PHOENIX โ Saying schools have the money to do it, House Speaker J.D. Mesnard wants to double the raises that teachers will get this coming school year.
Mesnard is proposing the House vote Wednesday, May 10, to force schools to use half the inflation-compensation money they get each year for teacher pay hikes.
That computes to about $38 million and would come on top of $34 million in the already approved state budget for a 1 percent raise for teachers.
But Chris Thomas of the Arizona School Boards Association said Mesnardโs plan would be illegal.
He said Proposition 301, the 2000 voter-approved measure mandating annual inflation-compensation funding, specifically says it is up to each school district to decide how to best use the dollars.
โWhat if you wanted to hire new teachers?โ perhaps by offering higher starting salaries, he asked. โOr what if you wanted to lower class sizes?โ
Thomas pointed out there are constitutional limits on the ability of lawmakers to alter votersโ decisions. He said if Mesnard gets the measure approved, a lawsuit is a virtual certainty.
House Minority Leader Rebecca Rios said the Republican speaker is playing political games. She said Mesnard, knowing the Democrats wonโt support an illegal plan, then hopes to use their โnoโ votes to argue that Democrats donโt care about teachers.
But it isnโt just the school boards and Democrats who want to quash what Mesnard is doing and avoid another lawsuit.
Republican Gov. Doug Ducey was intimately involved with negotiations last year to settle a lawsuit filed by school districts after the state failed to provide the inflation dollars mandated by Proposition 301.
The deal Ducey worked on reaffirmed and cemented the stateโs legal obligation to adjust state aid each year for inflation. And that agreement, which voters approved last year in Proposition 123, did not allow for earmarking how schools use those dollars.
Gubernatorial press aide Daniel Scarpinato said Ducey does not want to endanger that deal.
โProp. 123 and the education settlement are settled, and thatโs a positive,โ Scarpinato said. โWe are not interested in renegotiating the terms of the agreement.โ
Mesnard conceded that the earmark he wants on inflation funds is not authorized by the measure voters approved in 2000, and that the Voter Protection Act specifically bars lawmakers from tinkering with what was enacted at the ballot.
But he said thereโs an exception for any change that โfurthers the purposeโ of a voter-approved plan.
โSuggesting that the cost-of-living adjustment that we give to the schools should be going to teachers, at least in part, I think is entirely consistent with the idea behind Prop. 301,โ he said.
