Tom Horne thinks BLM posters and rainbow stickers make kids dumber

Even as his department has failed to meet key funding deadlines and neglected to inform schools about how to use federal funds for homeless kids, Arizona public schools chief Tom Horne continues to spend his time trolling and demonizing local schools and education advocates.

In a Thursday press release from the Arizona Department of Education, Horne attacked the Phoenix-based Osborn School District and its leadership because a “member of the Osborn community” told the department — via the infamous hotline he created upon taking office — that they were “offended by what is going on at that school district.”

What’s going on, according to Horne, is that a “big Black Lives Matter poster” adorned a classroom wall — though a photo provided by the department shows it to be a flag — and that students were given stickers featuring the Osborn logo and “colors associated with gender politics.” Because of those talismans of wokeness, Horne claimed, test scores in the Osborn district have suffered.

“If districts eliminate the time spent on race and gender politics they will have more time for academics,” Horne wrote. “This will produce higher test scores.”

To underscore his point about the deleterious effects of inclusiveness in education, Horne “cited” — without actually citing his source — test scores in the Osborn district and “the demographically similar Avondale Elementary district.” The latter has more students proficient in math and reading, Horne said, despite having a “higher poverty rate based on the number of children getting free and reduced lunches.”

Horne cited specific numbers, though it’s not clear where he got them. On the department’s website, several Osborn schools have B grades from the state and one has a C grade. Avondale has performed better by the district’s grading system, with mostly A- and B-graded schools. However, there’s no evidence that a lack of Black Lives Matter flags has freed Avondale’s young minds to soar higher, and perhaps Horne could use a refresher on the difference between causation and correlation.

Horne did not respond to a question from Phoenix New Times about which Osborn school drew the complaint that so agitated him. The Osborn district has five schools serving elementary school students as well as one middle school. However, in many of the neighborhoods surrounding the district’s schools, it’s common to see yard signs that express support for Black Lives Matter and LGBTQ+ rights.

And at any rate, Horne appears to have ignored pertinent facts in his zeal to wage a culture war. According to Osborn Superintendent Dr. Michael Robert, the BLM flag wasn’t even in a classroom.

"I made very clear to Superintendent Horne that the pictures he has are not from classrooms, but rather support staff in the office, and that instruction in our classrooms is driven by the Arizona state standards,” Robert wrote in a statement to New Times. “While he claims identity politics at play, the fact that he released this statement ignoring the facts discussed demonstrates the only politicking happening. We lose faith in elected officials when the leader of our state education agency chooses to attempt to bully school leaders and their communities, or pit them against one another.

“With the support of our school board, my message is one driven by our Core Values, and that Osborn will continue to be recognized for whom we choose to include and welcome, rather than by whom we exclude and reject."

In his press release, Horne mentioned speaking to Robert, though Robert was unnamed.

“He said what I was complaining about was designed to make all students feel welcome,” Horne wrote. “The way to do that properly is to teach students to treat each other as individuals without regard to race, sexual orientation, sexual identity, or any such characteristic. It is not to promote identity politics in our public schools.”

According to Horne, Robert “responded that we would have to agree to disagree.” Horne then lamented that “Arizona is a local control state,” which means he doesn’t “have authority to order this to stop.”

The Horne files

Dyspeptic and misguided press releases from Horne are almost as reliable as 100-degree summer days in Phoenix. Throughout his decades in public office, Horne has built a reputation for weaponizing his own incompetence to push a slanted political ideology.

On Aug. 15, Horne used another press release to attack Beth Lewis, the director of the public education advocacy group Save Our Schools. Lewis, who had critiqued Horne for meeting with “grandmas” concerned about extending protections to trans students, responded by tweeting that Horne was “a weirdo who is publicly obsessing over kids’ genitals.”

That press release came soon after the Arizona Republic exposed that Horne’s department missed a crucial deadline to allocate $29 million in Title I funding for Arizona schools, causing the funds to revert to the federal government. The department also failed to tell schools planning on those funds that they would not be available.

Horne blamed his predecessor, Democrat Kathy Hoffman, even though he took office eight months before the deadline passed. After the Republic published its report, Horne issued another press release, lying about missing the deadline, demanding a retraction and calling the paper’s reporter “dishonest.” Horne’s staffers eventually admitted the department did miss the deadline, though Horne never retracted the insult against the journalist.

Wednesday, another Horne failure came to light when Cronkite News reported that millions in unused federal COVID-19 relief funds meant to provide unhoused kids with resources were about to expire. According to the report, many of the schools were unaware the aid was available. Horne called the snafu a “breakdown of communication.”

And that’s just this year. Horne’s history of scandals is legendary.

During his tenure as Arizona attorney general in 2012, FBI agents watched Horne commit a hit-and-run in a Phoenix parking garage to avoid being caught with his alleged mistress. His reelection campaign for that office was soiled by that incident as well as a whistleblower report that Horne was using government staff members to do campaign-related work. When Horne mounted a political comeback in 2022 by running for his current position, his campaign employed child sex predator David Stringer, who in the 1980s received five years of probation for paying two boys for sex.

If schools feel neglected by their state superintendent, though, there’s one tried-and-true way to get Horne’s attention: Just hang a Black Lives Matter flag in the staff lounge.