Dr. Teresa Leyba Ruiz for Arizona Superintendent of Public Instruction

3:36AM Aug 8, 2025

Speakers:

Keywords:

Public education

Arizona Superintendent

Teresa Leyba Ruiz

career educator

community college

workforce training

dual language programs

ESA program

charter schools

teacher salaries

school funding

educational accountability

strategic plan

grassroots effort

community support.

Our guest speaker is here today, Dr Theresa Terry Leyba Ruiz is a career educator, executive leader and passionate advocate for public education. A proud Arizona she is entirely a product of our public schools. Her journey began in South Phoenix as a student in the Roosevelt Elementary School District, and continued through Northern Arizona University before concluding with a doctoral degree in higher and post secondary education from Arizona State University. Terry has dedicated over 30 years to Arizona's classrooms as a math teacher and administrator and ultimately as the president of Glendale Community College, where she championed programs that expanded access to higher education, workforce training and career pathways for Arizona's youth. From being a first generation college student to becoming a woman in STEM she has consistently broken barriers and never back down from a challenge. Now, Terry is taking the same commitment to the race for State Superintendent of Public Instruction, because she understands that public education is the heart and soul of Arizona and deserves to be protected. Let's give Terry a warm welcome.

Hi everyone. Thank you so much, Joe for that wonderful introduction. You know, very, very proud to be a third generation Arizona and grew up in South Phoenix, but my parents are from Tucson. They grew up in Tucson, and are both graduates of Pueblo High School, so spent a lot of time in Tucson visiting grandparents and cousins my whole childhood. So I love Tucson. Tucson always feels like home to me. It's so wonderful to spend some time with Democrats of greater Tucson. It's always a privilege to speak to community members and share my mission of why I've taken this decision to enter into this race I am. My career has spanned, like Joe said, 35 years from a first generation college student who had a dream of becoming a math teacher because I wanted to make a difference in the lives of our students in my community in South Phoenix, I wanted them to see that they could hope and wish and dream for a brighter future for themselves and for their families. And so that's exactly what I did. I became a math teacher, and spent 23 years teaching math across all grade levels, middle school, high school and at the community college level, right here in south Phoenix, and was making, and continue to make a big difference. And today I'm really proud to say I have students who are now doctors, lawyers, engineers, pharmacists, and these are students who come from humble beginnings, much like my own, students who are here, whose parents brought them over as children from Mexico, and they just had that dream for a chance of a better future. And I see them in the communities, because I still live in South Phoenix, and I see them all around, and we stay in touch. I know that I made a difference in their life by encouraging them to reach for the stars. Over time, in that career, I realized I wanted to have a bigger influence, and so I set my eyes on becoming the president of a community college in Arizona. I was really proud and supported all along the way, and sought the credentials that I needed. You needed to have a doctoral degree to become a college president. So I sought that. I sought professional development opportunities to give me the professional development experiences to become a college president, and was really proud to complete my career as an educator as the eighth president at Glendale Community College. GCC is one of the one of the fifth largest community colleges in our state, and so you think about the power of public education to go from first generation college student, from humble beginnings in South Phoenix to leading one of the five largest community colleges in our state. That's the power of public education, and that's what we must fight for, so that students who look like me and students who come from humble beginnings can have these opportunities to reach for the stars and reach for their dreams. After I retired from GCC, I realized, gosh, I have so much more to give. I have so much energy that I just I gotta keep doing something. I. So I went to work for a statewide nonprofit called education forward Arizona. And it was in that role where I served as a Senior Vice President, Chief advocacy and programs officer, that I started tracking bills at the state legislature and getting really frustrated because good bills that would make a difference in our state, but if it had a D behind the legislators name. It wasn't going anywhere. And I'm tracking data throughout the state. There's a website called The Education Progress meter, education forward, Arizona was partly responsible for sharing that data out, and you could go statewide, county, city, district, down to your local neighborhood school, and you can track the data. You can disaggregate it all kinds of ways. I got deep into the data and nothing we know it's not perfect, and there are bright spots, but things like third grade reading and eighth grade math are really would just will break your heart when you see how our students and our schools