Nickie Kelley, an Arizona schoolteacher, recently announced she is running as a Republican for Maricopa County School Superintendent (MCSS), challenging the Republican incumbent currently in office. The Maricopa County Supervisors (BOS) accused current officeholder Steve Watson of financial mismanagement in May, and voted for a resolution to defund the Maricopa County accommodation school district he oversees next fiscal year. Under Watson, the district fell $3.4 million in debt. The Arizona Auditor General has been investigating MCSS.
The Arizona Sun Times spoke with Kelley (pictured above), a longtime political activist, about why she decided to run.
“I’m worried about the financial issues,” she said. “I cannot explain in my own mind how you get into that amount of debt. If I ran a business, I would be out of business.”
The BOS said the district took out an unauthorized line of credit, which the BOS bailed out reluctantly with $2 million, but the district continues to rack up deficits. The BOS said employees and creditors would not have been paid without the bailout.
“In essence, the Accommodation School District spent money they didn’t have,” said Supervisor Bill Gates in July 2022. “Even worse, after we confronted them about it, they took out another line of credit for which they had no collateral.” The BOS said for the past six years, MCSS did not follow through with the budget plan presented to the board.
Gates added, “We will do everything we can to support quality education for all students in Maricopa County, but we cannot turn a blind eye to clear mismanagement of taxpayer money.”
State law does not require the county to fund the district. The district will still receive base funding from the state. The BOS also said in their resolution that Watson failed to document how $1.7 million in grant money from the federal government was spent. Finally, the BOS found that MCSS deposited revenues into special revenue funds but recorded related expenses out of the general and other funds, violating county policy. Maricopa County Treasurer John Allen is going to audit the office.
The Sun Times asked the MCSS about the unauthorized line of credit. A spokesperson responded, “You must have received some misinformation about how either the accommodation school or the county office operates. Both have finances which operate through the County Treasurer’s office, annual budgets approved by the County Board of Supervisors, and undergo frequent audits by both the State of Arizona and third-party auditors.”
On Monday, Steele posted on his Facebook page that he thought it was rigged. “I really thought I had a good chance to be appointed to the open board seat in Mesa,” he said. “Turns out, it was never going to happen.” Steele said he’d never seen Davis at a Mesa school board meeting. One commenter said, “I just read her statement, she sounds just like Marcie…yikes!”
Marcie Hutchinson is the president of the governing board, and was referred to as “A Mask Karen in our schools” by a site that opposes “woke school boards.” Hutchinson reportedly fights “against parents who want to pull their kids out of failing public schools and place them into charter and private schools.”
Under her leadership, the site said the board “[a]dopted secret gender pronouns, hiding them from parents,” and “[a]llowed boys in girls’ locker rooms.”
The MCSS spokesperson told The Sun Times he believed Davis was a qualified choice. “Superintendent Watson interviewed 47 applicants for the position and many were highly qualified, and each and every one had something positive to contribute to the district,” he said. “Mrs. Davis has served on her local schools’ PTO, School Improvement Advisory Committee, parent groups and West Mesa Little League. She has committed countless hours to serving Mesa Public Schools and the West Mesa community. Most importantly, she has several children enrolled in Mesa Public Schools and will be the only board member with children in the district schools. She will be an important voice for district parents.”
When Kelley first started hearing about the allegations of financial mismanagement, she urged others she knew to run. Unable to convince anyone — the position requires a teacher’s certificate — she decided to run herself.
Looking over the district’s financial information on the website, Kelly discovered that Watson “gave teachers a 100 percent pay increase between 2018 and 2019.” “On the MCSS website, it says teachers in the district made an average of $44,000 annually in 2018,” she said. “In 2019, that average jumped to $88,000.”
When asked about the salary increases, the MCSS spokesperson told The Sun Times, “The Maricopa County Regional School District operates an accommodation school for disaffected youths of high-school age with highly skilled and experienced teachers who are employed year-round, rather than a nine or ten month contract. The hourly rate for our teachers is comparable to a typical district.”
Kelly looked at the margins by which Watson won his two previous elections and realized “he’s on a trajectory to lose the next one.”
She said in 2016 that he beat the incumbent Democrat by about 36,000 votes. In 2020, he defeated the Democratic candidate by only 11,000 votes. This year, Democrats have a “formidable candidate” running, Kelley said, Dr. Laura Schaffer Metcalfe.
Schaeffer worked for the office before and has a lengthy resume in education, which she describes as “27 years of progressively responsible education experience.” It includes a certificate for “Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in the Workplace.”
Kelley teaches math at Tolleson High School. The mother of two has taught at both public and charter schools. In her seventh year of teaching, she focuses on STEM subjects. Previously, she worked as a staffer for former Phoenix City Councilman Sal DiCiccio and Representative David Schweikert (R-AZ-06).
The MCSS oversees school governing board elections, bond and override elections and maintains home-school and private school records.
The position also oversees the Maricopa County Regional School District, which serves students awaiting court hearings in county detention, and students at Hope High School, an accommodation school for students who left traditional school settings.
The Sun Times asked Watson for comment but did not receive a response by press time.
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Rachel Alexander is a reporter at The Arizona Sun Times and The Star News Network. Follow Rachel on Twitter. Email tips to [email protected].
Photo “Nickie Kelley” by Nickie Kelley.
