind “creating safe communities” and ahead of “making health care affordable.”
- “Students who get degrees from universities” are believed to be the greatest beneficiaries of university education, followed by “employers” and “communities where universities are located.”
- When Arizonans are asked who should be responsible for keeping university education affordable, “state government” is the most popular answer.
- “High quality educational programs” and “accessible to students of all backgrounds” are the phrases that Arizonans say most closely describe the state’s public universities.
- Sixty-one percent of Arizonans think the state should guarantee all qualified students an opportunity for a university education, and 71 percent of these respondents would pay more taxes to support such a guarantee.
- Seventy-four percent of Arizonans think that a state public university education is a good value for the money. Two-thirds support spending increases to improve the three state universities.
- Eighty-three percent of Arizonans think the state legislature should allocate more money to Arizona’s public universities.
- Fifty-seven percent of state residents support raising taxes to provide more need-based financial aid to students, and 55 percent support a tax increase to fund new construction at state universities.
Despite strong public support, the education situation is grim here in the desert right now -- scarce resources are literally drying up, and opportunistic politicians are using the financial crisis for ideologically-driven purposes. While the nation talks about stimulus, in Arizona we’re looking at retrenchment instead. The way things are going, the state could slide from 49th to 50th in its educational outlays, leaving it at the bottom of the class in a critically-important category. One is left to wonder if future generations in the southwest will stand any chance of succeeding, financially or otherwise, with the supportive foundations of learning removed from beneath their feet. As Prescott College Education Professor Dr. Anita Fernandez recently observed, the psychological and perceptual impacts can be as critical as the loss of infrastructure:
“The impact on kids is what gets lost in these budget debates -- the disturbingly clear message that is being sent to the children of Arizona is that they are not important. They are not important enough for schools to provide basic supplies like paper and pens anymore; and they are not important enough for their classrooms to be heated or cooled because their schools can’t afford the utility bills. So what becomes of children who are told they don’t matter, and how do those children contribute to their communities when they grow up?”
They say it’s a dry heat out here, but at the end of the day, the Arizona legislature’s shortsighted budget fix is fundamentally all wet.
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