Funding and Expanding Education

Pre K for All

High-quality early childhood education is one of the most powerful tools we have to help more children succeed in school, and even more importantly, in life. All of our youngest children deserve the ability to achieve their greatest potential and to start their education with high quality, no cost learning regardless of location or income. That’s what my Let’s Grow Arizona: Pre-K for All plan will provide; preschool for every 4 year old in the state who needs a spot. 

The average cost of Pre-K in our state is beyond $7,000 a year. Imagine what our working families could do with that money if it was diverted back into their pockets. The funds saved would contribute to a more prosperous Arizona.  Additionally, many parents could return to the workforce without having to scramble to secure childcare. The nearly 20% of Arizona’s children at or below the poverty level would have access to incredible new opportunities. 

Currently, many Arizona families struggle to find decent Pre-K for their children. Just 17% of Arizona’s preschool-aged children are enrolled in quality early learning settings, which is below the national average. Arizona also satisfies just 3 of the 10 NIEER quality standard benchmarks. While 44 states offer some form of state funded Pre-K, Arizona is one of just six that make no investment of state dollars in this critical area. 

The data is undeniable: children who attend full day Pre-K have overwhelmingly better outcomes than their peers who don’t have access to such programs. A comprehensive Pre-K experience is associated with better preparedness for elementary school, lower dropout and retention rates, and greater high school graduation rates.  

Additionally universal Pre-K has been shown to reduce costs associated with child care, healthcare, and abuse and neglect expenditures. Conversely, these programs increase earning potential and economic well being for the families involved. Simply put – universal Pre-K has well-established, long-term benefits for all of society.  For too many families, the high cost of Pre-K has been a barrier keeping one parent out of the workforce.  My Let’s Grow Arizona Pre-K program will help more working parents get back to the workforce knowing that their child will have access to high-quality learning in the year before they enter Kindergarten.

My Let’s Grow Arizona universal pre-K initiative will:

• Place a qualified Early Childhood Education teacher in each classroom of no more than 15 children 
• Provide developmentally appropriate, evidence-based curriculum linked to state core standards
• Work in conjunction with providers to ensure smooth transitions to Kindergarten 
• Connect families to the program through established community services, agencies, and institutions

Over my first term as Governor, my administration will expand this Pre-K effort to enroll 100% of four year olds whose families want them to participate in the program. Initially, voluntary Pre-K will be available to the highest need families, those in the bottom 25% of household income.  Each year, we will expand the program to enroll more children in the next quartile of household income until all children whose families want to enroll can participate. The program will accommodate approximately 15,000 children in its first year and expand to 60,000 by the end of my first term. 

My Let’s Grow Arizona: Pre-K for All  program will follow the current ADE guidelines. Educators may use the traditional bachelor’s degree approach to an Early Childhood Education Birth-Grade 3 or Age 8 certification or follow several alternative pathways to this goal. I will also strive to ensure pay parity between Pre-K and elementary teachers. The existing workforce of hardworking educators will initially be grandfathered in, for several years, until full certification can be achieved. If additional support is needed to upskill the workforce, we will implement those measures as well by pairing with universities and community colleges. 

Let’s Grow Arizona Pre-K for All will utilize a mixed delivery model that combines existing early childhood education facilities and community-based providers, and the planned phase in of the program will ensure that infrastructure and resources are in place to accommodate the needs of the children enrolled. 

Through an extensive outreach and education campaign, we will empower families to be part of their child’s early learning experience. Parents will be encouraged to be active participants in the program. Access to Pre-K should afford them more opportunity to be involved with school activities as opposed to being burdened with securing childcare and other stress inducing arrangements. 

As with my teacher pay and promise scholarship programs, this can also be achieved without raising taxes. Just a small fraction of our nearly $2B ongoing surplus would be needed to bring this to fruition. 

The choice here is very clear–we must invest in our youngest learners if we want our state to continue to succeed.  Over four years, the cost of the Let’s Grow Arizona UPK plan will reach $450 million annually.  

The cost of inaction on comprehensive Pre-K is estimated to be $56B to our nation annually. We literally can’t afford to not fund this essential service. Our children, families, and indeed Arizona as a whole, can only benefit from this investment. All we need to enact this policy is a leader with the audacity to make it a reality. I’m that leader and that’s exactly what I’ll do as Governor. 