are faring and are not blaming our schools. I'm not blaming our students. I'm not blaming our teachers. What I'm blaming is the funding, the lack of funding that we have in Arizona when we are 49th in the nation because the Republican led legislature refuses to invest in Arizona, that plays out in these poor academic progress meters. So I'm listening. I'm tracking this data, I'm tracking bills, and I'm listening to what Tom Horn, the current state superintendent of public instruction, is saying, and not defending our schools, and in fact, suing our schools. You know, he famously sued Tucson unified and lost in the early 2000s and he's suing schools for dual language program and continues to lose. In the meantime, the universal empowerment scholarship account scam is off the charts with a billion dollars that's going to cost Arizona. While we know school starting for many schools are starting this week, we know that parents are given a long list of school supplies or teachers are giving. This is our wish list and the things that they're asking for, basics, crayons, paper markers, scissors, hand sanitizers, basic things that are now on the backs of our parents to either provide or our teachers to beg with a wish list. Meanwhile, families who are using the empowerment scholarship accounts are often joining a vacation to San Diego on our dime, to Sea World, to wherever they decide to go, as long as they write the curriculum that says this is going to fit. They're using our dollars for these expenses, while our children and our parents and our teachers are having to bring their own basic necessity supplies. All of this is wrong on all kinds of levels, and I decided I have nothing to lose here. I'm a career educator. Spent 35 wonderful years serving our community and serving Arizona. I'm a fighter. I know what it means to go up against adversity. I know what it means to be the lone woman in a STEM field. I know what it means to be a first generation college student who went on to become the president of a large institution. I will never back down from a fight. I will never backed down from a bully, and I decided to take that same energy and commitment and take over and take to Tom Horn's job, and with your support, we can make this happen. As a career educator, I don't have the name recognition that Tom Horn does or other politicians, but what I have is a grassroots effort and a growing coalition of elected officials who have endorsed me. I'm proud to say I have the endorsement of Kathy Hoffman, the former state superintendent of public instruction who was ousted by Tom Horn because he outspent her, not because she wasn't doing a fabulous job, because she was. And I will pick up where she left off, I have endorsements from the mayor Becky Daggett in Flagstaff, and many elected officials who have gotten their name behind me to give me the boost I need to get statewide name recognition. In the meanwhile, in the meantime, we're traveling the state. In fact, we were just down in Tucson on Saturday for the town hall, and we were in Phoenix last night for the I was hot. It was much harder to Phoenix for that town hall. We're up to Flagstaff, down to Tucson. We'll be back in Tucson tomorrow, actually, for the elected the election nights event at Congress hotel. This is a commitment to travel the state to talk with voters when I'm not traveling, we're doing call time, five to six hours a day, so that I can reach out to voters and community leaders and members across Arizona, so that they know that there's somebody who wants to listen, who hears, I see you, and I will never, ever stop advocating for. For public education, because this is an investment in our future. When we invest in public education, we're investing in our children's future so that Arizona can have a thriving economy and that our children are benefit from that economy. So I'm asking for your support. You could click on the QR code behind me and sign my petition. Your donations small, small or large, all benefit my campaign, and I'm happy to answer any questions that you might have.

Yeah, we do have some in the chat room, and Mike will be helping you out by voicing those you go ahead, Mike

will do Catherine wants to know, if you are elected, what would your plan be to push back against the corrupt Arizona voucher, ESA program that has no oversight or accountability? You touched on that a little bit, but please elaborate

loudly. I will be doing press conferences daily if I have to. This is where we can use the Office of the Superintendent of Public Instruction to speak against these scams right now. Tom horns, they speak for it. They're justifying every ridiculous legislation or lack of legislation that comes out this when the state legislature refuses to put any guardrails on. They applaud it. I will call it out. I will do like I said, daily press conferences, if I have to. I will go to the Senate and the House Education subcommittees. I will partner with our local nonprofits and organizations that also see this as a scam, and I will raise. Excuse the phrase I will raise, holy hell, because this is taking money away from Arizona's students, and it's taking money away from our teachers, and having a huge negative impact. So I will be the biggest fighter and biggest advocate there.

Follow up on that. Does the Department of our Department of Education, but specifically the SPI have the discretion to reject some of these more outrageous parental reimbursement requests.

