Roberts: Diane Douglas, where's your plan?

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A number of people have taken offense at my calling out state Superintendent Diane Douglas as the state’s most notorious kindergartener.

This, after she called the cops last week on state Board of Education President Greg Miller, accusing him of assault by putting his hand on her arm when he tried to take away her microphone.

(Miller says he may have hit her arm by accident while moving her microphone, putting him at a solid first or second grade level.)

Readers immediately rushed to the defense … of kindergartners.

“After teaching kinder for 24 years in Balsz School District, I feel I'm in a position to say neither of these people would be typical kindergartners,” wrote Jane Murtagh, of Surprise. “From the 1st day of school my students and I worked to develop their social skills like sharing, solving problems peacefully, not hurting each other's feelings. … Before my students could think about learning to read or solving math problems we practiced how all 30 of us (or more) could function in the classroom. Without that skill, learning anything else was impossible.”

Which about sums up where we are at the highest levels of educational leadership in Arizona, as Douglas’ six-month-old feud with the state Board of Education rages on.

She’s mad because Gov. Doug Ducey blocked her from firing two top board staffers she deemed too liberal. Mad because Ducey offered safe haven to the 11-member board staff, allowing them to move out of Douglas’ digs and into the Executive Tower.

Mad because a Maricopa County Superior Court judge ruled that only the board can fire the board’s staff and then refused to order the staff back to the Department of Education building, as Douglas demanded.

Not content to simply appeal her losing lawsuit, Douglas is now refusing to allow board investigators to remotely access teacher certification files as they investigate potentially bad teachers.

Reader after reader expressed shock that Douglas could continue carrying on like a kinderg…oops, I mean a baby when Arizona’s schools so desperately need a boost.

“I am a registered Republican but this is what you get when you just vote party,” wrote Craig Heustis of Buckeye, on my Facebook page. “Base your vote on the research you can do on the qualifications of the person regardless of party.”

Douglas ran last year on a platform of dumping Common Core, never mind that she’s just one vote on the 11-member board that sets Arizona’s educational standards.

Talk of a recall began even before she took office, by skeptics who believed that her vast educational experience — sitting on a suburban school board and teaching people how to make stained glass — left the pride of the Peoria Tea Party unprepared to oversee the education of a 1.1 million Arizona children.

I suggested at the time that Douglas be given a chance, noting that 50.52percent of voters had proclaimed her the one to lead Arizona’s future generations to previously unseen levels of academic achievement.

“Quit shuddering and give her a chance, people,” I wrote in December. “I, for one, cannot wait to see what she does.”

So now I’ve seen what she does. Thus far, she’s squabbled with the school board, gone on a listening tour then squabbled some more with the school board.

Early on, I saw glimpses that gave me faint hope, when she proclaimed the state of Arizona’s school as poor and called out Ducey for “depriv(ing) schools of hundreds of millions of dollars to give his corporate cronies as tax cuts.”

Since then … nothing. Nothing to advocate for better funding of schools. Nothing to stem the outgoing tide of teachers who are fleeing this state to take jobs in places that actually value public education.

After seven months in office, no plan to do much of anything other than throw tantrums when she doesn’t get her way.

It’s great for people like me.

For our kids? Not so much.