Hello! I hope you all had a wonderful week.
All right, so, one area that's very important to the Chamber is education. Governor Doug Ducey has always supported the idea of rewarding high-performing schools and the Chamber agrees with this initiative. One article I read concerned the governor's budget plan for fiscal 2018. Extra money from last year's Proposition 123 added to his budget and increased it to $9.8 billion. One interesting aspect of the budget that has garnered both support and criticism is its slow phase-in. Many of the changes the budget contends occur at a slow enough rate that the full impact of the budget is diluted over the next few years.
One specific area that I read about in an article this week discussed how the Governor's Office has rolled out a program that will allow K-12 district schools and charter schools to apply for and subsequently receive extra funds. Called the Public School Credit Enhancement Program, it helps these schools "get lower interest rates on construction projects to expand successful schools or build new ones" (Rau). The application process will apparently rely heavily on how financially stable these schools are.
In the article I read, the writer asserted that this program will benefit charter schools the most. Moreover, the lower interest rate could help schools expand the existing school, build a new school, expand other school programs, and so on.
Another area that's important to the Chamber is NAFTA. An article I read this week discussed how updating NAFTA would be a good option that would benefit Canada, Mexico, and the United States since it would enhance North America's competitiveness in the global market through an increased focus on innovation and entrepreneurship. One of the updates the article proposed was increased protection of intellectual property, which has been a problem we've had to tackle as technology has advanced. Going with this advancement in technology, the article identified that some areas that would benefit from a NAFTA revision would be agriculture and energy. The writer also warned against altering NAFTA while also imposing tariffs on Mexico since doing that could affect Canada negatively too.
Anyways, that's pretty much what I did/learned about this week. Let me know if you have any questions and I'll get to them in the comments! Thanks for reading and have an awesome weekend! I'll see you all next week for another post.
Sources:
Hansen, Ronald J., Yvonne Wingett Sanchez, and Mary Jo Pitzl. "Arizona budget: Gov. Doug Ducey pitches small steps toward big education goals." Azcentral. The Arizona Republic, 13 Jan. 2017. Web. 25 Mar. 2017.
Martinez, Arturo, and Carol Guensburg. "SXSW Panelists: Updating NAFTA Could Aid All 3 Signatories." VOA. VOA, 15 Mar. 2017. Web. 25 Mar. 2017.
Rau, Alia Beard. "Gov. Doug Ducey releases plan to shrink wait lists at high-performing schools." Azcentral. The Arizona Republic, 18 Mar. 2017. Web. 25 Mar. 2017.