Yes, and this was, this is to Tom Ward's credit when he said no to that $16,000 cello. Of course, he said yes to many other things that we know are outrageous and capricious? Well, yes, there is some wiggle room to say no, and I will say no, because those things like a $16,000 cello or a piano, which we know have been purchased that those items stay with the family instead of benefiting all we know that $20 million has been spent on extracurricular activities, gymnastics, piano lessons, horseback riding lessons. Can you imagine what we could do with that money? We could hire a gymnastics teacher for our public schools and benefit hundreds of students? Yeah. So there are ways that you can there are I can't put guardrails on because that's comes from the legislature and the policy and the laws that they create. But if there is room and wiggle room to do audits, Absolutely, in fact, Tom Horn is refusing to do an audit with the auditor general's office. Yeah, now I will put whatever restrictions I can within the administrative regulations I will

yeah, there's also a lot of concern from people that I've heard that some of these accounts have many 1000s of dollars, upwards of $100,000 in some of these accounts, and the parents are purportedly planning on using that for college tuition. Is that an abuse of the ESA program? Is there anything that the SPI can do about that?

Most definitely, it's an abuse, however it is written into the law. This is one of those fine print details that everyone missed and didn't think it would come to fruition. But there are organizations that are helping ESA parents find these not loopholes, find these ways to stockpile money to use the money for vacations. There are organizations that are actively helping to scam Arizonans, and so I think what we need to do is call it out. Call it out and highlight it. Because there's the laws that the regulations, they come from the state legislature. So I will use that office as the bully pulpit to highlight the scams that are costing Arizona's taxpayers and our children. One question on

this topic that is my own, that I'm concerned about is a lot of these parents are, I would say a disproportionate proportion of these parents who have kids with learning disabilities, or disabilities in general, get a much larger amount of money from the ESA program, up to $40,000 if you're gravely disabled for the purpose of learning, and there is no audit at all to make sure that the services that are being secured for these kids through BSA programs to help them overcome those disabilities are actually effective in any way. I know that in in our public schools. Because that is very carefully evaluated by professionals to ensure that the kids are getting benefit that they that the state is paying for. And that's not happening with the ESA is even though a much larger percentage of ESA claimants actually have disability designations versus the public school population. So is there anything that the SPI can do to help make sure that there's some accountability for those public dollars that are paying for special education services for disabled kids?

So I think this applies to whether it's for disabled kids or just the universal vouchers. There is zero oversight, zero assessments, zero academic accountability, zero insurance, that whoever's teaching the children are actually qualified to teach the children, and that should frighten everybody across Arizona. Yes, it's it is true that parents whose children have special needs, they do get funded at a much higher rate, but there is zero oversight across the board, we don't know who's teaching, what the children are learning, what their academic progress is, because there's zero requirements. And so here's a crazy example. A lot of news about Texas in the news lately, even Texas, who just passed a similar voucher program scam for Texas, even ruby red, Texas has some guardrails in place, income cap requirements, some assessment requirements, while Arizona has zero. And so again, most people aren't aware of that. Of course you are, because you're very engaged in the political process, but writ large, Arizonans across the board are unaware, and so highlighting that using this office to bring notification to that is, I think one of the responsibilities of this role is an advocate for public education, and that means calling out the scams. Yeah,

couple more questions in the chat. Roderick wants to know, what are two of the most egregious policies that Tom Horn has implemented that you would reverse the fact

