Message to the Legislators — Arizona Learns
A sustained business and education collaboration for a superior public education and future for Arizona K-12 students.February 25, 2003
As Executive Director and Legislative Project Team leaders of the Arizona Business & Education Coalition (ABEC), we write to introduce ourselves, ABEC and the ABEC legislative agenda, the most recent product of our Board�s work in consensus and continuous improvement.
ABEC is guided by a board of 44 leaders: 50% from business, 50% from education, plus ex-officio members. The ex-officio members include designees from the State Board of Education, the State Board of Charter Schools, the Superintendent of Public Instruction, and the Governor's office. We've requested, but not received, designees from the House and Senate. There are over 100 organizational members of ABEC with a distribution of over 300 individuals. The Champions and Advocates for ABEC from the business community include Arizona Public Service, Boeing, Cox Communications, Intel, Medtronics, Motorola, the Rodel Institute, and State Farm Insurance. Additional members include business leaders and educators from Tucson, northern Arizona, rural, urban and suburban school districts, large and small.
ABEC�s legislative agenda is focused on two areas:
- modifications to Arizona LEARNS, and
- protection of K-12 funding.
- In December 2002, a small group of business and education representatives met with Department of Education experts.
- In January 2003, the ABEC executive committee of 18 reviewed 2 additional drafts of proposed changes, including one from ASA, and the Department of Education for commonalities. Six areas of commonality were identified. The work was given to the Legislative Project Team to bring the three proposals together.
- In January 2003, the Legislative Project Team met, and a preliminary draft was developed that contained common elements from the three drafts.
- In February 2003, the Board of Directors met and heard the views of a former legislator, a member of the state board of education and from ADE regarding difficult issues with Arizona LEARNS and its alignment with NCLB (No Child Left Behind). The members had small discussions about the issues, and went through a dialogue, area by area, to identify what they could accept in a consensus amendment.
Regarding protection of K-12 funding, because ABEC believes that a strong public school system is directly linked to strong economic development, fully funding our K-12 system is important. ABEC looks forward to working collaboratively on issues that relate to funding K-12 education.