A debate between the two candidates for Arizona Superintendent of Public Instruction follows a recent the accusation by Republican Kimberly Yee that her opponent, Democrat Teresa "Terry" Leyba Ruiz, is breaking the law.
The debate starts at 6 p.m. on Sept. 15 and can be seen on the link below.
The superintendent leads the state Department of Education and serves on all the state's education boards, including the State Board of Education to help develop curriculum and standards.
Yee, who's in her second term as state treasurer, and was recruited to run by state Sen. Jake Hoffman, chair of the Arizona Freedom Caucus. She soundly beat veteran Arizona politician Tom Horne in July's Republican primary, denying him another term after Hoffman and other conservatives
decided Horne wasn't sufficiently supporting the state's Empowerment Scholarship Account education voucher program.
In the 2022 election that brought Democrats to the top statewide positions, Yee stood out for receiving the most votes of any elected official in the state. After beating Horne, she said she didn't want the billion-dollar-a-year voucher program to overshadow her race. She supports "traditional mathematics," phonics-based instruction, mentors for teachers and more home economics and shop classes.
Ruiz, a lifelong educator and the former president of Glendale Community College from 2018 to 2023, beat another political newcomer and fellow Democrat Brett Newby in July.
She offers voters a starkly different choice in terms of policy and tenor from the superintendent's office. She's vowed to save money by taking down Horne's unproductive complaint hotline for critics of DEI and trans rights in schools. She wants to push private schools for more accountability, such as committing to standardized testing, since they're now collecting receiving hundreds of millions of dollars each year from state taxpayers.
Classroom policies have taken a backseat in the race recently after Yee filed a complaint with the state Attorney General's Office against Ruiz, claiming she's breaking state law by meeting school officials across the state on school property.
Yee’s complaint cites an Arizona law stating that “a person acting on behalf of a school district or a person who aids another person acting on behalf of a school district” cannot use school buildings or facilities to influence the outcomes of elections. It's still unclear if the Democratic attorney general, Kris Mayes, will recuse herself from the case since she's formally endorsed Ruiz.
So far, Ruiz has dismissed the complaint as a "desperate political attempt" by Yee to distract the public and said visiting schools and educators should be a prerequisite for the superintendent's job.
This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: What to watch for in Arizona's school superintendent debate