that he sues, I don't say policy so much, but he has it in his mind that he sues school districts that offer dual language programs. Think about that. Dual language programs, this is nothing. It's new for Arizona, but it's not new across the state. Across the country, other states do this, and they do it very well. Not only does it help students who are monolingual Spanish speakers become fluent in English, but what we're finding more and more is there are parents who want their children to learn another language besides English. I was at a dual language school in Levine. 90% of the children there are monolingual English speakers who parents. Parents want them to learn Spanish because they recognize that one it's good for the child, and they'll be prepared to to compete in a global economy. But yet, Tom Bourne will sue these schools because he feels it's a violation of English language learning models. He's unaware. He just does not know. And Lou, when you look at what schools he's suing, he's not suing the districts that are teaching Mandarin. He's suing the lower resourced schools in inner city, Phoenix, Maricopa, county, that have very little room to fight a lawsuit, but they do, and he just lost his appeal again. So that's one thing I would never do. Why would you sue one of our schools? The second thing he never does is he never acts as a shield from the federal government. So I would act as a shield and help, not help our schools navigate. You don't have to comply with these requests just because the President puts out an executive order. The other thing he does is he removed this is something I could definitely control. He removed the associate superintendent who oversaw Diversity Equity and Inclusion programs in the Department of Education. Why are we closing our eyes to this? We are a beautifully diverse state here in Arizona, you can't say we're not diverse. Who are we not going to include. Who do they want us to exclude? And as far as equity goes, we want all of our students to succeed. And so that's something that I would bring back, because it's important and recognizable. Sel social, emotional learning. Here's another really important one, definitely, what schools are doing is they're just working around it. They're just calling it something different. But we do know our children are suffering mental health crises are on the rise. Why would we take Why would we ask our schools to remove programs that are going to benefit our students? Shameful,

absolutely. Yeah. Sherry Gomez sharsky wants to know, what would you expect a charter school? What role do. Expect charter schools to play in the future, and how can we keep this alternative education available and accountable? I also see it lumped together with the voucher issue when it is part of public education, so that's her comment at the end there. But what do you feel about charter schools?

Charter schools are business, so let's start with I hope my internet stays stable. Charter schools are business. There is a myth that charter schools are better academically than our public schools. That's not true. When you look at the data, charter schools are business, but they do not they do not have higher academic progress than our public schools, but we must still find a way to embrace our charter schools. They are considered public and so we can track their academic progress. Oh, is

that all you wanted to say about charter schools at this point, or do you have more to add?

I think that's it. It's a business, but we have to find a way to still work with them. Kathy, I believe, created a there is a whole charter school board, and so we want to make sure that we are, that we're all hitting academic progress. But I think again, the misnomer, or the Miss, the myth, is that charter schools are better than our local neighborhood public school, and we have found that to not be the case.

Yeah, not only that, but charter schools are able to select the students that they admit, and so they can only they can decide, no, we want to be a high performing school, so we're going to only admit high performing students. And we

actually see that. We actually see that on the 100th day, which is a census day for schools, the date that determines what their funding levels will be. On the 101st day, charter schools will exit students, and then they'll show up at the public school, because that's the beauty, again, and the power of public schools is public schools take every student. They don't have to hit their charter requirements, like charter schools, if you, like you said, if the student isn't meeting Academic Progress, or they're not whatever, whatever reason, they can exit that student. And usually they do that on the 101st day, and that child has nowhere to go, other than to the local public schools who embrace everyone.

Lillian has had her hand up. Lillian, it makes me crazy when I see schools that the proficiency rates are in the 20s and they're rated A's, we have a school like that, and it hasn't progressed that much. The letter grades for schools make no sense when you look at the growth a school has had and what their actual proficiency ratings are. Too many schools are A's and B's, who should not be, and you'll see schools that are rated A B and another school that's higher proficient, that has had growth, that's a C. I have wondered if the formula is off because somebody wrote the formula didn't understand what they were doing, or if the intent of the Department of Education was make it so that schools wouldn't be rated Fs. So my question is, have you had a chance to look at the formulas used to create these letter grades.

I haven't I know that there it's made up of many components. Now as a math teacher, I would love to see that formula, and I would understand what those components are. I think that it's important that we look at not only what the letter grades are, but we look at the academic progress of the students, patient progress meter. When that was created about 10 years ago from about 200 leaders across the state, they set these benchmarks with goals that we're not going to hit. These goals are like for the year 2030, which is just what four years away, we're not going to hit these goals. But third grade reading, eighth grade math, high school graduation, post high school enrollment, those are some of the metrics that they track. That data comes directly from the Department of Education. No one's really talking about that, though. No one's really talking about, how are we going to hit these goals, and why even those metrics? Why are those important? So I think it's a wonderful opportunity to have a conversation of Arizona does not have a strategic plan for education, like, we don't have a plan this progress meter that was created, like is, it's just a progress meter. There's no plans to how are we going to actually hit these goals? And so that might even be a wonderful starting point, bringing our educated, our educators, our leaders, together along with community leaders, to talk about, do we have a strategic plan, and maybe we should have one?

