One Arizona mom is hoping to make a difference over the next two years for her family in the state legislature.
Carine Werner is currently running to represent Arizona Legislative District 4 in the state senate. She notes on her website that her history as an immigrant, who arrived in the United States when she was eleven years old, has given her a great appreciation for this nation and helps drive her spirit to give back to the community around her through public service.
On March 29, Werner posted to her “X” account that she “turned in more than 3x the amount of signatures needed to get on the ballot for State Senate in LD-4.”
“Mom” is the first descriptor on Werner’s biography, which speaks volumes to onlookers about “who” and “what” is inspiring her to serve. Carine has three children, all with her husband of almost 30 years. She reflects on the motivation for her campaign for the state legislature, saying, “We face a flailing economy with out-of-control prices, a broken border, rising crime, homelessness, and challenges within our education system. As a result of these issues, we worry that our children and grandchildren won’t have the chance to enjoy the same opportunities and lifestyle that we have.”
Werner now serves on the Scottsdale Unified School District Governing Board. She lists her goals for this position as “improving the quality of education offered to Scottsdale students and ensuring their safety on all SUSD campuses.”
On her biography for SUSD, Werner reveals that “highlights of her [business] career include facilitating more than $100 million of commercial and residential loans, hiring, developing, and training more than 150 lenders, and creating the most six-figure income earners in her organization.”
Though Werner is already involved in public service, she sees an opportunity in the state legislature to secure a better future for her children. On her website, Werner writes that she is running for state senator “because our school boards are only one front in the battle for our children’s future, and we need fighters in the state legislature who will fight for their future too. Those of us who call this area home are truly fortunate because we’ve worked hard for the life we’ve built here. But we aren’t immune to the problems happening in the world that are beginning to hit close to home.”
The District 4 candidate has three priorities on her website to give voters a taste of what she would pursue if given the chance to represent them at the state legislature. The first is education, where Carine promises to help “increase teacher pay and reduce wasteful spending [and] empower parents.” She states, “Parents are the experts in their children’s lives, education, and health. They’re the ones who should drive children’s education inside and outside of the classroom. In the State Senate, Carine will ensure transparency in classrooms so parents are informed and involved in their child’s education.”
In her second priority for the state legislature, Werner highlights “safe and secure communities,” vowing to “empower and fund law enforcement, secure the border [and] address homelessness with compassion and accountability.” Giving her thoughts on the border, she writes, “We’ve all seen far too many Arizonans die of drug overdoses as a result of the crisis at our border. In the State Senate, Carine will work with local, state, federal, and law enforcement officials on solutions to secure our border, stop the rise in crime, and stop the flow of drugs coming into Arizona.”
Finally, Werner includes “economic growth and opportunities” for her priorities. Under this umbrella, she commits to “champion low-tax, business friendly environment, generate job growth, and improve cost of living.” Werner says that she “will promote legislation to advance economic growth and opportunities for prosperity through low taxes and legislation that will benefit Arizonans and Arizona businesses, while standing firmly against legislation that attempts to increase the burden on families and businesses.”
Werner was recently endorsed by the Maricopa County Colleges Police Officers Association. In announcing the support, Werner said, “It is critical that we fund police and stand alongside the men and women who risk their lives to keep us safe. At the Capitol, I will champion funding for law enforcement and more investment in a secure border. Together we can keep our communities and neighborhoods safe!”
Legislative District 4 is one of the most competitive in the state. According to the Arizona Independent Redistricting Commission, it has a 3.4% vote spread over the past nine statewide elections within its boundaries, with Republicans winning five of those contests.
The Scottsdale mother is running in the Republican primary against Kenneth R. Bowers, Jr. The winner on July 30 will face off against incumbent Democrat state senator Christine Marsh for the right to represent Arizona Legislative District 4.
AZ Free News is your #1 source for Arizona news and politics. You can send us news tips using this link.
Scottsdale Unified School District (SUSD) extended its application deadline for a sex ed curriculum committee serving grades 6-9 to about mid-January.
