Does Ariz. really need 236 school districts?

The state of Arizona has taken over the beleaguered Murphy Elementary School District.

Kids have been fleeing the district’s struggling schools for a decade while the school board has gone merrily along, declining to cut costs.

The result: classrooms with too many kids and too few qualified teachers.

And oh yeah, a superintendent who enjoyed a six-figure salary and in December scored a 10 percent bonus. This, to oversee four schools — one rated F, two D’s and a C.

That superintendent beat a path to retirement in February after parents and teachers revolted at the prospect of teacher pay cuts.

Now, the state Board of Education has decided to take over the Murphy district, to try to rescue it from a deep financial hole.

“It’s almost hard to imagine how they’re going to come through this, at this point,” state Superintendent Diane Douglas said, during a recent state school board meeting.

I have a suggestion: Dissolve the district, along with a few others.

If ever there was a case to be made for consolidating school districts, surely Murphy is the poster child.

This west Phoenix district had one administrator for every 44 students, according to the state auditor general’s analysis of fiscal 2017 spending. The state average is one for 67.

The per-student cost of Murphy’s administration last year was $1,705. That’s more than twice the state average. Meanwhile, just 45.4 percent of the district’s funding reached the classroom.

Once upon a time, Gov. Doug Ducey appointed a committee to figure out how to put more money into Arizona’s classrooms. (Without, of course, putting more money into Arizona’s schools.) But nothing came of it other than a recommendation by the panel’s chairman to raise taxes.

Curiously, he’s never shown any interest in merging school districts. His office didn’t respond to a request for comment to explain why.

The last governor to try to reduce the ridiculous number of school districts in this state was Janet Napolitano. A decade ago, her State District Redistricting Commission recommended merging elementary and high school districts.

But the plans went down in flames as school officials fired up torches in defense of “local control.”

As a result, Arizona now has 236 school districts, according to the auditor general. In Maricopa County alone, there are 58 districts — 39 of them non-unified.

That is 58 sets of administrators and school boards overseeing 58 sets of school buildings, bus fleets and food

service operations.

Murphy is one of 13 elementary school districts that feed into Phoenix Union High School District. They range in size from 900 students to 17,000.

On average, school districts in Arizona spend a woeful 53.8 percent of their budget in the classroom.

Of those 13 feeder school districts, only four meet or exceed the state average.

Meanwhile, six others spend less than half of their budget in the classroom.

Murphy is the worst, following closely by Riverside (46.4 percent), Creighton (47.5 percent), Roosevelt (48.7 percent), Balsz (49.1 percent) and Phoenix Elementary (49.8 percent).

School officials will give you all manner of explanation for why consolidation and unification of their districts isn’t a good idea. They question whether it would save money, noting that Arizona’s administrative costs are below the national average (10.4 percent to the nation’s 11.2 percent). The real problem, they say, is a desperate need for more funding.

They do need more funding and if the school lobby succeeds with its plan to soak the rich with a massive income tax hike, they’ll get it.

But it’s tough to make the case that no consolidation is needed when you have a school district like Murphy, with fewer than 1,500 students in four schools. Murphy is not even the smallest of the 13 Phoenix Union feeder districts. Or even the second smallest.

It just stands to reason that fewer districts would allow for more efficient operations.

Marty Shultz, who headed up Napolitano’s task force, estimated at the time that merged districts could free up 10 percent of a school district’s budget, money that could then be used to lower class sizes and boost teacher pay.

His panel’s proposals — combining 76 elementary and high school districts into 27 K-12 districts — were put on the ballot in 2008.

Only four passed. Of those four, none changed. The affected school districts successfully sued to stave off the mergers.

Now, the state is left to figure out what to do with Murphy, a school district that approved 10 percent teacher raises for next year even as it projects a $1.2 million spending deficit.

Can you guess who will suffer?

“If we don’t give them help, I don’t know what’s going to happen with these children,” Douglas told the state Board of Education on Monday. “I think they’ve suffered enough.”

Exactly.