Arizona public schools have a powerful ally in Gov. Katie Hobbs. It's about time

Arizona has been a pioneer in education choice for roughly 25 years. Today nearly a quarter-million students are now attending charter schools and many more are availing themselves of vouchers to attend private schools.

Choice has a baseline, however, and it is the traditional public school.

In Arizona, that traditional public school is still king. More than four times as many parents choose to send their children to them than to charter schools.

Soon those traditional schools will witness a shift in priorities on the Ninth Floor as a new governor puts them once more at the center of Arizona’s education universe.

Gov. Katie Hobbs told us that on Monday. And it’s welcome news.

Hobbs voiced public schools' frustrations

Her State of the State speech was first and foremost an education speech with the largest portion focused on the needs of Arizona district schools.

Hobbs signaled that she will champion traditional public schools and their classroom teachers while casting a more skeptical eye on charter schools and other engines of education choice.

This see-sawing from a Republican administration to a Democratic one is to be expected.

School choice has largely been a project of Republican governors and legislatures, while Democrats have viewed charter schools and private-school vouchers as a raid on district-school resources.

The challenge:Hobbs faces political tests with budget proposal

On Monday, Hobbs gave voice to the frustrations of district schools. “For years, our leaders have chosen to ignore parents, teachers and students who know we can have the greatest public education system in the nation – but instead are too often saddled with crumbling infrastructure and crowded classrooms.”

Most recently, those same leaders were still at it, setting up future problems for the school system, she said.

“Rather than doing the right thing and facing these challenges head-on, the previous Legislature passed a massive expansion of school vouchers that lacks accountability and will likely bankrupt the state.”

Funding is a 'ticking time bomb,' she says

For the time being, those issues will take a backseat to a more pressing and catastrophic issue – the Aggregate Expenditure Limit.

If the Legislature and governor do not lift the limit by March 1, they will set off a “ticking time bomb” that will create one of the largest school funding cuts in state history, she said.

Arizona schools would be forced to make $1.3 billion in reductions in the last two months of the school year, leading to potential school shutdowns, teacher furloughs and layoffs.

Hobbs applauded the bill of a Pinal County Republican, Rep. David Cook, that would override the limit, and encouraged the Republican majority to sign on. She promised Democrats would join in.

Hobbs wants to stop the teacher exodus

Since the Great Recession, when Arizona had make huge cuts to balance depleted state revenues, Arizona public education has been an ongoing exercise of crisis management.

One of those crises earlier governors failed to corral is the massive teacher shortage, one of the worst in the nation, with some 2,500 vacancies.

Arizona has “(robbed) educators of the joy of teaching,” Hobbs said. “There are too many amazing professionals who have walked away from the career they love because of the uncompetitive salaries, onerous policies and unfunded mandates.”

To retain teachers, Hobbs will create an Educator Retention Task Force to improve class sizes, resources and working conditions. That is a huge challenge that will likely demand large new funding sources.

She wants accountability for all schools

Hobbs said she plans to make charter schools go through the same scrutiny as district schools. “Let me go on the record to say that any school that accepts taxpayer dollars should have to abide by the same accountability standards that all district schools do.”

Republican lawmakers have long believed that overregulation has been the enemy of public schools and have worked to keep charter schools unfettered by the same red tape that has tangled traditional public schools.

But charter schools have not always proven they can regulate themselves and have been the source of some of the largest scandals in public education over the last three decades, going belly-up, underperforming or skimming enormous profits off the top.

The charter school industry and the expanding Empowerment Scholarship Accounts that are essentially private school vouchers could stand greater scrutiny from the opposition party.

How deep is her support? Watch the budget

Arizona isn't going to retreat from the choice model and eventually Arizona governors, no matter the party, will need to begin to see charter and traditional schools as part of the same ecosystem, without favoring one over the other. After all, they're both teaching Arizona kids.

Hobbs could eventually begin that transition.

She is right to sound the alarm and demand action on Aggregate Expenditure Limit, and to make the teacher exodus a priority.

It is time again to attend to the growing needs of our traditional public schools and their vast majority of Arizona students.

Not until Hobbs attaches dollars to her education budget will we truly comprehend her support for public schools. But if her speech is a barometer, the traditional public school has a powerful new alley on the Ninth Floor.

This is an opinion of The Arizona Republic's editorial board.

This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Gov. Katie Hobbs is a powerful new ally for Arizona public schools