Forum calls for action on school funds
While the education funding picture in Arizona might be bleak now, it wasn’t always that way, state education leaders said during a forum on the topic Thursday at the Yuma Main Library.
“At one time, we were in the middle,” said Dr. Chuck Essigs of the Arizona Association of School Business Officials, who gave a presentation on the basics of education funding.
Education, business and community leaders came together at the library on Thursday at the Southwest Arizona Town Hall, formerly known as the South West Futures Forum, to brainstorm ways to seek new funding streams for education in Arizona. Funding Pre-K-12 Education is the topic for this year’s Arizona Town Hall in November in Mesa.
Town Halls in Arizona are designed to “educate, engage, connect and empower people to resolve important issues through consensus,” according to the Arizona Town Hall website. Yuma’s Town Hall organization has been in place for nearly 20 years, said Shelley Mellon, the cochair of this year’s event.
The morning session included a panel discussion designed to bring attendees “up to speed” on the state of education in Arizona, with leaders from Expect More Arizona, the Arizona School Administrators, the Arizona Business and Education Coalition, and the Arizona School Boards Association.
Afterward, attendees separated into breakout sessions to answer specific
questions pertaining to education goals, achieving those goals, improving funding methods, increasing local support, and other creative solutions. Answers to those questions are formatted into a position statement, which will be presented at the state Town Hall in Mesa.
Known as the school funding “guru,” Essigs, using data from the U.S. Census Bureau, looked at Arizona’s revenue per pupil from fiscal year 1992, which was $4,931 (figure includes federal, state and local sources). The U.S. average for that year was $5,621, with Arizona ranking 34th among the states. For 2015, the U.S. revenue per pupil was $13,246, an increase of $7,625. In Arizona, per pupil revenue for 2015 was $8,634, an increase of $3,703. The state ranked 48th.
Essigs noted that the school funding formula used by the Legislature was put in place during the 1980s, before Arizona became a leader in “school choice”; and that formula has essentially stayed the same for the past 40 years.
Dick Foreman, president and CEO of the Arizona Business and Education Coalition, quipped that the electricity being used in the meeting room was funding classrooms in Texas. The audience laughed, but Foreman wasn’t joking.
Texas buys electricity from Arizona, he pointed out, but Arizona doesn’t put any excise taxes on it, which could be used to fund education.
“Arizona is in the bottom 10 states on excise taxes,” Foreman noted during a question and answer session with the audience. “Even adding a penny on a kilowatt of electricity would put $425 million into the state.”
Even if the Legislature agreed to do so, Foreman pointed out, the state would still rank in the bottom 15 for states using excise taxes.
Foreman said that it is not that the Legislature “can’t” afford to fund education, “it’s a ‘won’t.’”
Dr. Mark Joraanstad, executive director of the Arizona School Administrators, said that in 2007, before the Great Recession, school districts received about $450 per student in capital funding. Capital funds are used to purchase items that tend to last a long time, he said. In 2016, that figure was $77.
“They call it District Additional Assistance,” he said of the new label given the funding by the Legislature, “because they assume you already have enough.”
And after the label change, he noted, the Legislature took away 85 percent of school districts’ capital dollars.
But the slashing of funding to schools causes its own ripple effect, Joraanstad said, in terms of delayed maintenance and repairs, delayed technology, impacts on safety and shifting expenses to local taxpayers.
In a breakout session, some attendees compared it to fixing a vehicle. “Do you want to pay now, or pay double later?”
Teacher recruitment and retention was discussed during a working lunch with Rob Vagi, senior policy analyst of the Morrison Institute for Public Policy at Arizona State University. The institute put out a report in the spring on teacher recruitment and retention that showed schools across the state are struggling to staff classrooms.
“Between 2013-2015, of the teachers who were hired in their first year of teaching, 22 percent did not return after their first year,” Vagi noted. “Of the new teachers hired in 2013, by 2015, 44 percent were no longer teaching in Arizona.”
“The numbers here in Yuma are not far from the state,” Vagi continued, “44 percent leave after 3 years, and about 24 percent leave after five.”
Attendees came up with myriad ideas to find a sustainable funding source for education, but many expressed concern about those who hold elected office, and educating the public on the issues.
Essigs, Foreman, Erin Eggleston of Expect More Arizona, Joraanstad, and Tim Ogle of the Arizona School Boards Association told participants that more and more elections are being decided in the primaries, and that voters should pay more heed to candidates in those races
For more information and to read the position statement, go to http:// www.southwestarizonatownhall.com/