I'm so glad you're a math teacher, because far too many, like elected people, are math phobic. They have no idea what's in the budget. They wouldn't dream of looking because they don't do numbers. I've had some of them tell me they don't do numbers, and we need people who can do math. So thank you any day.

Okay, Sandy sells, you have your hand up with the

ESA scam. The this program, to me, is not the parental choice, it's the parent. Primary purpose of this program is destruction of public education, with the cover thing being a parental choice, you destroy public education, you destroy equality, you destroy the chance for advancement with so many more pure numbers of public school students and parents. How do you how do we get to the parents to vote the state legislators out to get rid the numbers are overwhelming, and how can, can we all show a move to get parents to vote for general advancement of society? All yours,

Sandy, I'm going to partner with you on this, because you know this isn't just one person, right? This is all of us. This is all of us screaming from the rooftops. Education forward. Arizona did some polls, and I would encourage you to go onto their website and see this poll data, and what they found is it was a statewide poll. Didn't matter about political affiliation, age, gender, race, ethnicity, none of that mattered, urban, rural. What they found is parents across Arizona value education and want their children to have opportunities for careers beyond high school or just a pathway beyond high school. Hands down, parents want this. I think what happens is all of that gets lost in the mix, because when they go to speak to their when it's time to elect legislators, they're not asking the right questions. We're not pushing the right agenda, and that agenda is tell me how you're going to support public education, because we know, especially in our rural communities, oh my goodness, our rural communities are suffering because of this lack of investment. Suddenly, there's a billion dollars that can be spent on the voucher scam, but our teachers have to beg for basic supplies, and that's going to hit people in their pocketbooks each and every that's going to hit parents. And so parents need to be asking these questions, why are you not funding public education? Because this is not new. This actually has been going on for 4050, years, a Republican led legislature that has consistently underfunded but will fund other things like prisons or other things that take away from where we know that if we invest in education, not only does it have a huge it's an economic impact. So education is economic development is then you have more individuals seeking better paying jobs, less reliance on social safety nets, and higher taxes are being paid in so it's a win. Win, economic win for Arizona's the Arizona's economy, but also for our children. So I think we need to engage. So Sandy, you and I are going to come up with a great plan to get our parents involved.

Yeah, I gotta say, I'm looking at that Arizona voters education priorities survey right now, and I just put the link to it in the chat. And it is astounding to me. 66% of Arizona voters believe that schools are underfunded, and 78% of Arizona voters believe teacher salaries are too low. I gotta say number one, they're right. That degree of unanimity on any issue is a pretty extraordinarily high level, and certainly something that Democrats should lean into. And absolutely thank you for pulling that up, Michael, you bet. And thanks for bringing up the questions, Sandy, couple more questions in the chat here on the charter schools issue. Continuing, Paula says, in particular with Sherry's question about charters, please address the issue of accountability and how to strengthen that. So how does the SPI go about enhancing accountability in the charter schools? Specifically

so accountability, as far as maybe calling out how their their charter actually excludes students and how they're and how they manipulate their data so that they can hit their charter needs. I think again, this, these are details that the general public doesn't understand. Yeah, and that's what we're here for, exactly. And I think that's let's find a way to call that out at the end of the day, I want to I want every single student across Arizona, no matter their zip code, no matter their family's income, every child should have access to a high quality education and when we have these different educational choices, and Arizona is has always been about school choice, it's just about how it's getting funded. Now I think it's finding the ways to if the charter schools are doing things that aren't benefiting our students, then we should be able to have a conversation about that, that and that the voters know that my kid got kicked out of a charter school because he didn't have an A. Right? And that should be concerning for everyone.

Definitely. You mentioned the charter school board. How is that? How much oversight does that body provide? How? What kind of powers do they have to enforce that oversight, and how are the members selected? Are you aware of that?

They're all great questions, and I don't know. So thank you for giving me homework.

