By Ronald Sampson
Arizona Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Horne has once again trained his sights on Scottsdale Unified School District, this time criticizing a community flyer for a “Girls in Gear” cycling event that invited girls, nonbinary, and gender-expansive youth to participate. His diagnosis? SUSD is promoting “woke ideology” that’s driving families away and causing declining enrollment.
Let’s be clear: some of Horne’s concerns merit consideration. School boards should focus primarily on academic excellence. Parents legitimately worry when they perceive their children’s education being influenced by ideological agendas of any stripe. And yes, SUSD enrollment has been declining, a troubling trend deserving serious analysis.
But here’s where Horne’s argument unravels. The flyer contained SUSD’s standard disclaimer stating the district “neither endorses nor sponsors the organization or activity represented in this material”. As Superintendent Scott Menzel explained, as a governmental entity, SUSD cannot edit submissions in the community forum it has opened to the public and applies the same review process to all organizations regardless of viewpoint.
This isn’t the first time Horne has targeted SUSD. In June, he threatened to cut federal funding unless the district withdrew certain history textbooks he labeled “leftist”…textbooks he admitted never reading in their entirety. The pattern suggests something beyond genuine educational oversight.
Horne holds a powerful platform. His office should focus on Arizona’s mediocre statewide academic performance: those dismal 40% ELA and 33% math proficiency rates. Instead, he’s issuing press releases about community bike ride flyers and cherry-picking passages from 1,200-page textbooks.
The political calculus is transparent. Cultural wedge issues generate headlines, energize bases, and build political profiles far more effectively than the unglamorous work of improving reading scores. Horne may have legitimate concerns about maintaining academic focus, but his approach of public accusations, federal funding threats, and headline-grabbing press conferences, feels less like educational leadership and more like opportunistic political theater targeting one of Arizona’s highest-performing districts.