Teacher Pay Plan

I believe great schools aren’t a luxury, they are a necessity to enable Arizona’s economy to continue to grow.  Investing in our public education system is the only way we will have the workforce and leaders our state needs to fill the good, high paying jobs of the future.  If Arizona wants to be able to compete for these jobs, we must increase our investment in our public schools and our educators to ensure we are producing enough qualified candidates for these emerging professions.

We know Arizona has over two thousand classrooms with no full-time teacher -- one of the worst teacher shortages in the country. We also know over 1600 teachers have left just since the start of the school year.  These shortages don’t just impact their individual classroom -- they impact nearly every kid and every teacher in every school as the staff we do have are pulled into covering for classrooms that don’t have any instructional leaders. 

This is a labor market issue -- if you pay people more money to do a job somewhere else, many qualified applicants either leave to take those jobs or drop out of the teaching workforce altogether.   Arizona ranks 49th for teacher pay, causing teachers to look to neighboring states for work or drop out of teaching all together. For too long our hardworking teachers have been asked to do so much while earning so little. They have had to contend with a legislature and governor who do not show them the respect they deserve. 

My teacher pay plan is very simple. As governor, I won’t sign a budget until Arizona is on a path to paying our teachers a salary that ranks 25th in the nation -- a goal we will achieve, at the latest, by the end of my first term.  This means we will move teacher pay from an average of $47,600 to $58,600 -- which will be an average raise of over $10,000 for our teachers. There's no need to raise taxes even one cent. It can all be funded with just a fraction of our recurring budget surplus. 

Fixing Arizona’s teacher crisis will have immediate benefits for all Arizonans; more teachers in classrooms, better job opportunities for educators, smaller class sizes, and importantly, better outcomes for Arizona students -- with the goal of ultimately increasing the number of Arizonans able to pursue a degree or certificate after high school. 

I believe we can have it all in Arizona, a booming economy and great public schools.  For too long, we have been told we can’t afford to make progress on some of the most pressing problems confronting our state.  I say we can’t afford not to.  

Especially when it comes to education, we have to solve the teacher shortage crisis if we want to continue to be a national leader in job growth.   I want Arizona to be the best state in the country to start a business, be a teacher, AND to raise a family.  My Let's Grow Arizona: Teacher Pay Plan will do exactly that by once and for all ending the exodus of teachers to other professions and states with competitive wages and a commitment to properly fund our K-12 schools.

Arizona's Future Promise Plan

A big part of Arizona’s economic future depends upon our ability to get people to and through higher education. If we want to continue to be a leader in economic growth we must have an educated, skilled workforce prepared to meet the demands of emerging professions. 65% of all jobs require some postsecondary education and that figure will only rise. Currently the number of Arizonans engaged in some form of postsecondary education is insufficient to replace the amount of people who will be retiring in coming years. Right now, our post attainment number is just 46%, well below the national average. We must act now to reverse this trend and ensure economic security and mobility for all Arizonans.

My Future Promise Plan will:

• Award students attending a four-year institution with up to $5000 per year
• Award students attending a two-year institution with up to  $2500 per year 
• Dedicate $2M per cohort for support services to help students excel on their postsecondary education path. Each participant will be paired with a success coach from a partnering agency.
• Earmark $30M in aid for non-traditional students wishing to return to higher education

These last-dollar, need-based scholarships will work in conjunction with federal Pell Grants to eventually make college free, or nearly free, for 40,000 students a year. Enrollees would need to maintain a GPA of 2.5 or above in order to renew their scholarship each year. The Promise Plan also includes money allocated for the purposes of student support services like college and career counseling, mentoring programs, and college-readiness activities. 

Additionally Arizona has about 1 million adult learners with some postsecondary education who have not completed their degree or certificate. The Arizona Restart portion of my plan will earmark $30M to be dedicated to the reengagement of adult learners who have not had the opportunity to complete their education and want to return for degree reclamation. They will be eligible for a tuition-free community college experience. 

The Arizona state constitution stipulates that university instruction should be as nearly free as possible and that’s what my Arizona’s Future Promise Plan aims to achieve. An affordable education should be the right of every young person in our state. Tapping into just a small fraction of our recurring budget surplus will give tens of thousands of Arizonans each year, the promise of a more prosperous future. Improved higher education attainment and access will create a more successful Arizona for all, and keep our state competitive in the years to come.