Tom Horne, Kimberly Yee argue over teacher pay, DEI in heated debate

Incumbent Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Horne faced off against superintendent hopeful and current State Treasurer Kimberly Yee in a heated debate Thursday night.

The debate, hosted by the Arizona Citizens Clean Elections Commission, saw the two Republican candidates tackle major education issues, such as school funding, Empowerment Scholarship Account (ESA) vouchers and teacher pay.

During the debate Horne and Yee agreed on how government oversight for the school voucher program, which allows families to use public education tax dollars for private school or homeschooling expenses, should be managed.

Yee explained academic accountability is already in place in the current ESA program, saying if a private school was not meeting the needs of families it would have to close.

She and Horne both said private and home schools receiving ESA dollars should not have to be held to the same state standards as public and charter schools.

“They wouldn’t be private schools or home schools if they were under the exact same rules,” Yee said. “Then you would also just eliminate the beauty of what school choice is all about, because each individual school choice opportunity should be uniquely different.”

Differences between the Republican candidates

The two candidates disagreed about other education topics like teacher retention and diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) practices.

Horne said teachers are leaving Arizona classrooms because of behavioral issues from students. He said having supportive administrators could change that.

“We need to pass a law to encourage administrators to support teachers on discipline. Too many administrators are too lax. A child misbehaves, they say ‘you poor darling, it’s not your fault, you come from a tough family’ or whatever,” Horne offered. “No. Actions have to have consequences… we need to provide incentives for administrators to support our teachers on discipline.”

Yee said keeping teachers in the classroom is about increasing the amount of education funding.

“When we take a look at how teachers are having to go to garage sales to pick up their own out of pocket purchases for school supplies, it’s wrong… I believe we need to move more money from the district administration office to the classroom,” she said.

The debate moves to DEI

Horne addressed a recent claim his campaign made saying Yee served on a DEI committee through the National Association of State Treasurers, Yee called it a lie and sent Horne a cease-and-desist letter.

Horne responded with a cached web page showing Yee sat on a DEI committee as recently as 2023.

Yee stressed that the claim was false.

“I have fought, in fact, against those types of issues that distract from real representation on merit because I believe that an individual should advance based on their skills, on their experience, on their merits,” she said.

Both Horne and Yee said DEI practices should not be used in schools.

Watch Horne’s comments on DEI below:

“In DEI, they keep pushing race. You have to have equal results by race regardless of merit. And that’s totally wrong. We need to emphasize individual merit so that we to be an achieving country as we always have been,” Horne said.

The winner of the July 1 primary will face the Democratic challenger in the November election.

The full Clean Elections debate schedule can be found here.

Funding for this journalism is made possible by the Arizona Local News Foundation.

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