With 36 days left to collect signatures and secure Invest in Ed’s spot on the November ballot, Arizona’s kids, educators and economy need your help.

Invest in Ed has the potential to secure Arizona’s future and restore cuts made to education during the LAST recession.

Help us get the signatures we need safely, responsibly, and legally:

1. Sign the Invest in Ed Petition

Find an opportunity to sign the Invest in Ed petition at a petition station near you, or sign up to have an Invest in Ed petition mailed to your home for you and other registered voters in your household to sign.

2. Host a Petition Station

Our grassroots volunteers are hosting petition stations across the state. Here, supporters are able to sign the Invest in Ed petition, pick up a new petition, or bring petitions they’ve collected to be notarized and turned in. Volunteers have hosted petition stations at their homes, places of worship, and other spaces in the community. Sign up to host a petition station here.

3. Send Texts and Make Calls

We need your help reaching out to voters about Invest in Ed and getting them involved in our grassroots movement. Sign up to send text messages and make calls, both of which can be done from the comfort and safety of your home.

4. Chip in to Power Our Grassroots Movement

Invest in Ed is a grassroots movement to restore K-12 education funding and power our economic recovery. We rely on supporters like you chipping in $10 or whatever you can afford. Donate to Invest in Ed here.

This effort will take all of us, working together, from now until we submit our signatures on July 2.

Let’s get to work!

Paid for by Children’s Action Alliance and the Arizona Center for Economic Progress. Not authorized by any candidate.

#INVESTinED, a coalition of education advocates and business professionals, including Children’s Action Alliance and the Arizona Center for Economic Progress, held a rally yesterday at the Arizona Capitol to kick off petition gathering for the Invest in Education Act.

The Invest in Ed initiative seeks to address the K-12 education funding crisis by generating an additional $940 million of revenue annually for education. Arizona spends $1 billion dollars less on public education than it did a decade ago. Currently, there are 1,840 teaching positions not filled with a qualified teacher. All the revenue will be directed to a voter protected fund for transparency and accountability.

The revenue must be directed towards:

• 50% of revenues to hire and increase base compensation for teachers and classroom support personnel (e.g., nurses, counselors)
• 25% of revenues to hire and increase base compensation for student support service personnel (e.g., classroom aides, school safety, student transportation)
• 12% of revenues to career and technical education and vocational training programs
• 10% to be spent on mentoring and retention programs for new classroom teachers
• 3% of revenues will go to the Arizona Teachers Academy to increase scholarship amounts

Revenue will be generated through a 3.5% surcharge to the top one-percent of incomes in the state. The initiative only impacts personal income tax exceeding $250,000 for individuals and $500,000 for families. For example a household with $501,000 in taxable income would pay $35 per year to invest in Arizona schools.

We have a goal to gather over 400,000 petition signatures before the July 2 deadline to qualify for the ballot in November - it's time to act.

Paid for by Children’s Action Alliance. Not authorized by any candidate.

We have been spending the last several days unpacking the Governor’s proposed budget and there is a lot to like and some questions that are yet to be answered. This is only the Governor’s proposal and not necessarily what will be in the final budget once it is negotiated and passed. The Governor’s budget checks off several of our legislative priorities this session:

• Doubling the kinship care stipend from $75 per child per month to $150 (the stipend is financial support provided to grandparents and other relatives who step in to take care of children in times of abuse and neglect).
• Fully restoring district additional assistance (DAA) two years ahead of schedule (this is money schools use to buy textbooks, curriculum, technology, and new school buses).
• Increase safe, quality child care options by adding $23 million in federal investments to the child care subsidy program for low-income working parents.

There are other investments in children such as $38 million in ongoing funds for school counselors, social workers, and school resource officers (SROs). We are also pleased to see incentives to encourage the adoption of children with significant special needs and sibling groups.

That said,  it is still unclear how the $23 million in federal child care subsidy programs will be utilized and if the new federal money coming to Arizona will be included in a final appropriation. Our position is that these dollars should be invested in increasing the subsidy rates so that they match the real costs that parents face when paying for child care.

One thing is clear: we will fight tirelessly to ensure our tax dollars are being spent on our children.