Hundreds of Arizona teachers gather in protest of Horne’s ‘Empower Hotline’

PHOENIX (3TV/CBS 5) — Greater than 100 lecturers spent the day rallying exterior the state capitol. They’re protesting the brand new, controversial hotline arrange by state superintendent Tom Horne. Horne says it’s designed for folks to report lecturers for lesson plans they assume are “inappropriate.” So lecturers need this hotline to be taken down.

Academics on the rally say essential race principle is just not taught of their Ok-12 colleges. Additionally they imagine this hotline creates a division between mother and father and lecturers and encourages harassment.

Arizona Schooling Affiliation President Marisol Garcia says this hotline will solely worsen the trainer scarcity. She believes Superintendent Horne is bringing politics into the classroom, saying they weren’t there earlier than.

She says lecturers have been feeling attacked because the hotline launched. “Increasingly, there’s lots of nervousness across the politicization of this. Final week we had college board members being attacked. We had a trainer being attacked at a faculty board assembly. That’s all being compounded with this 1-800 quantity. This simply has to cease,” Garcia stated.

On Wednesday, the Arizona Educators Affiliation referred to as on Horne to take down the hotline and requested him to return to tour Arizona’s public colleges, saying then he’ll see the sources lecturers and college students want. “All that is nonsense in my view that they’re speaking about and they’re simply ignoring actual points like pupil wants and trainer pay and infrastructure,” stated Angela Gomez, a pupil trainer.

We reached out to Superintendent Horne for a press release. He stated, “mother and father have a professional curiosity within the training of their kids. The Empower Hotline provides mother and father an opportunity to speak with the Division of Schooling and that could be a good factor.”

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