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Senator: Dems seek campaign issue, not charter school reform

Julia Shumway//May 3, 2019//[read_meter]

Senator: Dems seek campaign issue, not charter school reform

Julia Shumway//May 3, 2019//[read_meter]

Arizona charter schools oppose more state regulation

Sen. Kate Brophy McGee this week vowed to bring back her bill imposing new rules on charter schools next year, but she said it faces a steep, uphill battle because Democrats want to campaign on the flaws of charter schools.

The Phoenix Republican’s SB1394, which passed the Senate on a party-line vote in March but died after being held in the House, would have given the attorney general more power to investigate charter schools’ purchasing decisions, limit how many family members can serve on a charter board and require disclosure if the schools contract with companies owned by board members. Democrats said the bill didn’t go far enough, but Brophy McGee contends they didn’t support it for political reasons.

“I think the system needs to be perceived as broken in order for it to remain a campaign issue,” the Phoenix Republican said.  “There’s something larger afoot. I hope I’m wrong about that.”

Brophy McGee said she has watched efforts to expand school choice in other states fail. She told fellow Senate Republicans in an April 30 caucus meeting that she sees a national movement developing in opposition not just to charter schools but to the broader issue of school choice — including vouchers and open enrollment in public school districts.

“My concern is that this is being done under the guise of reform,” Brophy McGee said. “The reforms I submitted were substantive, significant. They have been disparaged as being not that.”

Senate Minority Leader David Bradley, D-Tucson, said Democrats look forward to working on “real reform” of charter schools during the next session. They tried working with Brophy McGee this spring, he said.

“We were seeking levels of accountability she wasn’t willing to go along with,” he said. “We were negotiating and we gave her language and all of a sudden her bill appeared on the (Committee of the Whole) calendar.”

Democrats aren’t opposed to school choice, Bradley said, noting that members of his caucus have children who attend charter schools. Bradley’s wife Debra was one of the founders of an early charter school, and during his time working in the child welfare system he saw children attending both good and bad charter schools and good and bad traditional public schools.

Senate Democrats wanted greater transparency about where state money goes from the time it’s distributed to charter schools to the time those schools spend it, Bradley said.

And he dismissed the idea that Democrats were solely responsible for the fate of SB1394 this year.

“We are not in the majority,” Bradley said. “We can’t kill bills.”

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