Arizona teachers union leadership say they are experiencing deja vu all over again.
Lawmakers are pushing a bill full of recycled ideas that are all aimed at subduing organized labor for teachers — and labor advocates are having none of it.
The bill, HCR2040, is a “direct attack on the freedom of us to (have a union),” Arizona Education Association President Marisol Garcia said at a presser last Wednesday.
“This is tired. This is something that has been tried over and over and over pre-COVID, during COVID and now … it’s the same. It’s over. We’re over it,” Garcia said.
HCR2040, was originally cloaked under the name “minimum wage; exception; homeless,” and it would have allowed employers to pay homeless people less than the minimum wage. But after a strike-everything amendment, it morphed into a constitutional amendment to bar union dues from being deducted from members’ paychecks and ban unions from meeting on school property, among other restrictions.
The House passed the measure, sponsored by former Turning Point USA CFO and Republican Rep. Justin Olson, and now it’s headed to the Senate. If the Senate signs off on it, then it will head directly to voters in November, bypassing Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs’ veto stamp.
It’s the little things
The bill doesn’t outright ban teachers’ unions. Instead, it creates hurdles that might seem small, but actually have a huge effect.
By barring dues from coming out of paychecks, the bill would create barriers for maintaining membership, as well as recruitment, April Pettit, president of the Phoenix Elementary Classroom Teachers Association, told us.
“Any time you add a step to membership, it is going to affect membership,” she said.
Being able to attend union meetings on school grounds makes it easier for members to attend, rather than going to another location before or after returning home from teaching. That, too, would be illegal under the bill.
“We hold site meetings at each school,” Pettit said. “We also meet monthly with the superintendent as an association, which is beneficial for the entire district … to solve issues collaboratively.”
And, Pettit noted that union dues aren’t public money. It’s the teachers’ money and they should be able to “decide where it goes.”
Union thugs. (Courtesy Arizona Education Association).
Makyla Hays, president of the Pima Community College Education Association, told lawmakers at the House Education Committee meeting that she has witnessed what happens when teachers unions are hampered.
“I have seen firsthand how the relationship between the college administration and the union can both positively or negatively affect an institution,” she said. “(Without unions) the faculty becomes disengaged — they volunteer less, they complain more, and they feel less personally invested in the future of the institution. It damages the experience for our students.”
HCR2040 would also supersede any existing agreements between labor organizations and school districts, which as far as Garcia is concerned “would ask voters to restrict our basic rights as Americans.”
Pettit said that use of district financial resources isn’t really an issue. For example, when food is served at the school for meetings, the food is purchased from the district, using union funds.
And while districts have had to cut funding for professional development, the teachers’ union has stepped in to help provide continuing education, Garcia said.
The bill also bans school district employees from utilizing district “internal communication systems” to distribute membership recruitment materials and political materials, and from utilizing those same resources to distribute any communication from a union.
Jaimie Kleshock, deputy director of labor relations for the Freedom Foundation, a conservative think tank dedicated to battling “left-wing government union bosses,” spoke up in support of HCR2040 at the House Education Committee hearing, saying the bill would put an end to unions “interrupting valuable classroom and planning time to recruit members and engage in political activities.”
She gave the example of teachers encouraging students to participate in walk-outs to protest immigration enforcement.
“(Protesting immigration policy) has nothing to do with education and is completely inappropriate,” she said.
Those walk-outs made headlines over the past few months, but there has been little evidence presented that teachers unions or teachers themselves recruited students to take part in anti-ICE demonstrations.
A national tactic
Drives to squash unions, much like HRC2040, have been presented in other states, including Arkansas, Florida and Utah.
“This is model language being pushed out by corporations to try to limit workers’ voices and Americans’ voices in shaping what their workplace looks like,” Garcia said. “It wouldn’t surprise me if the folks putting these forward have received a lot of support — fundraising support, policy support, research support — from these nationally based organizations.”
Utah’s legislation restricting union activities, including those of teachers, firefighters and police officers, was signed into law in 2025.
After its approval, Utah union supporters collected more than 300,000 signatures and House Bill 267 was put on the ballot in 2026. It was repealed.
“This is a national tactic that may or may not land well,” Garcia said.
So far, it looks like the latter. Several hundred people filed a request to speak about the bill, and only eight of them supported it.
If Republicans in the Senate sign off on HCR2040, then we’ll find out in November whether all those opponents at the hearing reflect Arizona as a whole.
Not enough students: Public schools spend 52 cents of every dollar they get on classroom instruction, the lowest rate in two decades, per Capitol scribe Howie Fischer. The analysis from the Arizona Auditor General uses a complicated equation that includes declines in enrollment, as well as rising costs for electricity and other utilities, which take up an ever greater share of spending. And the auditor’s report comes as Republican lawmakers are pushing a ballot measure that would require schools spend at least 60 cents of every dollar in classrooms, or lose state funding. Meanwhile, the Auditor General’s Office says roughly a third of all schools in Arizona are at increased financial risk due to declining enrollment, partly because of the growth of Arizona’s school voucher program, per KOLD’s Steven Sarabia.
Fewer students, fewer educators: Mesa Public Schools laid off 50 employees last week, mostly from administrative positions and instructional coaches, the Republic’s Erick Trevino reports. The district is making the cuts as officials look ahead to the expected loss of 2,400 students and budget deficits next year. Last week’s cuts should save about $3.5 million, but district officials say more cuts will be needed next year.
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Upskilling for the future: Grand Canyon University and the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. are offering an 11-week course that could lead to a job officer from TSMC, Shira Tanzer reports for KTAR. The university and TSMC offered the same course last year, and 35 of the 51 students now work for TSMC.
The kids aren’t alright: Lawmakers are pushing legislation to eliminate mandatory mental health instruction in schools, AZFamily’s Mickaela Castillo reports. The bill, which is awaiting a vote from the full House, is part of GOP lawmakers’ push to eliminate anything with “social and emotional learning” attached to it.
“When we’ve asked our schools to do too much, the most important aspects of our educational system — reading writing and arithmetic — have suffered as a result,” Republican Rep. Matt Gress, said during debate.
Art that’s experienced: A recent art show at the Arizona School for the Deaf and Blind highlighted what’s being lost as the school closes its Tucson campus, cancels on-site classes for most students and ships kids off to local school districts instead. The exhibit, which was “curated by a teacher who understands that art must be touchable to be fully experienced” shows what’s being lost as students have to adapt to environments built for the sighted, as opposed to spaced designed around them, advocates write in the opinion section of the Arizona Daily Star.
Students at the International School of Arizona put on a weather forecast, which is impressive enough.
But these students did it in English, French and Spanish, as ABC15’s Jorge Torres saw when he visited the school in North Scottsdale.
Rather than take Spanish or French as a class, they study various subjects in those languages — so they develop language skills pretty quickly.
Still, everybody is bound to get butterflies when they go on camera. The students spent two days preparing and they quietly rehearsed their portions of the weather forecast in the hallways right before the taping.
"They were like, what is that? And how much do I have to say, and do I have a script?" Francis Hewitt, director of admissions and marketing, said. "As we heard today, some of them have been practicing for two days to say their short little phrase.”
