What a crazy week it’s been in the world of Arizona school boards!
Last week, I covered the nonsense happening in Peoria (PUSD), where two board members voted to reject their own money in a stunning display of privilege and cruelty.
In that editorial, I touched on the sUpEr SeCrEt “expert panel” training put on by the Arizona Women of Action organization where the presenters essentially lied about the work social workers do in our public schools and encouraged attendees to overwhelm their districts (and the taxpayers) by filing endless public records requests.
I also touched upon the shenanigans in the Higley Unified School District (HUSD) where a parent is targeting an AP English high school teacher for teaching books on the approved reading list, deeming it “pornographic.”
It’s absolute chaos, and it’s on purpose.
Let’s circle back to PUSD first.
After the vote to reject the remaining $275,000 of the mental health grant secured back in 2019, a few local news outlets covered the vote. I’m glad they did, but I wish they’d cover school boards more. I’m not a journalist, and originally, I began covering these board meetings for my own form of therapy. Now, I continue to editorialize these meetings because I don’t see enough coverage from local news. Aside from perhaps LOOKOUT and the Copper Courier, and of course, all these “independent news sites” there isn’t nearly enough coverage. I get it.
The knuckleheads running the legislature and plenty of municipal governing bodies keep the local media on their toes, I’m sure, but when you consider how many legislators got their start on local school boards, school boards should warrant more attention in the media, IMO.
Click here to read the rest of this post on Secular AZ’s Substack.
Jeanne Casteen, Secular AZ Executive Director
JEANNE CASTEEN has a bachelor’s degree in human communication and history from the Hugh Downs School of Human Communication at ASU and a master’s in education, also from ASU. Jeanne has over 11 years of experience teaching in Maricopa County’s public schools. In 2011, Jeanne completed the Emerge Arizona program and in 2012 became a school board member of the Creighton School District. She served as Board President from 2016 through 2020. In 2020, Ms. Casteen ran for Maricopa County School Superintendent, and came within 12,000 votes of winning. She has been awarded the Arizona School Public Relations Association Award for Excellence in Advocacy and Political Contributions to Education as well as the Arizona School Board Association’s All-Arizona School Board Member Award.
