Ducey, lawmakers working to restore education money in budget plan

PHOENIX — Gov. Doug Ducey is counting on rank-and-file lawmakers to restore some cuts in public school funding — cuts that are in the budget deal he negotiated with Republican legislative leaders.

There are signs that’s going to happen.

A tentative agreement being negotiated late Thursday would reverse a decision, made last year, by lawmakers to change how the state calculates aid to schools. The result, if a compromise is reached, would be to restore money that schools would have lost in the state budget agreement announced earlier this week.

The deal also would scrap a proposed change in the law that would penalize districts that use their own taxpayer dollars to build schools.

“We’re very close,” the governor said in a tweet about the budget process.

Ducey shares the blame for why the process has dragged on. His press aide, Daniel Scarpinato, acknowledged his boss agreed to the $9.58 billion spending package unveiled earlier this week.

That budget plan already has gained approval of the Senate Appropriations Committee on a party-line vote. However, it stalled as some House Republicans oppose the cuts in public school funding.

Scarpinato said despite Ducey’s blessing for the plan, his boss never believed it would be the last word.

Pressure has been building since it was determined the budget proposal — which is supposed to represent the consensus of Ducey and state GOP leaders — would cut the amount of money going to K-12 schools this coming year.

Back to homepage

Subscriber Login

Keep reading with a digital access subscription.

Subscribe now

Adding to that pressure: Ducey is trying to convince voters to approve Proposition 123 to tap the state education trust fund to settle a lawsuit and provide more money for schools over the next decade.

The governor, in a bid to line up votes for Prop. 123, which will be voted on next month, is promising that the infusion from the ballot measure is just a first step in improving education funding. The fact that the budget deal announced earlier this week would actually scale back education funding makes that a harder sell.

The announced budget plan includes $132 million in new funding for K-12 schools. That, however, simply reflects both the growth in the number of students attending schools as well as the voter-mandated requirement to boost aid every year to account for inflation, which the state is now doing.

The budget plan also would change how the state computes how much each school district gets, using each school’s current enrollment versus the number of students it had last year. That change harms more districts than it helps.

The bottom line is that K-12 funding next year under the deal Ducey agreed to would have been $21 million less than what the schools would otherwise get automatically just from enrollment and inflation.

Scarpinato said Thursday that Arizonans should not read too much into the fact that his boss was a party to the package, including cuts to education.

“This is a framework for legislative leadership to take to members,” he said.

“The governor has made it very clear that schools need to see more money moving ahead,” Scarpinato continued. “And he is confident that the result and what comes out at the end through the budget negotiations will be something very satisfactory to the schools.”