The district disclosed that it had received enough applicants to form the Sex Ed/Human Growth and Development (HGD) committee, but that not all of the desired learning communities were represented in the applicant pool.
SUSD divides its schools into five learning communities that comprise a school feeder pattern: Arcadia Learning Community, which includes Arcadia High School, Echo Canyon K-8, Ingleside Middle School, and the Hopi and Tavan elementary schools; Chaparral Learning Community, which includes Chaparral High School, Cocopah Middle School, Copper Ridge K-8, and the Cherokee, Cochise, and Sequoya elementary schools; Coronado Learning Community, which includes Coronado High School, Tonalea Middle School, and the Hohokam, Pima, and Yavapai elementary schools; Desert Mountain Learning Community, which includes Desert Mountain High School, Desert Canyon Middle School, Mountainside Middle School, Cheyenne K-8, and the Anasazi, Desert Canyon, Laguna, and Redfield elementary schools; and Saguaro Learning Community, which includes Saguaro High School, Mohave Middle School, and the Kiva, Navajo, and Pueblo elementary schools.
The committee will be tasked with learning Arizona laws establishing processes and guidelines for HGD/sex education materials; discussing and identifying criteria for evaluating resources beyond statutory criteria; reviewing, evaluating, and discussing vendor-submitted resources; reviewing teacher and parental feedback; and recommending resources to the SUSD Governing Board for formal approval and adoption.
Arizona law requires parental permission for any sexual education lessons in grades 6-12. Sexual education is prohibited before the fifth grade.
Even prior to seeking out parental permission, school districts and charter schools must make all sex ed curricula available for review online and in person, and notify parents where these materials may be reviewed at least two weeks prior to offering the instruction.
Development of the curriculum also requires public notification, review, and input for at least 60 days before the governing board votes on the curriculum.
Committee members serve as unpaid volunteers, though eligible certified employees could receive horizontal move hours for committee meetings that occur after the school day. Members are scheduled to meet twice in January, and once in February, March, and April, though SUSD noted that there will be the possibility that more meetings could occur to accomplish their work.
The original application deadline was scheduled for earlier this month, in mid-December, with an announcement of the committee members promised for Dec. 22. The new deadline is end of day Friday, Jan. 12, 2024.
The first meeting date is scheduled less than a week after the new deadline.
At least half of the committee members will be SUSD-certified teachers who possess content knowledge of sex ed/HGD curriculum.
Those deciding on committee membership are three individuals from the SUSD Cabinet, Ed Services Department, and/or the Teaching and Learning Department.
Parent and community member applicants are asked to provide experience and/or expertise relative to sex education, such as any training, prior employment, health care background, and education levels; examples of membership on past teams that were successful; and the main reason for interest in serving on the committee.
Corinne Murdock is a reporter for AZ Free News. Follow her latest on Twitter, or email tips to corinne@azfreenews.com.
Earlier this month, Arizona’s schools chief took a stand against antisemitic and anti-American materials at state schools.
Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Horne held a press conference to “denounce antisemitic and anti-American materials provided by UNICEF and Amnesty International at a high school club event that made Jewish students feel unsafe.”
The reason for Horne’s press conference, according to the release from the Arizona Department of Education, was due to tips from “several community members who had learned of antisemitic and anti-American materials being presented at a lunchtime club sponsored by those organizations…at Desert Mountain High School in Scottsdale.”
Horne minced no words in alerting the public to the dangers to students by the presence of these materials at this school – or any school in the state, saying, “The materials presented to these students were profoundly antisemitic in particular and anti-American , in nature. Some of the material states that ‘Palestinians have been subject to killings, torture, rape, abuse, and more for over 75 years.’ This is a ‘blood libel’ similar to the blood libels used in the Middle Ages to get people to go out and kill random Jewish people.”
