Guest Editorial: Not So Fast: The Crazies Must Be Heard

By Ronald Sampson

We have previously written about the consistently wise actions coming out of the Scottsdale Unified School District governing board, and the many misled parents who decided to aggressively protest these moves, often in disruptive manners. Well now it seems that they have a powerful friend on their side: the Goldwater Institute.

For those who are unaware, the Goldwater Institute, named after Arizona’s own bastion of small government conservatism, has turned into a legal tool for conservative political movements which often betray the desired objectives of its namesake. In this case they are stating that SUSD violated open meeting laws by not allowing sufficient observer access and comment.

As we all know, Covid has made traditional meetings largely go away for the last 18 months, and as such the district complied with AG Mark Brnovich’s guidance when it came to remote meetings. The complainants say that they were not reasonably accommodated when it came to watching the meeting outside of the room.

They have smartphones, right? They could have just pulled up the meeting on their smartphones and watched it, correct? Were they expecting a TV to be rolled in there for their benefit?

If we’re being honest here, the Goldwater Institute has turned into little more than a smaller scale conservative version of the ACLU: once a proud, principled organization that held true to its stated mission, but now is little more than a piece of a political apparatus.

SUSD has had more than enough unnecessary difficulties based on the irrational protestors that seem to delight in making their lives miserable. They don’t deserve having a large legal organization going after them on top of that. They have been exemplary in their responses to a very difficult situation, and have earned our trust, not harassment and lawsuits.