Page 35 - The Edge - BTS 2016

ARIZONA CAPITOL TIMES CONTRIBUTING ARTICLE

BY GARY GRADO

Public School System Prepares

for K-12 Funding Overhaul

Arizona’s public school system is gearing up for a change. e funding formula is a complex array of state funds and property
Whether it will be an upheaval or steady transition will be up to taxes and several other revenue sources, allocated based on weighting
lawmakers and the governor, but each of the special-interest groups and enrollment.
within the education system has its own ideas for overhauling the It was also designed for traditional school districts, but Arizona
state’s K-12 funding formula. over the years has become a bastion of school choice, from charter
Gov. Doug Ducey’s Classroom First Initiative Council is expected schools to online schools and home schooling. ere are now di erent
to si through those ideas and meld them into a proposal that can funding formulas for charters and traditional districts.
succeed politically. e council meets again Aug. 9. Chuck Essigs, a lobbyist for the Arizona Association of School
Arizona last restructured the school nance system in 1980 as a way Business O cials, had a hand in developing the current system. He
to stave o e orts to limit property taxes, a policy out of California that said he thinks there is momentum and political will for a change
was sweeping the nation. because the education community, lawmakers and governor and
“Going all the way back to the 1980s we have in many respects a business community all want it.
model system of school nance that we just amended into oblivion and And while there is an abundance of proposals from the various,
amended into inequality,” said Jay Kaprosy, a lobbyist for the Arizona diverse interest groups, there are a few proposals that appear on the
Charter Schools Association, at a June 21 meeting of the council. lists of multiple groups.

In a nutshell, the current system gives school districts the power to tax, but that “Everybody pays a little bit instead of certain districts paying a lot and other
makes for vast differences in funding for districts that are rich in property and those districts paying a little bit depending on what their property valuation looks like,”
that aren’t. And there are some districts whose voters regularly approve tax increases Kotterman said.
and those that don’t. Eileen Sigmund, executive director of the Arizona Charter Schools Association,
The answer, some say, is a statewide property tax. said a single uniform tax would bring stability to the system by reducing the reliance
Chris Kotterman, a lobbyist with the Arizona School Boards Association, said in on risky, politically-charged bond and override elections.
theory a statewide property tax would spread out the burden of funding education to “Let’s spread out what is in our property tax and bring that back to one source
the entire state at a uniform rate, generating the necessary revenue more equitably. and equitably distribute based on students’ needs, not on systems,” Sigmund said.

CONTINUED ON PAGE 36

35