Page 36 - The Edge - BTS 2016

K-12 FUNDING OVERHAUL
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Calvin Barker, superintendent of Vail Unified School District in southern Arizona, tended for general education.
said special education in Arizona’s public school system is underfunded in many “Their needs will be met, but it comes at the expense of other students until we
categories of disability and haphazardly applied. just end up using all the money,” Kotterman said.
For example, a child with a certain kind of autism will be fully funded for the cost He said the Department of Education used to conduct a study every other year to
of educating him, but a child with a learning disability will get only $7 to $10 a year. see if funding reflected the true costs of special education, and it would be used to
“No one disagrees it costs more than that just to do a psychologist report to de- adjust the extra funding needed to educate children with disabilities.
termine whether or not the child is eligible for that service,” said Baker. The Legislature quit funding the study to save money during the Great Recession.
Kotterman said the result is special education gets subsidized by resources in- The last one was done in fiscal-year 2007.

Almost 60 percent of Arizona’s public school students qualify for federally Backpack funding is a concept being pushed mostly by A For Arizona, a proj-
funded reduced or free lunches, meaning poverty is abundant in the state. ect of the Arizona Chamber Foundation, which is a research arm of the Arizona
States get money from the federal government for kids in poverty, but school Chamber of Commerce and Industry.
officials say it isn’t enough and educating them is a state responsibility. It’s also a concept Ducey favorably referred to when he gave opening remarks
“Helping middle class and upper class kids who live in the suburbs to get a at the council’s first meeting in June 2015.
couple extra points on their SAT and ACT test scores to get into better colleges is The concept is just as the name implies; funding follows the child to the
certainly an important responsibility and we need to be addressing that,” Baker school where he attends.
And while Ducey acknowledged Arizona’s current funding formula does follow
said. “But that’s not the crisis in Arizona. The crisis in Arizona is the education of the student, it is incomplete and not transparent enough, and the money is typi-
students in poverty.” cally depleted by the time it reaches the school.
Baker, who worked with the Arizona Association of School Business Officials
Lisa Graham Keegan, a former superintendent of public instruction and
and a consortium of about 20 school districts known as the Education Finance current executive director for A For Arizona, said putting all available resources
Reform Group to develop their proposals, said public schools that successfully closest to students will in effect raise teacher salaries.
serve kids in poverty should be rewarded. The Arizona School Boards Association said in its proposal to the council
Kotterman said the educational needs and challenges of students in poverty there should be some controls placed on backpack funding.
are greater, so the state should recognize that and provide more money to edu- “So-called backpack funding should only be allowed if it can be documented
cate them. that every student is funded for that student’s true cost and then only if funds for
“It’s like treating poverty as a special characteristic that is worthy of greater common expenses (those not directly tied to the student) are also provided,” the
consideration by the state,” Kotterman said. association’s proposal read.

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