The nationwide “ICE Out” protests that brought out thousands of Arizona students and teachers struck a nerve with two GOP state lawmakers, who now want to block teachers from being able to participate in organized sick-outs.
So many teachers joined in the national day of protests that schools around the state had to shutter for the day, and now, House Education Committee Chair Matt Gress and Senate Education Committee Chair Hildy Angius are trying to ban teachers from participating in protests during school hours.
If HB2313 were to become law, any teacher who called in sick so they could participate in the protests would “forfeit all civil service rights,” including any “rights, benefits or privileges that accrue as a result of employment.”
But the bill doesn’t stop there. It also takes aim at school districts by reducing state funding for districts that employ teachers who go on strike.
The district that Gress and Angius highlighted in a news release Monday was the Tucson Unified School District, which closed 22 schools after hundreds of teachers said they wouldn’t come to work on Jan. 30.
“Parents should not wake up to closed campuses because of organized protests,” Angius said in a news release. “The Tucson closures showed how a coordinated call-in can shut down learning overnight. This legislation restores accountability and stability for families and keeps the focus where it belongs, on students in seats and classrooms open.”
Even if Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs were to sign the bill into law, which she won't, any attempt to actually stop a teacher from exercising their First Amendment rights is sure to run up against a lawsuit.
The bill doesn’t lay out how to prove a teacher just wasn’t feeling well that day or had an emergency. And it apparently only applies if teachers are “acting in concert with other individuals.”
Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Horne, a Republican like Gress and Angius, sent out a press release the day of the protests saying students and teachers “should not be a part of a protest during class time.”
Arizona Education Association President Marisol Garcia put HB2313 on the teachers union’s list of bills to oppose this week. She called it an “anti-collective action” bill that “you’re probably going to see all over the country.”
While the bill is aimed at strikes and work stoppages “against the school district or charter school,” as Gress and Angius wrote in their bill, the recent protests had nothing to do with any individual school district or policy.
Instead, they came after weeks of federal agents occupying Minneapolis, supposedly to find dangerous immigrants. Most of the people they arrested while roaming the city’s streets were immigrants who had no criminal records.
But the flashpoint that led to the nationwide protest was a video of federal agents shooting and killing Alex Pretti, a nurse who was protesting ICE on a street in Minneapolis. That shooting came just two weeks after a federal agent shot and killed Renee Good, a mother of three.
The House Education Committee voted along party lines on Tuesday to approve HB2313, the first of several legislative steps before the bill could make it to Hobbs’ desk.
While Arizona’s Republican lawmakers debate whether to punish school districts and teachers for protesting during school hours, they’re also pushing bills to require counties to welcome ICE at voting locations and making it a crime to warn your neighbors that ICE agents are looking for them.
Meanwhile, TUSD officials are training teachers and staff for the arrival of masked, heavily armed federal agents trying to fulfill a daily arrest quota, a key part of the Trump administration’s mass deportation program.
The district launched mandatory training this month to ensure staff understand their students’ rights and what to do if agents show up on campus, like demanding a judicial warrant and identification from the agents.
District officials say any unidentified federal agent will be treated as an intruder and trigger a lockdown, per the Arizona Luminaria’s Shannon Conner.
“We understand exactly what ICE is allowed to do and what it cannot do,” Ruben Lopez, a campus monitor, told the Luminaria as he stood by the spot where ICE agents stopped a car and arrested its occupants just outside an elementary school playground.
“So my biggest thing is making sure my students are all safe,” he said. “As long as they are safe, I’m safe. That’s all that matters to me.”
It’s not all doom and gloom: The Senate Education Committee gave the green light to Democratic Sen. Lela Alston’s SB1598, which would put $500,000 toward starting community gardens at public schools, including charters. Lupe Castro of the Arizona School Boards Association told lawmakers the community gardens at a middle school in Tucson are “more than just patches of soil; they’re living classrooms.”
Time to call HR: Phoenix Union High School District Governing Board member Jeremiah Cota resigned on Friday after it came to light he attended a Christmas Party hosted by people with ties to neo-Nazis, Shira Tanzer reports for KTAR. In Peoria, Centennial High School Principal Scott Hollabaugh is getting a lot of support from the community as he deals with allegations that two teachers had a sexual relationship with a football player at the school, Philip Haldiman reports for the Daily Independent. And in Scottsdale, school art director Victor Bobbett resigned after he was arrested smuggling immigrants in his car south of Tucson, Tom Scanlon reports for the Scottsdale Progress.
The kids are alright: As the state deals with a teacher shortage, 170 University of Arizona students are planning to become teachers after they graduate in May, KOLD’s Isabela Lisco reports. If they decided to teach at the Tucson Unified School District, they could fill almost every one of the district’s 185 open teaching positions. The shortage is driven by burnout and low pay, and UA senior Zoe Hunter says she was forewarned by her sixth-grade teacher.
“She would always say, ‘never become a teacher, the pay isn’t worth it.’ When I came back and told her I wanted to become a teacher because of her, she said, ‘don’t put that on me – that’s your fault,’” Hunter quipped.
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Talking about DEI again: Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Horne is reviving his anti-DEI push, thanks to new guidance from the Trump administration about prayer at schools. The U.S. Department of Education says public school officials cannot “coerce or press a student to engage in speech or affirm a viewpoint that would violate the student’s sincere religious beliefs.” Horne’s interpretation of the guidance, per a news release from his office, is that DEI violates “widespread religious beliefs, such as urging students to change genders, age-inappropriate sexual lessons, and other elements that may demean a student’s religious beliefs.”
Sneak attack: A conservative watchdog organization secretly recorded two Arizona State University faculty members discussing the school’s DEI policies, Andi Ruiz of the State Press reports. The videos show activists pretending to be prospective students talking to faculty members, who describe how the school has shifted the way it talks about DEI, while still trying to promote inclusivity.
Kudos to reporter James T. King of the Sedona Red Rock News for “Best Quote from a Kid.”
King was writing about a group of middle schoolers from Sedona who went on a 10-day trip to Thailand for a model United Nations event.
“I ate crickets, centipedes and scorpions,” 11-year-old Levi Kraut said.
Besides having an adventurous diet, the students from Sedona Charter School represented countries like Uruguay, China and Argentina at the UN event. They gave speeches about disarmament and health care, among other issues, after working on them throughout the fall, including coming in on Saturdays.
The students at the model UN event in Thailand.