The Republican superintendent pointed out the failure of these materials to document the truth of the horrific attacks in southern Israel on October 7. He said, “In none of this propaganda is there any reference to what happened on October 7. The fact that 1,400 civilians were murdered does not begin to describe to horror of what Hamas did. They went house to house in the neighborhoods, machine gunning entire families, and sometimes killing fathers in front of their children and children in front of their fathers. They copied the Nazi technique of setting fire to houses so that people would burn to death, or if they came out of the fire house, killed them upon their exit. The actions of Hamas are a repetition of what happened during World War II. Yet the materials make no mention of October 7.”
Horne shared an email he had sent to each district superintendent across the state, asking that their schools refrain from inviting UNICEF and Amnesty International and soliciting any materials from these two groups to campuses. The schools chief warned that “giving aid and comfort to terrorists is contrary to US law,” and that the groups and their literature “generate antisemitism among impressionable young people.”
Daniel Stefanski is a reporter for AZ Free News. You can send him news tips using this link.
Scottsdale Unified School District (SUSD) voted Tuesday to halve its public meetings for the upcoming school year, reducing special meetings to every other month. The reduction results in a five-meeting difference from this year to the next.
Superintendent Scott Menzel said that the changes arose after several board members had indicated that their meetings required more work than the board should have to handle, and that public meetings ran too long. Menzel said he initially opposed proposed reductions to the calendar. However, Menzel said he countered with the currently-adopted calendar: a “hybrid” solution that took away five public meetings.
“I didn’t think it would be possible to go to one meeting a month, for multiple reasons. One reason is that there are statutory deadlines that we would miss if we only had one meeting a month,” said Menzel.
Vice President Carine Werner opposed the measure. She said it saddened her that there were complaints from her fellow members about the amount of work they had to do, and that the proposed changes hurt transparency. Werner pointed out that they haven’t even discussed all of the work they needed to do under the current schedule with more meetings.
“I understand it’s a lot of work, but it’s also part of everyone’s jobs, just like it’s our jobs to be here to do the work that our governing board does,” said Werner.
Transparency has been a hot-button issue for the SUSD community over the last few years. Just last summer, the district opted to publish the names of those who file public records requests, but redact educators’ names. The push for greater transparency has come in the wake of discoveries that SUSD allowed and defended educators promoting sexualized and race-focused agendas in the classroom.
Werner added that she found it interesting that fellow board members wanted to reduce meetings, yet was willing to add meetings for the academy attended by administrators.
“I can only imagine the amount of work that’s gone into creating the academy and then fulfilling the work for the 40 applicants that get elected to participate in the program,” said Werner.
Werner also noted that parents and community members had expressed grievances over the proposed calendar change.
Board member Amy Carney pointed out that, by that point in Tuesday’s meeting, they’d been there two hours discussing key issues — an opportunity not possible in the adopted schedule with fewer meetings.
“We’ve got a lot of work to do. I can’t understand how we can cut meetings,” said Carney. “One of the critical places for school boards to work, to retain informed trust of the communities is the conduct of meetings.”
Carney asked whether SUSD had ever cut meetings this drastically. Menzel said he wasn’t aware, deferring to Board President Julie Cieniawski. Cieniawski said that, in the past, the board had held more non-public meetings.
Cieniawski also claimed that the addition of town halls were sufficient for the reduction of public meetings.
“This isn’t anyone’s voice being limited or taken away,” said Cieniawski.
Cieniawski contended with Carney’s insistence that the changes would erode community trust, and claimed that community trust came from engagement with local schools, not the board.
Carney attempted to respond to Cieniawski, who ignored and spoke over her and filed a motion to vote on the calendar. Board member Libby Hart-Wells, who appeared remotely for the meeting, seconded Cieniawski’s motion.
Menzel said that regular meetings should concern core business of the district, and that this calendar would free up the board to voluntarily call special meetings with at least 24-hour notice to focus on specific issues as needed. Menzel noted that he didn’t believe special meetings should take place every month, either.
“I don’t see the calendar as taking away from being able to conduct the work of the district, I think it actually enhances and keeps us focused in a way that the current calendar drifted away from, with the way the schedule is at the present time,” said Menzel.
