Legislative Update

March 26, 2008

Transcript:

Ted Simons:
Tonight on "Horizon," $40 million or $300 million? Find out what it will cost to educate Arizona's English language learners. Join high school students backstage as they participate in an award-winning program that allows them to explore careers in theater. And we'll update you on what's been happening this week down at the state's capitol. Those stories are next on "Horizon."

Ted Simons:
" Horizon" is made possible by contributions from the friends of eight, members of your Arizona PBS station. Thank you.

Ted Simons:
Hello and welcome to "Horizon." I'm Ted Simons. Last week, a bill that makes changes to Arizona's employer sanctions law was stuck in committee. Now it's back on track and moving through the legislative process. Joining me with an update is Jim Small, a reporter for the "Arizona Capitol Times." Jim, good to have you back.

Jim Small:
Thanks for having me.

This the one representative pierce is talking about with e-verify, do it by august first or you have problems. Correct.

Jim Small:
Correct, The original version of the bill as we talked about last week, if a business didn't sign up for e-verify -- that didn't set well with a number of people in the business community.
It didn't sit well with people who had family businesses, mother, father, daughter, son, where they're not hiring a lot of employees and everyone that is in the company, they know where they came from. Their citizenship isn't in question. The new version of the bill, which passed through the senate appropriations committee yesterday, removes that portion and instead of being more of a punitive measure against businesses that don't use the federal data base, it -- it is -- businesses that don't sign up for it by august first, can't be eligible for government contracts or what is called economic development incentives. Any contracts with the state, city, school district, county, they will not be eligible for unless they use e-verify and all subcontractors use e-verify.

Ted Simons:
How much is this holding up the previous revisions?

Jim Small:
Representative Pearce who sponsored the bill is in agreement with it, he is ready and willing to move this forward. It was supposed to go through the house today. Got held up for a little bit. Was supposed to go through yesterday as well, and the factors weren't right today. They held off on it. They could do it as soon as tomorrow or they may wait until next week.

Ted Simons:
Let's get an update on the budget. Anything to report on '08 or '09?

Jim Small:
From what we've heard, not a lot of specific details, most of the current year budget, the fix has been agreed to, at least as far as spending cuts goes, and fund sweeps and things like that. They started talking yesterday about doing budget cuts for the next fiscal year, the one that begins in July. They met yesterday, today, and they are expected to meet tomorrow and may meet on Friday.

Ted Simons:
Is there a thought that because '08 is figured out, the movement on '09, the speed can get faster?

Jim Small:
The pace has been picking up for about the past week and week and a half. That is good news to a lot of lawmakers' ears and people in the state concerned about the economic situation.

Ted Simons:
There was debate as well related to the federal No child Left Behind law. What was that about?

Jim Small:
There was a bill that passed on a voice vote in the house today, saying the state will conduct a cost study of what the impact of opting out of no child left behind would be, and if the state could find a way to cover the costs, loss of federal money, the state would be the first in the nation to say we are not going to be part of this federal program.

Ted Simons:
Interesting, As well the idea of electing judges in Maricopa and Pima counties as opposed to merit selection. How far has that gone?

Jim Small:
One bill that went through senate committee that didn't make it out of the senate committee earlier this year. Similar bill in the house, through committee, waiting for floor to -- floor vote, scheduled to be heard today. Much like the employer sanctions, it was a factor of there just weren't enough republicans on the floor at the time; number of people had to leave early today. They couldn't stick around for the lengthy calendar that they had. That caused the leadership to go ahead and hold onto these measures.

Ted Simons:
It sounds like the House had a lot on its agenda but not much getting done. Can we expect to see action on these and other issues later in the week?

Jim Small:
I think either tomorrow, they only work Monday through Thursday, either tomorrow or next week a lot of these things will come due. What will push this process along, if there is a budget agreement, leadership is going to want to pass the budget as quickly as possible, the fix for the current year and a budget for the upcoming year. Once they pass it, there will be a lot of pressure on them to go ahead and wrap session up and move through everything that has been doing a holding pattern right now, try to get that out and let lawmakers go back to their districts and run re-election campaigns.

Ted Simons:
It sounds like not much happening today, but still movement out there. So that's encouraging. Once again Jim Thanks so much for joining me. Once again Arizona is facing huge fines if it fails to adequately fund English language learners. How much funding is adequate? In just a moment, I'll talk with two people who have very different viewpoints. But first, David Majure gives us some additional background information.