You're welcome. Teacher Karen says the charter schools also have zero accountability. I wrote a story about a charter school that employed a convicted registered sex offender. They aren't required to do background checks on their staff. Anyone can open a charter school in their garage. That's alarming. Were you aware of that fact? And what can SPI do about it, if anything,

this is the most frustrating thing. I met a community member down in Yuma who started a micro school, not a charter school, a micro School, which is like a home school with a few other kids in a trailer in the desert. Zero oversight, zero accountability. I'm frightened for those children, because just you don't know. And to Karen's point about a charter school hiring a convicted sex offender there, you might have to get a thumb a fingerprint test now, but no one's investigating those fingerprints. So we truly do not know who's teaching the children what curriculum they're using, what their academic progress is we should all be frightened, whereas in a public school, we know that there's there is so much oversight and protections for our students. You credentials that you must have, you must be a certified teacher to be in the classroom where you become a long term sub, or you become the different ways that you can get certified. But there is so much oversight for our public schools and absolutely zero outside of that we should all be worried angry.

Steve Linder has his hand up.

Okay, I'm a retired teacher with caught for almost 40 years, so I applaud anyone who's willing to do what you're willing to do, but first thing is, you have to get elected. In Arizona for a Democrat to get elected, you really have to appeal and get independent voters, people who are registered independents and some of the few sane Republicans who are, who can think on your side. So what are you doing? And what to involve independents and appeal to them, get them in on your campaign. And the second part of the question is, have you approached the Arizona education association for support? Because with AEA, that not only includes money, but it very much includes, if you have their support, people feed people on the ground, people who go out and do things and actually knock on doors. So what are you doing to get people involved in your campaign?

It's a great question. I actually, I am already speaking with independents, and I'll be at an event, and there will be and thank you, first of all, Stephen, for being a teacher and serving our students for 40 years. When I go to events and I meet other educators, and they'll tell me, Terry, I can't sign your petition because I'm a Republican, but you do have my vote, I think that's a way to we all share something common, and that is the education of our children, and we all want to live in an educated society. So first and foremost, I am already speaking with independence Throughout my travels. Once we get past the primary and I am confident that with your help and your support, that I will be the candidate representing the Democratic Party, then it's going to be a very big conversation with all independents and Republicans, because again, I'm going to come back to what we all what we have all in common, and that's our children, and we all want our children to have a better future, and that's not going to happen When we are underfunding and defunding education, the very idea of dismantling the Department of Education is so outrageous. That's a common thread that I think we're all going to get behind. Now with respect to AEA, Arizona Education Association, I was always a proud member of AEA, and now I'm a proud retired AEA member. They do have a very strict protocol on how they endorse a candidate, and so I'll go through that process, and I hope for their support. I will have support, and we are seeking support from some of our other unions as well.

Yeah, Lucy,

you have the floor. Thank you. Hi, Terry, good to see you again, hi, and I was just going to respond about the AEA question. I do serve on the AEA board, and I actually just brought this up last week about how we were going to proceed, because AEA, in my opinion, needs to sometimes move it. And so we are absolutely looking forward to interviewing. Candidates and moving forward with our endorsements as we move towards next year. So we're going to we it's a three stage process. We are looking at everyone, and we really thank you for stepping up to this to this challenge. Roderick

wants to know, do you believe our school boards need much more support from the Department of Education? And if so, what kind of support would you provide? Support would you provide?

Yes, our school boards deserve our support. We spent a lot of time calling school board members, and one of the things that can be, hopefully, can we can provide, is training. Because school board members, they rotate, and they need to know there needs to be training around. What does it mean to be a school board member, what's your role? What's your lane? How can you support the schools? And I think we also need to support board members candidates who actually are advocates for public education. We're seeing this across Arizona and across the nation, individuals who get on school boards who are not advocating for public education, who are just destroying and disrupting and causing problems. It makes it really difficult for the superintendent to do their job, is to to manage that district, and so that he can support he or she can support the teachers in their jobs. And so I think it's important that we provide training and guidance and support for school board members.

Okay, Sandy,

the superintendent the Public Instruction housekeeping question, you take superintendent's office the State Board of Education, county superintendents, school district superintendents, principals, school boards, who has let me maybe is a bad word here, the authority over who, who's the final, who's the decider. How does this whole complex interact?

