We move on now to Tom Horne.
How the new Republican School
Superintendent wants to change Arizona
schools horns an old hand at the job,
the 77 year old lawyer is now in his
second stint as school Superintendent.
Horne last served in the role
for two terms from 2002 to 2010.
Joining us now with three things you
need to know about horns plans is
Yana Kunitskaya V She's a reporter on
the K12 team at the Arizona Republic.
Welcome to square off.
Hi, thanks for having me.
So any discussion of what a
school Superintendent wants to do
has to begin with what a school
Superintendent can actually do.
What powers does Tom Horn or any
or any Superintendent have to
put in place their plans?
Yeah, it's really important to
understand that this is a very
technical administrative role.
The state Board and the
legislature make policy,
but the role of the Superintendent is to.
Oversee how that policy
plays out on the ground.
So Horn has a lot of place to
speak about his priorities,
but he is not a policymaker,
and much will.
The Superintendent does is funnel
federal dollars to the right place
and skate state schools or districts.
Yep, federal and state money.
Yeah, pretty much that.
It's kind of a really an administrative job.
So with that caveat, let's start with,
you know, the first thing to
know about a big shift in policy,
Horton's focus on putting police
school resource officers in schools.
How and why is he trying to make that happen?
Yeah, Tom Horne has spoken a lot about
the need to have officers in schools.
I think the recent what happened in Uvalde
in Texas has been a big driver for that.
He says school safety has to be paramount.
The reality is that Arizona schools
don't have a lot of extra money.
So when Horn says he wants
school officers right now,
that means a priority on that staff
instead of counselors or social workers,
and that money is awarded to schools.
Through grants, there's a whole
grant process they can apply for,
and he's using that as the tool
to sort of enforce this policy.
Yeah, it's a competitive state grant.
And what what the Superintendent has said
right now is that he will not recommend
any schools who ask for counselor,
social worker and don't already have
a school resource officer on campus.
So he's very much prioritizing
within the range of his power,
those staff positions.
And so to be clear, he's denying
school counselors and social workers.
And instead wanting cops in schools.
In their place, many schools don't
want school resource officers.
That battle has been going
on for a few years now.
What's, what's the reaction?
Yeah. I mean, you know,
there's been decades now of efforts
at the school level to move away from
punitive school discipline and from
having police officers who might means
that students are more likely to be
funneled into the criminal justice system.
Schools do want more staff,
but they want staff that will
help with students,
especially after COVID,
who are struggling with their emotions,
who are struggling with adjustment
back to school.
So is this something Tom Horne?
Can do on his own just deny grants to this
school and award grants to that school.
I think it's an interesting example of
where his power lays so he can decide
who gets recommended to the state board.
And so it's not clear whether the
state board would see schools that
he denies a recommendation to.
And that's the state, in this case,
the State Board of Education,
Board of Education, which we're going
to be paying a lot more attention to
this year versus versus past year.
On to #2, another policy shift Hawthorn
staff took down a department of.
Education web page with resources
for social emotional learning.
He wants schools instead
to enforce discipline.
Explain what's going on there.
Yeah, so social emotional learning
generally is an idea about how that
students need to have emotional
regulation to be able to learn.
Tom Horne has said that that's actually
a Trojan horse for critical race theory.
So he's come with like a really ideological,
ideological analysis of this.
You know, there's hundreds of
schools all over the state.
It's not clear how he'll remove that.
From schools.
But he is going to have a director
of character education who will be,
you know, kind of training teachers
on a different set of values.
He's also talked about having a hotline,
a critical race theory hotline
for people to report teachers.
So again, you know,
school boards of districts make
policy of what schools learn,
but he can create a lot of tension
around what's happening in school.
So he sounds like he can create
an environment without creating,
enforcing an actual. Policy,
yeah, I mean, I think that he,
he can train teachers.
You know, he can have folks come
at at the district or school level,
but he can't change the policy
of what schools are learning.
And so for many school districts,
they've been having a different kind of
conversation about things like discipline.
Yeah, I mean, I think so. This really does.
How will this affect that conversation?
I mean, I think that the general
effort right now has really been
to move away from suspensions,
to move away from detention that
advocates say remove students from
classes is a punitive response to to
issues that might have deeper roots.
So they think that counselors
and social workers,
those staff members can address.
Those roots.
But Arizona has one of the worst student
to counselor ratios in the nation.
So there's usually, I think,
about one counselor for 700 students.
So that's also not a very effective
ratio for those staff members,
even if there is one in a
school to help students.
And the third thing to know,
Horne wants to overhaul English
language learning in the classroom.
This is a long running
battle debate in Arizona.
What does he want to do
so right now?
For Horn wants to return Arizona
schools to English immersion learning,
which means that students would
have to sit in classes where
they're only learning in English,
rather than bilingual learning,
which is now considered one of
the best practice around how
students learn a new language.
Again, sort of an open question
where he has the power to do that.
There's a lot of laws already on the books,
but since 2019, schools have more
flexibility in how to do that.
So right now,
he says he's going to train
teachers and how to teach English,
but sort of where the rubber meets the road.
And that we get to see,
OK, I'm gonna end by putting you on the spot.
Where do you think given what we've said
about a school superintendent's powers,
he can have the most impact?
I mean, we haven't talked about
the Empowerment Scholarship account
program that is ideologically,
I think horn is very much
in favor of that program.
But it is a like massive
administrative undertaking.
So I think that he can have a lot of
impact on what that program looks
like. And he's the 1st.
Superintendent administering
the universal program,
and he's brought in some big supporters
of school vouchers to help them do it.
Got ended there.
Yana Kunitskaya V of the Arizona Republic,
thanks so much for joining us.
Thank you.