How our funding system hurts poor schools like mine

Arizona has an incredibly efficient education system.

As a state, we spend less per pupil than almost any other state or industrialized nation, yet we achieve better results academically and have some of the highest growth academically compared to other states over the past 10 years.

But averages regarding per pupil spending can be misleading. While average per pupil expenditures come in at a modest $12,331 statewide, some school districts receive as much as 3.5 times that per student.

In other words, there are highly funded districts and there are poorly funded districts in Arizona, in a system where funding is supposed to be equal.

Unfortunately, my school district falls into the category of poorly funded districts.

Why is that? Because many other districts can increase funding with local bonds and overrides. This creates an unequal system across the state where those who can convince voters to increase property taxes have access to additional funding, where others simply remain stagnant.

That is why a legislative proposal sponsored by state Sen. Vince Leach and Rep. Michelle Udall fundamentally changing how schools in Arizona are funded is worth our support.

Students should not be funded at vastly different amounts across our state. Why is a student from Pima Unified worth thousands of dollars less than a student in another district?

At Pima Unified, average per pupil funding is $8,778, nearly $28,000 less than the highest funded district in the state. Over the course of their education, each of the approximately 1,000 Pima student will get shorted $360,048 in educational value, compared to students in richer districts.

That disparity shows in their teachers’ salaries, their classroom supplies and the extracurricular activities they can participate in each day.

We are proud of our ability to maintain strong educational services and opportunities for our students with limited resources, but a more equitable funding system will provide more opportunities for our students and support efforts to attract and retain quality teachers.

Arizona’s leaders have been talking about the need to address the inadequacies of our education funding for decades, yet zero action has been taken. Now, there are conversations about adding hundreds of millions of dollars into a system that distributes these dollars to local school districts unfairly.

Arizona’s current school funding formula ensures students in some districts and charter schools get less dollars and resources than students in other districts.

Portions of our current formula picks winners and losers in the name of providing more pay for teachers, but not actually making that funding available to all schools.

Some schools can access extra money through overrides, because of different assessed property values among districts.

While voters of one district can give its schools up to 10 cents more on every dollar the state provides while still enjoying low tax rates, voters in a less affluent district would face the highest tax rates in the state if they did the same thing.

It is an unfair system, and adding more money to this system won’t fix the equity issue.

Leach and Udall’s proposal would make the system much more fair by adjusting some elements of the school funding formula that contribute to inequities.

It gives parents the opportunity to send their children to schools with stable and reliable sources of funding without having to rely on volatile and unreliable funding sources like bonds and overrides.

For a district like mine this means an opportunity to increase funding by 15% by moving to a system that provides increased state additional assistance funding in exchange for ending bond and override elections.

The added dollars will ensure that facilities built 80 years ago can be updated, teachers can be paid at levels that support retention, and students will have more experienced teachers and better programs to support their growth and learning.

It also means our parents will know their children are getting the same quality education found elsewhere in the state. These simple steps are long overdue and can make a tremendous difference for Arizona students.