Teachers rally in Tucson against dismantling of Department of Education

TUCSON, Ariz. (13 News) - A group of teachers hit downtown Tucson Sunday afternoon to oppose President Trump’s signing of an executive order to dismantle the Department of Education, and they say this could just be the start of their fight for funding.

“It’s people power, it’s educator power, it’s community power that’s going to get us across the finish line,” Tucson Education Association President Jim Byrne said.

The state of Arizona receives about 2 billion dollars from the Department of Education. Most of the funding is for school grants, Title I schools, and special education programs.

“We’d have to make some really difficult decisions that we just don’t have to,” Byrne said. “He’s playing political games that make the public suffer.”

Political games that protestors say may be different if there was more financial support for public schools at the state level.

“Our public schools have been starved, especially here in Arizona, and so when you don’t provide those supports, that gap is going to get greater and greater,” Adelita Grijalva said.

Arizona State House Assistant Minority Leader Nancy Gutierrez found herself among the hundreds advocating for the department as she says her victories in Phoenix for education are hard to come by.

“My bill, 2213, is to make reduced lunch free,” Gutierrez said. “It got through two committees, and then they wouldn’t give it a third read and so if we can’t feed kids and we can’t make them feel safe, how are they going to do well on a test?”

She says support for public education should go beyond party lines.

“Public education was never a partisan issue,” Grijalva said. “If you look back, it was fully funded by republicans, democrats, independents.”

Her work to fight for it isn’t going away anytime soon.

“I will stand up for these schools until I have no voice left,” Gutierrez said.

The Tucson Education Association says that the 2024 to 2025 school year will be unaffected by federal funding changes, but they can’t say the same for next year