I am Ian Kerr. I’m in my late 40s. I live in Phoenix, Arizona, with my wife, Birgit, and twin children, Max and Anna. Each is in 4th grade and attends the same public school in North Phoenix.
I was not born in Arizona, but my mother was. My family (mom, dad, brother and myself) moved to Arizona when I was 9, and apart from 6 years in the mid-1990s, I have lived in the state ever since. I attended nothing but public schools while growing up in Arizona and elsewhere. I have a Bachelors Degree from the University of Arizona, and a Postbaccalaureate Certificate from Arizona State University. All of the other college courses I’ve ever taken (apart from 3 online courses) were through the Maricopa Community College system.
My mother attended public schools in Arizona throughout her childhood. When she enrolled in what is now Northern Arizona University, she became the first member of her family to do so. She became her family’s first college graduate. Within a decade, her sister and mother also earned college degrees from NAU. All became teachers, serving in Arizona’s public schools for, collectively, about 80 years. At times, my mother’s income from teaching was the vast majority of the income supporting our family of four. My brother, an ASU graduate, teaches in a public school in Arizona, as does my best friend in the world. My father taught on-and-off at the community college level in Arizona. I attend a medium-small church in north Phoenix with less than 150 member families. There are at least 8 members who work in public schools, six being teachers.
Few people owe so much of who they are to Arizona’s public primary, secondary, and post-secondary schools than I. I would not be who, what, and where I am professionally and personally without those institutions.
I am angry because the institutions so important to my formation are being financially abandoned to the detriment of a state that, more than ever, needs them to be strong.
By every credible measure, Arizona’s public schools are underfunded relative to how other states see fit to fund theirs… to dire consequences.
Primary and secondary schools are having a hard time recruiting and retaining teachers. Many haven’t seen a pay raise since 2008. My son’s teachers for gifted math, gifted language arts, and his home room teacher all changed in the middle of the current school year. A friend who will be a principal at a new school next year spent much of this year flying around the country to recruit teachers.The district in which I live is relatively affluent, yet a standard class size for 4th grade in our district is 28 students.
Things are just as bleak at the post-secondary level. Arizona State University (all of its campuses put together), in the fiscal year just ended, received about 10% less support from Arizona taxpayers than just the Main campus of the University of New Mexico did from New Mexico’s taxpayers. ASU, all-told, is 3 times as big as UNM-Main.
The principal consequence – in-state tuition so high (twice as high in AZ as NM) many well-qualified Arizonans can’t take advantage of the strong universities close to home. In the three decades since my freshman year at the University of Arizona, general inflation has caused consumer prices to be about 2.2 times higher. U of A in-state tuition is 11 times higher than it was 30 years ago.
Year after year, proponents of education beg and plead with the legislature and the governor of the day to do right by our schools to little avail – and they’ve found ways to sidestep various school-funding ballot measures.
I’m angry and I need to do something about this… for the sake of my children, my extended family, my friends in education, and for a state I care for a lot.
I have decided to start a group, which I hope will become a movement, called Citizens of Arizona for the Reform of Public Education Finance – C.A.R.P.E. Finance (pronounced CAR-pay as in the latin carpe diem – seize the day).
Its sole purpose is working for increased funding for all levels of public education in Arizona – adequate, sustainable, equitable long-term funding for all public schools, colleges and universities done in such a way that elected officials would have a hard time undoing it.
C.A.R.P.E. Finance is not yet mature enough or robust enough to take any action – for now, it will be a group that agrees schools need more funding (the “how” will come later, at the discretion of the group members).
Such a change would be great. I am under no illusion that it will be easy. Great things seldom are easily created and rarely created without the persistent optimism of many of their creators. On this topic, I choose persistent optimism. I choose to believe a large enough number of Arizonans believe as I do on this topic to make a difference.
Now, I ask you:
Do you want public education in Arizona to be adequately, sustainably, and equitably funded for the long-term? Are you willing to join a a grassroots movement committed to working toward that one goal and willing to participate in a little bit work from time to time to make it happen?
If so, C.A.R.P.E. Finance would be glad to have you. Message me and I’ll include you in our Facebook group (which is a Closed group). It’s free to join the Facebook group. At the moment, the group is not big enough to
Even if you like the goal and want to join the group and want to get others to join the group… there is a very specific reason I do NOT want you to LIKE and SHARE a link to this on Facebook or other Social Media. That reason will become clear once I reply to your request to join C.A.R.P.E. Finance.
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