That's a great question. A year ago, I was down in Tucson meeting with Dustin Williams, and he was planning a conference, a Social Emotional Learning Conference. And I said, this is when I was working for education forward. And I said, I didn't think you were allowed to even say that word. And I'm going to quote Dustin here. He said, I don't report to him. I'm going to do what's right for my school and my communities. And I thought, right on. So that told me, right then, this is a year ago, when I was thinking about running in the first place. I said, oh, there isn't a there isn't a hierarchy of not accountability, like nobody reports to anybody. So this county superintendents do not report to the State Superintendent, but they do work closely together, and I think that's where, again, we can what's what? What services can the SPI provide to the county? So here's another example. I was meeting with the Coconino county superintendent, and she was telling me that her little office has to provide professional development training for the whole county of coconut, which we know is very big County, way up in very rural Arizona on the border, she thought it would be wonderful for the SPI office to provide that training, rather than her tiny office doing that. And I think, though, any way that we can support each other in the education of our children, in the support for our teachers and staff members to have continued professional development is a wise use of our resources and time and talent. So it's not a direct reporting structure as much as it is a collaborative are we going to work together to support our students? Now, I have met with Jackie clay in the past, and I appreciate Jackie clay, superintendent of Cochise County. She's a Republican, but she is all in for her kids, and I appreciate that, so it doesn't matter. This is where education should not be a political conversation. If we are not all talking about what's best for our children and their academic progress, then I think we're missing an opportunity. So I will work with our county superintendents, in support of our local superintendents.

Thank you. Okay.

Thank you, Terry. I guess I'm concerned about the charter schools, because there are some great ones out there, and both my grandchildren spent at least five years in charter schools, and I think they had a lot more attention paid to their individual needs. And that particular school was a not nonprofit, and I think we're not paying enough attention to the difference between for profit charter schools and nonprofit charter schools, and I hope that we can take a look at that in the future.

Thank you, Sherry. I appreciate that, and I think of how wouldn't it be wonderful if every kid in Arizona got that same kind of care and support? And we should really be pushing for that, which means we need to fund public education writ large across. Across the board in charge of school, put them under that umbrella as well, because they're still considered public education. But I really it. I really am going to advocate that every single child, regardless of their local school or school they're in, has access to a high quality educator who cares about them and cares about their success, which means we need to pay our teachers more, which means we need to find ways to retain our teachers. And that's going to be my commitment as your next superintendent of public instruction, is I will always advocate for our students and advocate for our educators.

And I think we need to support teachers who are willing to provide individualized or small group education for those who, as they say, not learning disabled, but learn differently.

Learn differently. Yeah, differently abled Absolutely. Sherry, thank you. We

don't want to lose our bright kids because they're overly bored and come home and say, What did you learn today? Nothing.

I had some of those students, believe me, they're harder to teach than I because they're challenging and they want to be challenged and they need to be challenged, or they become, in my experience, discipline problems. So let me challenge,

but I do have a direct response to the issue of charter schools, and specifically for profit charter schools versus nonprofit charter schools, there's an emerging scandal with the Primavera online charter school that is a D rated school that receives just as much money as any other Charter School, despite having 45 students on average, instead of 23 students per teacher, as is a norm in Arizona charter schools, yet they get just as much money. And this guy who I'm going to put the chat the link in the chat here, regarding that story that came from our one of our former bloggers at blog for Arizona, David SAFFiR, who looked at this and did a quick story about it. So I encourage you all to read it, and it is scandalous how many millions this guy was able to put in his pocket as a result of this online charter school that was failing kids left and right, but nonetheless was getting continued to be funded by the state. And so I think there's an important distinction to be made between nonprofit charter schools and for profit charter schools, just the very idea that we would allow for profit schools, I think, is scandalous, because that means that automatically, you're going to get short shrift as a kid, because you're getting paid the school is getting paid the same regardless of whether they're nonprofit or profit. And so where's that profit coming from out of the kids education? That's the only real answer that you can actually propose is that, if you're a nonprofit, you're leaving it all on the field for the kids. Oftentimes, the administrators and founders of these schools will take salaries for themselves, which can be egregious, but if you're talking about a for profit corporation, that's just a much different beast. You have a you have a lot more duties to your actual stockholders than you do to the kids. So is there anything that that SPI can do about that, or is that something that is going to have to be fixed by the legislature?

