by Itasca Small
Just learned: Senate President Andy Biggs hopes to end the 2016 Second Regular Session of the 52nd Legislature this Friday, April 22nd! With 350 bills yet to work their way through the legislative process, and the budget bills expected today, Tuesday, April 19th, it seems that President Biggs is hoping to leave a lot of bills swinging slowly in the wind. At least some of our representatives, and possibly the governor, are not as anxious to end this session!
With unconscionable bullying and terrorizing of our children by many teachers and administrators determined to force them to submit to AzMERIT, our legislators and governor should do their jobs! These children need protection BEFORE the legislators Sine Die until next year! (End the session and kill all bills remaining unpassed.)
The legislators can draft and pass emergency legislation to protect pupils from retaliation, before they end the session!
They need to hear from US that We the People of Arizona will not tolerate the egregious treatment being inflicted upon Arizona’s Children! This is what lawmaking is supposed to be about in America—government exists to maintain order and protect the people, LITTLE CHILDREN in this case! Our children are not chess pawns!
The Arizona State Legislature codified a mandate for our public school system to establish online instruction “to meet the needs of pupils in the information age. . . .”
15-808. Arizona online instruction; reports; definitions
A. Arizona online instruction shall be instituted to meet the needs of pupils in the information age. The state board of education shall select district public schools and state-approved charter authorizers shall sponsor charter schools to be online course providers or online schools. The state board of education and state-approved charter authorizers shall develop standards for the approval of online course providers and online schools based on the following criteria: . . .
For the criteria, see: http://www.azleg.gov/FormatDocument.asp?inDoc=/ars/15/00808.htm&Title=15&DocType=ARS
Online instruction operators provide accredited, publicly funded and authorized, K-12 education to Arizona pupils.
15-808(B) also provides:
If a pupil fails to comply with the testing requirements and the school administers the tests pursuant to this subsection to less than ninety-five percent of the pupils in Arizona online instruction, the pupil shall not be allowed to participate in Arizona online instruction. (Emphasis added.)
As reported in Anita Christy’s “GilbertWatch” blog and featured in ADI’s “Lesko and Farley Win Big! Sunday’s Comic,” online instruction operators are among the most egregious in ostracizing and bullying pupils whose parents Refuse to allow them to be subjected to the AzMERIT assessments.
My best efforts have not revealed another statute that mandates that pupils shall take the assessments required of the state board of education by Title 15-741. Yet, -808(B) does just that, and further decrees that the pupil who does not take these “tests” shall not be allowed to participate, if the operator’s participation rate is less than 95%. In other words, he is expelled!
Other public school system pupils in both district and charter schools, do not have this Sword of Damocles hanging over their heads!
This online instruction-only provision mandates unequal treatment under the law. It actually sets-up online-instruction pupils as a collective population in which individuals that do not conform are excised from the collective! The legislators, whether from ignorance or calculated intent, created a law that blatantly violates the individual rights of pupils and their parents.
It violates Article II, §§1, 2, 2.1, 4 & 12, of the Arizona Constitution, the Fourth Amendment in the right to be secure in one’s person against unreasonable governmental searches and seizures of personal thoughts, beliefs, attitudes and associations, and the Ninth Amendment against denial or disparaging of rights not enumerated but retained by the people. And, it certainly violates 1-601 & -602; Parental Rights statutes that stand-upon our unalienable God-given Rights acknowledged in all of the above!
The implementation of 15-808(B), -741 & -183.E(4) regarding AzMERIT and other non-academic assessments, with and without the codification of the claimed 95% administration rate, violates all of the above protections. The defeated Opt-Out bills this session and last would have made protecting parental rights and authority easier, but, I hope the bullying and terrorizing of Arizona’s schoolchildren will end soon with the widespread recognition of the inherent God-given Right of parents to direct the education of their children—without “permission” being required from Big Brother!
The defunct 95%-participation federal mandate is being imposed selectively upon online pupils. Our legislature is obligated to amend this offending statutory mandate ASAP! (I’m not saying the federal mandate was ever legitimate!)
They need to enact at least two emergency measures:
1. Criminalize and punish adult bullying/terrorizing of children in our public school system, and,
2. Repeal the 95% mandate of -808(B), along with its denial of public schooling to the pupils who do not participate. And do NOT compound the offense by adding it to other statutes!
Schools/online operators that are locking-out pupils from daily instruction before they tally the participation rate are actually violating -808(B) as it stands —they could not punish the pupil by this “law,” if it were valid, until after they knew the rate!
It is well-past time for Arizonans to restore the true meaning of “education” to our public school system. Brainwashing, indoctrinating and channeling pupils into “career tracks,” and “graduating them on-time” as “college-and-career-ready” is not equivalent to “educating” them!