Patrick’s Rants

Jan Brewer, who has just taken over the office of Governor of Arizona, in an act of pure Republican dogma wants to cut taxes and make government “smaller”. The state is looking at staggering budget shortfalls, public schools in Arizona (already funded the absolute worst in the US – 49^th or 50^th depending upon the year) are being asked to cut as much as 20% from their budgets. The state universities have had funding reduced by somewhere in the neighborhood of $250 million.

I understand there are many people in our state who like the fact that we are a pioneer state, the fact that there are still cowboys and the feel of the old west. But that should not be a reason to slash funding for basic education. Nostalgia for the one room school house and the unmarried schoolmarm should not direct our actions. The days when our kids had a barely passable reading level and worked the fields over the summer are long gone. Or they used to be. With the hatchet job being done to our Arizona educational system we are in danger of returning to the frontier age while the rest of the world looks forward to the 21^st century.

While I prefer that my own taxes stay manageable – and they have – I don’t believe that a tax cut now makes sense. When the tax rate – hypothetically speaking – is 10% and the base drops by 10% you only have 90% of your original income.

So Governor Brewer, before you slash and burn the education system from kindergarten through graduate school think about the future. Think about the effects of losing a highly-educated work force. Honeywell, Intel, Motorola, WL Gore and Google lose their employee candidates draining the tax base even further. Arizona is already one of the top four foreclosure states, when our biggest employers board up the windows we will soar to #1.

Of course there could be a bright side to this. Gov Brewer could totally break the state, bankrupting us. We could return to the days of the wild west and be bailed out, and then annexed by Utah, Nevada, New Mexico or the Navajo Nation. The US could sell the state back to Mexico, or California could bulldoze everything under and turn the state into a massive solar array. We can go back to exporting tumble weeds and dust storms.

At least Las Vegas would be happy that we are not sucking the water off the Colorado River anymore.

I have had an excessive number of unsatisfied phone calls lately from people thinking they are talking to an idiot. How I managed to get these calls is beyond me, they aren’t even my “department”.

First, a little groundwork and background. Each of the schools in town has its own attendance boundaries, if you live within a school’s boundaries, that is the school you attend; that is the school that we will transport students to and from. Also the State of Arizona has designated one mile as walking distance for elementary students and one and a half miles for secondary (7^th through 12^th grades). By walking distance, I mean that the State does not consider anyone within walking distance to be an “eligible student” for transportation. We don’t get paid to drive these kids to school and we don’t drive them to school. Flagstaff also has four “magnet schools”. The magnet schools get students from everywhere. Of the three elementary schools with magnet programs, at least two are full magnets, meaning that everyone in the school is in the programs and every student qualifies for transportation from anywhere (and we are obligated to transport to these schools). The middle school program is for specific students and does not encompass the entire student body. Only the students in the magnet programs are entitled to citywide transportation.

Now that I’ve said that, let me delve into the conversations that I have had to endure over the last few weeks. The first is a call that I received asking about a particular route and why the driver was not stopping at some corner, but was instead stopping on a different corner.

(From memory)The website shows this bus stopping on Dodge for Flagstaff Middle and Flagstaff High

At which point I knew that I was probably talking to a high school student and I replied,

That neighborhood goes to Sinagua High School, we do not transport to Flag High from that address.

Can you just check your web site?

I don’t have to check, that’s Sinagua district.

Of course, he was not satisfied and told me that he wanted to talk to a supervisor. As it was after 5 PM I told him there wasn’t a supervisor but that I could take his name and number and have someone call him in the morning. His intention was to report me for “poor customer service” for already knowing that he (as he sounded like a student) wanted to get transportation to a school outside of his boundary – and refusing to look. And of course for being “rude”.

Next up, a phone call from a mom who wants her child to ride the bus to Thomas Elementary School. I asked where she lived and she gave me an address two minutes by foot to another school – out of boundaries and ineligible for transportation. I advised her that she was a block and a half from Killip, that she was in Killip’s district and that her child would not be transported to Thomas from within Killip’s boundaries. She told me that her child would never go to Killip and insisted that we transport her child (ineligible for reimbursement from the State). I again told her there was no bus. She became frustrated with me and hung up. I heard the she has talked to two or three other people over this with the same answer.

Lastly, I received a call from a woman wanting to help her “friend” get transportation for her child to Killip. Killip is only walk distance, there are no students from outside of a mile that attend Killip. In this case the child is right at a mile distance. Again, the dance of “give me your supervisor,” “I’m sorry, at this time of day, they trust me to work by myself,” ensues. I don’t know if she called back or not.

Back when I worked as a lifeguard we had a rule that anyone who rented a boat from us, or used any kind of watercraft that they themselves brought to the lake, were required to wear a life jacket. Not that they just have it in the boat, but actually wear it. As a lifeguard I was exempt due to an incident the first day the park was opened. Two ladies that I told to wear their life jackets promptly complained to my supervisor about “the guy who thinks he’s a private dick”. Yeah, it was the era of Miami Vice and I was wearing a pair of cheap Rayban knock-offs. But private dick?

Don’t get me wrong. I’ve worked in different businesses, where the customer is usually right. Like when I worked for the string of businesses owned by my grandparents, then my dad, and finally for myself. And when I worked selling shoes, and Ruby Tuesday. But when the law dictates the rules and the service level your kid has to walk.