Hart-Wells said she hadn’t heard any concerns from the community about the meeting restructuring.
Arizona law only requires school boards to have a minimum of one meeting per month.
Watch discussion of the board meeting reduction here:
Corinne Murdock is a reporter for AZ Free News. Follow her latest on Twitter, or email tips to corinne@azfreenews.com.
A Scottsdale superintendent said that the white race is problematic, and that meritocracy is a lie.
These comments, and more, came from Scottsdale Unified School District (SUSD) Superintendent Scott Menzel in a 2019 interview given while he was a superintendent in Michigan. His remarks remain in line with his current beliefs, based on local reporting on his performance in the district over the last two years.
“There’s a misperception that educational equity is really only for ethnically and racially diverse districts. But White people have racial identity as well, and in fact problematic racial identity that we typically avoid,” said Menzel.
Menzel advocated for dismantling the current educational system and replacing it with a system based on racial equity and calling out privilege.
“[White people] should feel really, really uncomfortable, because we perpetuate a system by ignoring the realities in front of us, and living in a mythological reality,” said Menzel. “In this country it’s about meritocracy. ‘Pull up yourself by your bootstraps, everybody has the same opportunity.’ And it’s a lie.”
Menzel said that the chaos of riots and public conflicts, such as the Charlottesville incident, affords “liberal progressive” actors such as himself “the opportunity to dismantle, disrupt, and recreate” society into a more socially just and equitable design. He noted that school funding shouldn’t be equal; rather, it should be equitable based on kids’ needs.
“[White supremacy is] in the very fabric of the way this country was established, and we’ve never righted the wrongs of the genocide of the indigenous population, and the enslavement of a population from Africa on which the wealth of this country was built,” said Menzel.
Arizona legislators decried the superintendent’s remarks as racist.
State Rep. Joseph Chaplik (R-LD03) said that Menzel should issue an apology and be terminated from his position immediately.
“The racist words and sentiments expressed by Scott Menzel have no place in education in Scottsdale or anywhere else,” said Chaplik.
Menzel became the SUSD superintendent in July 2020 amid the George Floyd riots. He was formerly a superintendent for various districts throughout Michigan: Washtenaw Intermediate School District, Livingston Educational Service Agency, and Whitmore Lake Public Schools. While at Washtenaw, Menzel was named Superintendent of the Year.
Just prior to becoming a superintendent, Menzel was the director of career development for a district in a county well known in conservative politics: Hillsdale County, home to Hillsdale College.
Menzel has long advocated for prioritizing equity and other social justice approaches to reforming education. While in Michigan, Menzel advanced efforts to institute social-emotional learning, race theories, and equity.
Menzel said in a 2015 equity panel that schools should have a “cradle to career education continuum,” resonant of the controversial “cradle-to-grave” approach former President Barack Obama proposed during his re-election campaign in 2012.
Before migrating to Arizona, Menzel was awarded with honors and positions of power defining educational standards.
In 2013, the White House honored Menzel as a YMCA Champion of Change, one of 12 nationwide to receive the honor. The following year, the Michigan Department of Education added Menzel to their Great Start Advisory Council, which defined policy issues on early childhood education.
SUSD has been mired in controversy since Menzel assumed leadership. Last year, the district posted the names of individuals online who submitted records requests, but redacted staff members’ names in response to those requests.
This policy concerning records requests occurred after media attention on SUSD’s past records requests. Last summer, SUSD provided a parent with blank patient intake forms for a Phoenix hormone and gender transition facility in response to a request concerning a high school librarian and the Gender & Sexualities Alliance (GSA) Club.
Menzel defended a staff member for discussing gender ideology with kindergarten and elementary students. Menzel accused upset parents of Civil Rights violations for speaking against the staff member’s actions. He also previously defended staff members who encouraged childhood exploration of gender and sexual identities through GSA clubs.
Corinne Murdock is a reporter for AZ Free News. Follow her latest on Twitter, or email tips to corinne@azfreenews.com.