Arizona schools again face possible shutdown if lawmakers don't act

PHOENIX — State lawmakers took the first tentative steps to ensure public schools don’t have to shut down before the end of the academic year.

The House Education Committee voted 8-1 late Tuesday for a one-year waiver of the constitutional “aggregate expenditure limit” on what schools can spend.

If there is not final action by the full Legislature by March 1, schools collectively will be forced to cut nearly $1.4 billion they already were allocated for the current year — about 17% of their annual budgets. And they would have to do it before the end of June, which would effectively mean cutting 70% of their spending for the final months of the school year.

It remains unclear whether there are enough votes in the full Legislature to prevent that from happening.

State schools chief Tom Horne, a Republican like a majority of the lawmakers, urged committee members to approve the measure to avoid what he said would be “an incredible disaster.”

“If we have a 70% cut and two-thirds of the teachers are laid off, I believe parents all over the state, of all political ideologies, will greatly resent what was done to their kids,” he said.

Horne pointed out all the waiver does is permit schools to spend the money already approved by the Legislature.

“I think it is in the interests of everyone in this room that the actions of the Legislature be respected,” Horne said. “And that means respecting the budget that was passed. And that means we must pass HCR 2001 and provide an exception to the aggregate expenditure limit.”

Rep. David Cook, R-Globe, sponsor of House Concurrent Resolution 2001 to waive the limit, said shuttering schools should not be acceptable to fellow Republicans.

It remains to be seen, however, whether the Republicans who control the House and Senate will provide the necessary votes or insist on some concessions from Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs to approve what they call “reforms.”

Sen. Jake Hoffman, R-Queen Creek, head of the Freedom Caucus, said the group’s members — about a third of all legislative Republicans — have questions about whether the money the schools already have is being properly spent. He cited figures that only 28% of eighth graders are considered “proficient” in reading.

“And only 32% of 11th graders were able to pass the state’s math assessment,” Hoffman said.

The problem, he said, is that schools are not emphasizing “the basics.”

“They’ve now embarked on ideologies and political ideologies that, unfortunately, don’t help children achieve proficiency in reading or math or English or history or science,” Hoffman said. He specifically mentioned “critical race theory, comprehensive sexuality education, gender confusion ideology.”

Rep. David Cook, R-Globe, said he is open to looking at these issues. But not now.

“Those are discussions to happen after this,” he said. “This is to clean up last year’s budget.”

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That has to do with the fact that legislators last year, with a state budget surplus, provided additional money to public schools, restoring many of the cuts made in the prior decade.

Only thing is, a 1980 voter-approved constitutional amendment caps total education spending at what it was then, with annual adjustments for inflation and student growth. But the new infusion of funds, coupled with a decline in enrollment due to COVID, puts that cap now at close to $1.4 billion less than the nearly $7.8 billion schools already have.

The 1980 constitutional amendment does allow lawmakers to enact one-year waivers, which is what HCR 2001 seeks to do.

Approval, however, takes two-thirds votes of both the House and Senate. That, in turn, means a minority of lawmakers — just 21 representatives out of 60 and 11 of the 30 senators — can effectively veto the waiver unless they get what they want.

In fact, Senate President Warren Petersen, R-Gilbert, told Capitol Media Services on Tuesday he will not bring the waiver to the floor unless a majority of his 16 Republicans agree. So that gives just nine of them a veto.

Foes of the expenditure-limit waiver want to ensure “dollars flow to the classroom,” Hoffman said.

The most recent report by state Auditor General Lindsay Perry says Arizona schools, on average, spend 55.3% of their dollars on instruction. But she said that figure does not paint the whole picture.

For example, Perry said, student support, consisting of counselors, audiologists, speech pathologists, nurses, social workers and attendance services, all necessary to run a school, ate up another 9.1% of every dollar.

And there was 5.8% for instructional support, defined as librarians, teacher training, curriculum development and instruction-related technology services. That brought what she considers total classroom spending up to 70.2% versus 69.3% the prior year.

Schools also spent an average of 11.7% on building maintenance, equipment repair and the costs to heat and cool buildings.

There also was 4.0% for food service and 3.7% for the cost of operating the school bus fleet.

What’s left is 10.4% for administration. That includes superintendents, principals, business managers and other staff who do everything from accounting to payroll.

There is data to show Arizona schools spend less on administration on a per-student basis than the national average.

Hoffman, however, said he is not convinced that teachers and classroom instruction are getting as much as they should. “So we’re calling for these reforms to accompany” the waiver, he said.

Hobbs has given no indication she wants to deal. A temporary waiver would solve the problem for only this year.

The new governor said earlier this month it is time for the expenditure limit to go away, since this is the second year in a row the limit was reached and it is likely to happen again.