David Majure:
There are approximately 130,000 students in Arizona classified as English language learners, Arizona is required by federal law to provide them equal opportunities to get a public education.

Michael Martinez:
Demographics are quite clear.We have a minority population, and their language is other than English, and we need to make them ready for our future, because they are part of our future. If we don't, we will start to slide downhill with regard to the attractability to business, the quality of life issue, and tremendous impact.

David Majure:
How much of an impact these kids will have on the state's budget has been a point of contention for years.

Gloria Rivera:
We have had several E.L.L studies in the past in the state of Arizona, and every study has shown it is costly to educate English language learners.

David Majure:
How costly is it? The English Language Learners task force was supposed to answer that question. Charged with designing a model that school districts will use to educate E.L.L. kids. After months of work, it came up with a model that requires E.L.L. students to spend four hours a day in English language development. Based on that model, districts had to figure out what it could cost to implement it. They came up with budget requests totaling about $274 million that is close to the $304 million estimate from the Arizona School Administrators Association. But, the state Department of Education did number crunching and figured the districts really only need an extra $40 million to do the job. That's the amount the state superintendent of schools has requested lawmakers include in the new state budget.

Ted Simons:
Here to explain why the numbers are so different is Tom Horne, Arizona's Superintendent of Public Instruction. And Greg Wyman, President of the Arizona School Administrators Association and Superintendent of the Apache Junction Unified District. Gentlemen, thank you for joining us.

Tom Horne: Thank you.

Ted Simons: $40 million, how do you come up with the figure?

Tom Horne:
1,400 teachers statewide. You have to have four hours a day of intensive English language development. We think that should have been happening all along really.
The proposition in 2000 overwhelmingly by the voters, emersion -- when they became proficient, they would be mainstream. We think this should have been happening all along. It hasn't been. They were thrown into the class who already speak English, many don't know what is going on; don't learn English, the subject matter. Now, in many cases, you can do that by rescheduling, and let's say you have 100 kids in four classes. Half are English language learners, 25 kids a class; you can take two classes of English language learners and two of the other kids. Schools are saying if you are doing that, we need two more teachers. No, you don't, that doesn't cost anything. In some cases it does cost because the numbers don't work and you do have to hire an additional teacher. We found you would need to hire 1,400 additional teachers. That's quite a lot state wide that's covered by the 40 million dollars.

Greg Wyman:
let's divide it up different, 75 of those kids are proficient in English and 25 aren't, the way the task force model came out it said you will place the kids in one of four categories, but you can't mix the categories. If you have 12 kids in level one and two, 13 in level three and four, you have to put them in two classrooms. You have to hire teachers, Tom talked about the teachers, but if I don't have the classroom space for the kids and I have to put them somewhere for four hours, it is not like I take them outside and teach them. We have to do something with kids for four hours. There is classroom space issues, if you have the space; you have to put the materials in there to help teachers. Our costs both in January, $304 million, and the $274 million will reflect the fact that that will be a major component of the structures when we divide these up, it is not as simple as was used a moment ago.

Ted Simons:
What about classrooms and facilities sounds like that should be a part of the issue

Tom Horne:
The calculation of whether you need more space is a difficult one. The school facilities board is expert at that. If you need more space for any one of a number of reasons, lots of reasons people need more space, they go to the school facilities board. The task force made the decision, this isn't my decision, the task force decision that decision should be made where the expertise is at the school facilities board rather than for them to try to duplicate that expertise and figure out classroom space which is a difficult thing to calculate.

Greg Wyman:
Problem is the reality will be I'm going to have those kids in my school next year. If you are going to implement something to the legislature and the department is going to go ahead and put it in place and there is a law that says we have to do it, then get your act together right off the bat and take care of all of those issues, because you guys are back over here talking about whether I should or shouldn't go to the school facilities board, should or shouldn't get the money, the reality, we have those kids, we have to do something with them. We don't have time to wait three or four years for somebody to get together, to figure out how much money, build the classrooms and put the kids there.

Tom Horne:
Greg is from Apache Junction. They did a good job. They felt they needed ten more teachers and we agreed. We had a district that asked for 90 no justification, no narrative. And we couldn't figure out where they came from. When we calculated, we found they needed 13. We had another ask for 49 and they needed one. It is a matter of if you are in the school and you are asked how much money do you need, you ask for as much as you can think of because we all want more resources in education. We had a fiduciary duty on behalf of the taxpayer to figure out how many is the added cost.

