The CUSD Three are financed by big PAC money. Their goal is to destroy school choice and bring public school completely under the control of teachers unions.
Pay to Play Corruption in CUSD80?
Current CUSD80 board member Barb Mozdzen is well connected in the teachers union establishment. She is part of the organization called "Yes for Chandler Students", a PAC that funds campaigns to increase funding for public schools, but not Charter or private schools. The organization should be called "Yes for Chandler Teachers Unions". The organization pulls in hundreds of thousands of dollars, often from donors in construction (construction contractors), who may stand to benefit from the massive bonds and overrides that the PAC is pushing. Currently it's pushing a bond of almost $500 Million, which would increase taxes by around $0.41 per $100 of assessed home value. Much of it is supposed to go to construction projects in a school district with shrinking enrollment and under utilized schools. It would also roughly double the district's current debt levels at a time when debt service is particular expensive because interest rates have been increased so much to fight inflation. The normal reaction to higher rates is to borrow less, not more. Yet, being able to tax people to death, government agencies, like CUSD80, rarely behave normally. Read our article about pay to play in the Chandler Unified School District.
CUSD Three want to kill school choice
A PAC called "Stand for Arizona Children IEC/Inc" supports Barb Mozdzen as well as candidates Zeyna Pruzhanovsky, and Claudia Mendoza. One of the main goals of this teacher union backed PAC is to kill the popular Empowerment Scholarship Account (ESA) program in Arizona. The ESA allows school choice by having the money follow the student, rather than attaching it to an institution. Parents - excluding (wrongly) homeschooling parents - are able to use ESA money of up to around $7,000 per year to offset costs for the education for their child if their child is enrolled in a private school and if a School Tuition Organization (STO) grant is not also used at the same time. For comparison, public schools receive close to $15,000 per student per year. Since everyone pays property taxes, it is only fair and right that this money can be used on ANY school, not just public schools. It would be even better to get rid of public/government schools, and property taxes, altogether and let the private sector provide education. Costs would be much lower and quality much better.
The CUSD Three are supported by Stand for Children Arizona PAC and Inc.
Stand for Children Arizona opposes the Empowerment Scholarship Account (ESA)
Parents/citizens defeated teachers unions opposed to school choice
The ESA program had been pushed by Christine Accurso. Accurso also led a hard working effort to defeat a ballot initiative by teachers unions back organization SOS, Save Our Schools Arizona, to kill the ESA before it could even get started. Accurso and her team of volunteers turned up at signature collection sites of unionized teachers and managed to give would be signers information that made many of them see that the ESA is good for kids. Teachers unions failed to get the required number of signatures, despite last minute shenanigans during which they claimed that they had met the threshold. Accurso was subsequently appointed by school superintendent Tom Horne to lead the ESA program. Accurso left the position a year later. Apparently her goal was to get the program on track.
Teachers Unions hate school choice and educational excellence
Teachers unions do not have the best for kids in mind, they serve their members, unionized teachers. The CUSD80 Three are perfectly fine to harm the education and development of kids as long as that means the unions get more money. Mozdzen in particular pushed for school closures and mask mandates and is known among parents for restricting free speech in school board meetings by telling people not to applaud speakers critical of board policy, only to minutes later erupt into loud clapping herself when there is some self-congratulation among school board officials.
CUSD80 has a severely bloated admin
The CUSD80 has 36 Directors, each paid over $100K a year, some has high as almost $400 a year. Among those 36 is Adam Sallu, the Director of Educational Equity and Inclusion, basically DEI (Diversity, Equity and Inclusion). Equity means equal outcomes which is diametrically opposed to a meritocracy in which the best person wins, outcomes are unequal, because people are unequal in their talents and willingness to work hard. Diversity is of course nothing else but racism.
As school board member, Mozdzen has been nothing but supportive of this administrative bloat and her two co-candidates, Claudia Mendoza and Zeyna Pruzhanovsky are woven from the same cloth.
Who and what to vote for?
Vote against the bond. Vote against the CUSD Three. Unfortunately, as we have pointed out many times in this paper, the Chandler Republican Party is so comically incompetent, so unusually stupid, they can't defeat a turd with a hammer and sickle stuck to it. In fact Chandler GOP leaders like mayor Kevin Hartke would probably endorse the turd. The best election advertising against the CUSD Three is probably the flyer shown in this article, sent out to all Chandler households using 6 figure PAC money. At least it shows the names and faces of the opposing candidates. Leanna Deking and Eloyce Gillespie have not filed campaign finance reports and so it appears they are not even raising money. Smart! Ryan Heap has raised about $2,500 this election cycle. Better than 0 but completely inadequate to go up against the 6 figure PACs standing behind Mozdzen, Mendoza and Pruzhanovsky. Gillespie supports DEI. In the black community DEI is often seen as fairness. In truth it's the opposite, it's about pushing more qualified white and Asian students aide to make space for lesser qualified black students, it's anti-meritocratic racism. Heap has a website, and the endorsement of Moms for Liberty, Mark Stewart and current board member Kurt Rohrs. Rohrs, more on the conservative side, also backs Gillespie and Deking. This is presumably to oust the Barb Mozdzen as board president. Rohrs also opposes the $500 Million bond that CUSD80 is trying to get voters to approve.
What do they mean with book banning?
Government school extremists have completely distorted the English language. A book ban in their vocabulary includes moving a book from the elementary school library to the middle school library. Even moving a book on the shelf to these lunatics counts as a book ban. Should playboy magazine be in an elementary school library? Yes would seem to be the answer that some of the teachers union stooges would give. It has nothing to do with free speech by the way. Children cannot consent, children should not be sexualized, they should not be taught that communism is anything but evil, should not be burdened with the degenerate fantasies of urban leftist elites.
Comments