Kathy Hoffman /Gage Sizemore
By Yana Kunichoff | Arizona Republic
Kathy Hoffman was elected to state superintendent on the wave of a tumultuous and emotional moment in public education: the #RedForEd movement, which saw tens of thousands of frustrated teachers walk out of their classrooms.
Little did she know she would steward Arizona and its students through the uncharted waters of what has since been called the biggest challenge that faced American public education in a century: the COVID-19 pandemic.
As the chief of schools, Hoffman supported universal masking at the start of last school year to help continue in-person instruction, and on several occasions took to social media to oppose the Governor’s Office’s stand against face mask rules.
The woman who in 2018 became Arizona’s first Democratic state schools chief since 1995 is running again. She is unopposed in the Democratic primary, with three Republican candidates to face off Aug. 2 for the right to face her in the Nov. 8 general election.
So far, according to her latest 2022 filing, Hoffman has raised $138,328. As a Citizens Clean Election Commission candidate, Hoffman has promised to not take funding from corporations or special interests, and in return the group has underwritten the majority of her funding.
More than one-quarter of her funding comes from individual contributions, much of it from small donations of $5.
Hoffman wants Arizona’s residents to look at her reduction of the student-to-counselor ratio by 20%, $14 million in mini-grants for Arizona educators to fund classroom projects, and her lobbying to end the discriminatory “no promo homo” law that threatened to revoke the license of teachers who promoted a “homosexuals’ lifestyle.”
“I love being the chief advocate for our public education system,” Hoffman said. “I feel very passionate about continuing the work that we’re doing.”