Ted Simons:
Is it not the case that districts are siphoning money from other things to try to stay afloat.$40 million, so many people find that low, and find it low by hundreds of millions of dollars and they're already saying we're siphoning money off, there is a disconnect there.

Tom Horne:
The $40 million is accurate. Well substantiated. Our books are open. Anyone can come look at them. We are happy to talk to districts if they think we made a mistake. The $300 million is pretty secret. We don't know how they got there. $40 million, that's 1,400 teachers. The guy who did the work was a principal for 20 years, if you ask me for how much money I can use, I will come up with a big number. His job was to figure exactly what was needed and the $40 million is a precise number.

Greg Wyman:
That starts to speak of the integrity of administrators and school districts. The issue out there, we came out as school superintendents January 23rd with the number $304 million, because we knew the number that was going to come in was going to be significantly lower, and probably in the ballpark of where we're at. Oversimplification of what needs to be done can get you to $40 million. Their number is no more right than ours if you want to play that game. $304 million, $274 million, and pretty close numbers. An example, one of the areas that people got touched on additional materials for class. If I am teaching a class, I have a textbook to teach a class, I will go ahead and meet one hour a day, five days a week for 18 weeks. You now come in with a model that says, oh, by the way, meet for four hours a day, five days a week, for 18 weeks, but just use the same textbook you used before. There will have to be supplemental materials. I think the concern we have is there is an oversimplification of what this issue is about, and there is a oversimplification of the task force model, the reality, school administrators, we are going to have to implement it without the dollars that are available and it is not going to happen.

Tom Horne:
Every school district gets $6,000 per student to educate the student. You have to teach the kids reading, writing, English, grammar. You should have been doing that all along and you should have books that are doing that. What have you been doing all of these years if not using the money out of the $6,000 per student that is designated for books and materials to have the books and materials to teach reading, writing, and grammar.

Greg Wyman:
And we have been using those books to teach that. If you take a course and expand it by four hours, there will have to be supplemental materials in place to help these kids. It can't be the same as it has always been. You will have kids on multiple levels in the same classroom.
I would contend we have already done that.

Tom Horne:
Four hours divided up, reading, oral language, time for grammar, writing, those are all things that the schools should have been teaching that they get money for materials out of the $6,000 per student. That is not an incremental cost of the way we teach. That is a cost that has always been there, they have a budget of which to buy materials from.

Ted Simons:
There is a concern regarding federal money for low income kids. You want to include it. I'm guessing you don't. Talk to me about it.

Greg Wyman:
I didn't include it.

Ted Simons:
But you would like to include it.

Greg Wyman: The answer is very simple on this. The judge in Tucson has already ruled that that is illegal. You cannot offset or supplant money. If I have $100, and this model gives me $200, you can't say you are already using $100, now -- you have to give me $200. The judges ruled three times to supplant, and we contend that the judge has ruled and we need to have the dollars available.

Tom Horne:
The $40 million is assuming that we do not use the federal money. If there were an appeal and reversal, which we will appeal, it will be $19 million instead of $40 million. Of 135 English language -- 125,000 are children of people who cross the border illegally. We need federal help. This is due to your negligence. Not only were we not getting it, but what little we do get, the federal judge says you can't count that. The Arizona taxpayers have to bear the full burden of kids that are here because of negligence by the federal government, and when I determine how much money you have to spend, you can't count the little bit of money the federal government is giving you.

Ted Simons:
Sticking to that point, it sounds as if much of the discussion early on dealt with what seems as moving targets. That being said, employer sanctions in effect and numbers that we are not sure about students in school districts anymore, how does that play into all of this?

Tom Horne:
There is some reduction; already was some reduction before employer sanctions because we were insisting that when the students passed a certain test, they be reclassified. Some districts were making lifers out of these kids. The number is 130, 135,000 students.

Greg Wyman:
That would be a consistent number. Again, we are going to play politics with kids. The reality of the situation, the solution of this problem has been ignored for years by the legislature and it needs to be resolved. The concern is we play politics with these kids, making lifers out of these kids. All we're saying, if you want us to do that, we will be more than happy to help you. You have to fund it. We are here in a situation like the state, any other organization out there, bad economic times, school districts that have to cut millions and millions off their budgets, and yet we turn around and say go ahead and implement this program even though it is not adequately funded.

