The classroom coup

Reshaping local education in her image … Choose Your Own Agenda … And the big, beautiful breakup.

In the whirlwind of last year’s elections, you probably weren’t too focused on the Maricopa County School Superintendent race.

In case you missed it, MAGA Republican Shelli Boggs won the position, which comes with the power to appoint new school board members to vacant seats across the county's 58 school districts.

So far, Boggs has hand-picked at least seven school board members this year, and there are currently five more openings to fill, according to the county superintendent’s website.

Boggs’ predecessor, Steve Watson, said he appointed 32 school board members in his first four-year term. And each appointment could potentially tip the balance of power at your local school board.

Boggs has an interesting background, so the people she’s appointed to the county’s school boards are also … interesting.

She’s a former assistant to Freedom Caucus leader, Sen. Jake Hoffman, and she was the statewide outreach coordinator for a group that wants to “expose the radical indoctrination in K-12 education.”

The county superintendent also oversees school district elections and operates an accommodation high school for vulnerable students. Watson got in trouble for financial mismanagement at the accommodation district and lost in the primary to Boggs.¹

Boggs already tried to expand the scope of her powers by telling school districts she’s monitoring them for compliance with President Donald Trump’s anti-DEI executive order, even though the school superintendent doesn’t have the authority to impose those regulations.

But the real way Boggs flexes her MAGA muscle is through the people she puts on school boards.

When a school board has a vacancy, board members typically host interviews, solicit public feedback and submit three names to the county superintendent.

But Boggs isn’t required to pick from the list of vetted candidates the board supports, and she’s using that to her advantage.

Here are some of the standout appointments, so far:

Jeremiah Cota - Phoenix Union High School District

The Phoenix Union High School District interviewed several candidates to replace a vacant seat and sent Boggs three names. She had someone else in mind.

A guy who recently announced he stopped shopping at Target when “they went ultra woke” was appointed by Boggs to one of the “more progressive high school districts in the United States,” as the Phoenix Union district calls itself.

Jeremiah Cota was sworn into the Phoenix Union’s governing board yesterday. He posted about his appointment with the declaration:

“I will be pro parent, prioritize student and school safety, fiscal accountability and ABSOLUTELY NO DEI or CRT.”

He replaces elected Governing Board Member Naketa Ross, who advocated for marginalized youth and has a child with special needs attending the district.

Cota seems to have earned his MAGA bona fides. He used to work for Republican U.S. Rep. Paul Gosar and was the political director for the Republican Party of Arizona.

The governing board’s updated website says Cota has a bachelor’s degree in business and “an Associate's in Bible.”

Michael Todd - Liberty Elementary School District

After resigning from the governing board of the Liberty Elementary School District in Buckeye last year, Michael Todd is back.

He used to be the board’s president, but quit in September because he was frustrated with the district’s response to a school shooting threat and a student-on-student assault.

Boggs said she attended a candidate forum hosted by the district, but still chose Todd — who wasn’t at the forum and applied for the spot afterwards — because he “already understands the district’s financial structure.”

When the community learned Todd was interested in the job, teachers started an email campaign asking Boggs not to appoint him and planned a protest when she did. The Republic found a Facebook post from a county superintendent's office employee that said, “The 'duh'-mb teacher's union is at it again. They're trying to take Liberty Elementary School District back to the failed … radical democrat ideological policies.”

Community members said Todd was in charge when the district blew its budget, and teachers worried funding for counselors would get cut with him on the school board.

Although he wasn’t in the candidate forum, Todd made sure to email Boggs a list of his achievements. They include "adopting a policy to prohibit boys from using girls' bathrooms” and “a policy that restricted psychologists to only work in special education classes for evaluations and placement,” per the Republic.

Kelli Anderson - Queen Creek Unified School District

When a school board seat became vacant in the Queen Creek Unified School District, the district formed a committee of stakeholders to interview 11 candidates.

The committee — which included the governing board president, the district’s superintendent, a teacher and a community member — told Boggs they found three people who stood out as qualified to help lead the district.

Boggs picked an apparent MAGA fan who didn’t make the board members' list.

Army veteran Kelli Anderson got the spot because she “stands firmly against DEI-driven policies,” Boggs said in a news release.

The committee picked applicants who “have children or have had children who attend our district and are very invested in the community.” Anderson homeschools her children.

This appointment was important to Boggs — she’s from Queen Creek and her kids went to school there, so she picked someone who seems to align with her own political ideology. The Queen Creek Independent found now-deleted Facebook posts of Anderson at a MAGA event. One of the pictures features Arizona’s own QAnon Shaman Jacob Chansley.

Just like a lot of people, the big names in AI are worried their tech will decimate the job market.

Or at least they say they are. And they can’t quite agree on what’s going to happen. Or even how worried everybody should be.

In fact, it’s a huge debate that was kicked into high gear last week when a titan of the industry made a bold prediction.

We’ve got the skinny for you in this week’s edition of the A.I. Agenda.

Elsewhere in the world of AI, the biggest newspapers in the country are leaning into AI tools, Isaac Asimov still has some lessons for us, and seniors in Arizona are finding new “companions.”

If you want to follow the debate, and a whole lot more, all you have to do is click that button!

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We’ve got it all in this week’s edition of the Education Agenda.

Vouchers are popping up in a GOP primary showdown. Apparently, everybody deserves a Rolex. And the feds have more than enough money to go around.

Under new state laws, teachers could get in big trouble for … teaching. And lawmakers are taking aim at Isaac Elementary (and any other school district that gets into financial trouble).

Plus, Arizona’s universities are watching Trump’s crackdown on higher education from the sidelines, at least for the time being. And a seventh-grader shined on a big stage in Washington, D.C.

Click that button and we’ll keep you on top of it all!

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In today’s edition of the Water Agenda, Christian talks with Republican Rep. Alex Kolodin about the possible futures of Arizona’s groundwater.

Should groundwater become a tradable market commodity?

Is Arizona due for new regulatory concepts like “correlative water rights”?

Will urban Arizona one day take rural Arizona’s water?

They dive deep into these questions, often pushing back against each others’ conclusions.

And Christian takes a look at what happens when the culture wars meet the water wars, throwing his own opinions into the mix.

For a bucket full of hot takes on water, visit the Water Agenda.

Without question, the best part of President Donald Trump’s second term as president so far has been this week’s breakup between him and Elon Musk.

The New York Times has a liveblog up documenting each new development in the quarrel, which, as of our last check-in for the day, had culminated with Musk calling for Trump’s impeachment and Trump ally Steve Bannon suggesting Trump should deport Musk, who Bannon has “a strong belief” is an illegal alien.

We pulled a few highlights and our favorite tweets, but do yourself a favor and go scroll the Times’ blog — the videos alone are worth the click.

But before we go, we’ll leave you with this big beautiful quote from Trump when reporters started asking about the spat.

“People leave my administration, and they love us, and then at some point they miss it so badly, and some of them embrace it, and some of them actually become hostile. I don't know what it is. It's sort of trump derangement syndrome, I guess they call it. But we have it with others, too. They leave, and they wake up in the morning and the glamor is gone. The whole world is different and they become hostile. I don't know what it is. Someday you'll write a book about it and you'll let us know.”

1. Don’t worry, the Cartwright Elementary School District Governing Board is treating Watson just fine. He got hired as the superintendent there with the help of one of the school board members he had appointed.