Arizona teacher pay plan: Questions remain on where the money will come from

PHOENIX - Arizona Governor Doug Ducey announced a plan to offer teachers a 20 percent rate hike by 2020, but some educators say they still have many questions on how that's going to happen.

"We're not getting our hopes up yet," said Marisol Garcia, Vice President of the Arizona Educators Association. "There are some glaring pieces missing from the proposal."

Teachers are not completely satisfied with Gov. Ducey's proposed teacher salary raise plan and are asking about specifics: where will the money come from?

"What about everyone else who works in the building, our counselors, our secretaries, our cafeteria workers, all of which we could not do our job without."

Gov. Ducey made no mention of them during April 12th's announcement, but the following day, House Speaker J.D. Mesnard said, "Teachers are going to be the priority. They have to be, that's the fundamental thing we're doing in our education system.. is teaching our kids. But we give billions of dollars to that system, we give inflationary money to that system as well and that is supposed to be going to support staff."

Mesnard adds that it is also the districts who have discretion over where the money goes.

"We haven't really been talking about stepping into force salary increases in other areas. We're gonna stay focused more narrowly on teacher pay."

So there are more steps ahead for the #RedForEd movement.

"The Red For Ed movement is gonna focus on the fact that it was never just about teacher salaries," said Garcia.