Tom Horne:
The last thing I want to do is play politics with kids. We want the kids taught four hours a day of English so they become proficient in English and they can compete with the other kids academically.

Greg Wyman:
And if you fund it, we will do it.

Ted Simons:
Thanks.

Ted Simons:
For 14 years now, Arizona State University's Gammage Theater has run a program that helps launch careers in theater. Gammage's "school to work" program started with federal funding and won a national award its first year out. The program has been so successful that it continues even after the federal funding dried up. Mike Sauceda takes us backstage where high school students are guided by professionals as they explore careers in theater.

Actor:
Everyone connected with this case identified the knife. Are you tying to tell me that it fell through a hole in the boy's pocket, somebody picked it up in the street and went to the boy's house and stabbed --

Actor:
No, I'm saying the boy -- it's possible the boy lost the knife.

Actor:
Look at this knife. I never saw another one like this.

Mike Sauceda:
High school students participating in the Gammage School to work program get to take a backstage look at 12 angry men. The students also get a backstage look at what it takes to put on a show.

Colleen Jennings-Roggensack:
Gammage has been doing school to work for 14 years; we offer high school students an opportunity to learn the business of the arts. The arts mean business, and we teach them the business of the arts, which means students are Able to understand what it means to book a show, bring a show to the theater, market the show, run the box office, be able to look at the back of the house and what requires, technical requirements, and the front of the house, house staff, everything that it takes to put on a show.

Mike Sauceda:
The backstage tour is the perk of the day for the students in the program. Before that they must work setting up the play. They are broken into five departments, business services, operations, box office, communications, programming. The goal of the program is for students to pick a play and determine what it will take to produce it. The programming department picks the play. Throughout the process, the students are learning.

Colleen Jennings-Roggensack:
First of all, they learn from a top flight professional staff. My professional staff teaches all of the different aspects. You learn how to talk with the agent. We start with the presenting aspect, speak with an agent, negotiate, not only important in theater, but just important in life, and you learn how to do a contract and you learn the different portions of a contract, how to take that contract to actualization, and the parts of the contract go from c, to technical requirements, and we have the tech staff come in and talk about how big is the load in, what is the crew call going to be? What about load out, what about lights? They learn about that technical aspect. And they learn about the -- the performers, you've got the technical, now what do you do? How do you actually get people in the house, and the inside of a theater is called the house. We talk about how you sell tickets. We have our marketing communication staff talk about television, print media, talk about grass roots media, and of course with the ever burgeoning technology, Internet, Text Messaging, I-Pod, I-Pod casts, we talk about those kinds of things and how to make the show available. We talk about the educational aspect. As an organization at a university, it is important for us that we reach the greater community, and the community has a notion of cultural participation, not just sitting quietly and watching what happens, but being deeply engaged.

Student:
I am the representative for the programming department.

Mike Sauceda:
Once the students have selected the play, numbers crunched, marketing plan figured out, it is time to let the group know what the department has come up with.

Student:
$12,000 was the budget, started off with the radio stations.

Actor:
I'm not asking anyone to accept it. I am saying it is possible.

Actor:
And I'm saying it is not possible.

Mike Sauceda:
Some of the students get to see a play. They see it differently once they have been in the program.

Colleen Jennings-Roggensack:
It takes on a totally different meaning. One of the things that is wonderful, they will sit there, the sound. Did they get that sound right? They will go, oh, is it time to close the doors? They become aware of the movement, the show opening, the audience coming in. Did the house staff greet me? With the packets there for the press? We really have a real different understanding, and then they really truly enjoy the show, but they have this inner sense of confidence of what it takes to make a show happen.

Mike Sauceda:
Students who participate are encouraged to attend A.S.U. if they are interested in pursuing the career in theater.

Colleen Jennings-Roggensack:
We have had students who have come to A.S.U. and come to our theater administration program or have gone to other colleges and universities who have done that. I have gotten letters from students who have said I am done with school; can you write me a recommendation? I would like to do an internship, sign on with another theater company. What is really, really great about this program is in all schools, there are students who are the a students and those are the kids who are focusing on what they're doing, and there are students who are not really certain where they want to go in life. This gives them new incentive. There is a place for you that is not that traditional track.

Ted Simons:
Dean Martin says the state will be out of money sometime next month or as late as May 5th; the governor called him Chicken Little for the estimates. Hear from him tomorrow. That's it for now. Thanks for joining us. I'm Ted Simons. You have a great evening.

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