We do know that Tom Horn cut from avera break and not going to cut a break to somebody who's scamming Arizona voters and scamming our kids. The other thing that they're doing is they're going from a charter school to a private school, because private schools have zero oversight. And talk about the biggest scam ever, right? So if there's opportunities for the SPI to make those kinds of decisions, I will always err on the side of our children, our teachers and our public schools. But outside of that. It really this is why we must flip the legislature and put in Democrats who are going to support public education, because, quite honestly, the politicians have made such a mess out of this. It's going to take an educator to come in and fix it, and I will have educators around me to fix that office, because Tom Horn and his cronies continue to make a mess of

it. Yeah, one of the things that I'd like to see our SPI nominee do, and I would note that I think there's five democratic contestants for the nomination for SPI at this point, and we're going to have a couple of them coming up real, real soon here. Keep an eye on the calendar for Democrats of greater Tucson, because we will endeavor to have all five of those SPI candidates. But one of the things that I'm going to be asking of all those SPI candidates is, how will you support flipping our legislature so that our Democrats can do a better job of setting policy for both public and charter schools, private schools here in Arizona, what can you do to support them in flipping those seats that we need to flip? I

think that comes as far as supporting them, it's doing events together, maybe it's canvassing together, and it's showing support in the community that there is a strong individual who wants to come in and make a difference for their community. So I think one of the things we can just do is make sure that we are supporting the. Candidates, all of us are supporting candidates. That means going to events, that means speaking on their behalf, following them on social media, follow me on social media, and then whatever we POST, PUT push it out as well. You can serve as an influencer that way, and that just benefits. Makes for a stronger candidate, makes for a stronger race, makes for a stronger Arizona.

Yeah, I imagine that whoever our SBI nominee, it is, ends up being, will be part of the coordinated campaign, the statewide coordinated campaign, and certainly should be a voice for putting public education front and center in our statewide campaign, for our statewide electeds, because it is such a popular issue, and Arizona does such a terrible job of it.

Well, lastly, last 49th in the nation?

Yeah, it's tragic. All right, you want to wrap up for us, Terry and give us. Give us your closing spiel.

Appreciate it. Thank you again, though, for the opportunity to speak to Democrats of greater Tucson. I look forward to getting to know you individually. I am coming down to Tucson tomorrow, so if you're going to be at elections night, please be sure to stop by my office as a career educator who not only spent 23 years in the classroom teaching math across all grade levels, but has spent the last 10 years of my career as an Executive leader, really working on workforce development issues, developing programs that benefit our Students in our community. I'm prepared for this role. I'm prepared to walk alongside and get let's build programs that are going to benefit our students and benefit Arizona, and so I'm honored to step into this position, or to this to this fight, because it matters. And people warn me all the time, Terry, you don't know what you're getting into. Yes, I do, because I care about our children and their future, and I care about Arizona, and because of that, that makes this fight worthwhile. I have nothing to lose in this fight. I'm not this is not a political stepping stone for me. This is to fight for Arizona's children and their future.

Okay, we really appreciate your coming. Let's give Terry a nice, warm send off and wish her the very best of luck.

Thank you. Hope to see you tomorrow. Have a great day. Bye.

Thank you. Dr Reese, all right, Joe, is there any business that we need to conduct before we leave for

the day. I know Larry put another notice in the chat, and we also have a notice in the chat tank of verde Dems are having a program. So check out the chat before you leave, and

I can actually save the chat if you go to the chat window, there's a little three dots for a hamburger, hamburger signal that you can click on that brings up a menu, and the first item is save chat, that will save it as a text file on your computer so that you can refer to it later if you wish. So make sure to do that if you want to capture the information in the chat.

Yeah. And thank thanks all of you for being part of the program today. It's not our Democrats a greater Tucson. Zoom call, unless you're on it. Keep coming. Ask those good questions. Lots of good questions today. Wonderful speaker, should be a good race coming up. You.