Education
Where I Stand
I teach political science at Mesa Community College and Arizona State University and have been teaching for 14 years. Suffice it to say, education is a top priority for me. I believe the three keys to ensuring a quality education system in Arizona are: school resources, teacher pay and parental choices. These fundamental principles, which involve ensuring funding and resources get into the classroom, investing more to boost career and technical education and help students with special needs, compensating hardworking educators appropriately, and empowering parents to choose which schools best meet their kids’ needs, are the key elements to good education policy. That’s why I personally sponsored the largest education investment in state history, which restored funding for school supplies and capital, provided the money needed to build new schools in Chandler, and dramatically boosted teacher pay by 20%. In fact, as the Chandler Unified School District website shows: teacher salaries now average more than $63,000.
What I've Done. Important Laws I Wrote.
HB 2545: Higher education; budget reconciliation (2017)
Created a results-based program to reward excelling school districts like Chandler, allocated money for new Chandler schools and established the Early Literacy Grant Program Fund.
HB 2663: K-12 education; budget reconciliation (2018)
Increased teacher pay by 20% and fully restored spending for school supplies.
HB 2543: Higher education; budget reconciliation (2017)
Created the Arizona Teacher Academy to incentivize students to enter the teaching profession by waiving tuition and fees.
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