Is 123 Positive or Negative, Boys and Girls?

Common Core would offer a confounding narrative to explain why a number like “123” is probably positive, but may still be negative. In actuality, the facts lead this way:

Arizona public school districts derive significant funding from the Permanent Land Endowment Trust Fund as established in the Arizona State Constitution. In TUSD, 30% of the fiscal year 2016 budget–nearly one-third of the money flowing into the district–comes from that trust. The district sates almost all of the rest of its cash-hungry budget with the unwitting largess of the district’s property owners. Proposition 123 works by skimming more of the land trust’s earnings and principal off the top, serving up a creamy and delectable amuse-bouche to salivating district executives.

In analysis of the district’s FY 2016 budget as TUSD has published it, a reader–one who can persevere through cryptic jargon, opacity, and obscurity–will find a year-over-year decrease of spending on regular education of 1.8%, but a whopping increase of 5.2% and 7.9% each in general and school administration expense.

From those facts derives the obvious question: How does funding this added administration help classrooms? With students who continue to lag the nation in educational results and educators who struggle to teach without the support or resources they need. It isn’t working.

The language of the amendment in Proposition 123 does not mandate performance, spending applications, or any form of protection that might guarantee the highest and best use of every dollar added into the questionably-prioritized budgets of our school districts. Districts can continue to spend imbalanced, impractical budgets that do not improve the state’s educational system. Proponents do nothing to promise voters where the money will go, but they are explicitly clear as to the source:

Each year, the Arizona State Land Department leases usage and mineral rights to land held in trust. The state, in turn, invests the revenues from those leases as principal in an investment portfolio and, via a formula, returns to the trustees an amount that roughly tracks the portfolio’s income.

Except that voters previously authorized an override through 2021 to fix the returns at 2.5% of the five-year moving average monthly value of the fund. If the investments do not return at least 2.5%, the state consumes principal to pay the schools, reducing the fund’s capacity to serve the future education system, especially once voters actually fix the system.

Proposition 123 would increase that 2.5% to 6.9%, depleting the income-generating principal even faster.

The long-term harm, the opportunity cost, compounds just like the interest would.

Ultimately, though, it no longer matters from what source school districts in this state take their funds, under what tax structure, or by what authority. Ideally, Arizona would be below national average in spending while maintaining academic rankings above national average–educating effectively and without wasting public funds. Instead, Arizona lags in standings and continues throwing gobs of money at failed solutions to a worsening problem. The districts manage to increase funding perpetually, and generally fail to produce improvements in the classroom.

This is how districts can afford cell phones and cars for administrative support staff, but can’t teach a seventh-grader the Pythagorean Theorem.

Proposition 123 deserves a resounding “No” vote. And so does every other additional funding request for public schools that comes up until:

• Voters fire school boards at the voting booth;
• The public presses new school boards to replace these districts’ inadequate and irresponsible administrations;
• Arizonans all hammer on the state legislature to mandate performance objectives of all public schools, reducing overhead and cutting costs, while improving teacher salaries and performance-based incentives; and
• Legislators require redesigned student assessments that truly gauge cognitive ability, not rote recollection of curriculum taught only to pass a test.

Nobody should vote for one additional cent to be disbursed to public education before seeing the first positive results from administration change. Arizona needs graduates capable of driving our economy, but more importantly, graduates capable of continuing to learn. Arizona needs teachers who work to be better at their jobs; who have a passion for their work and their students; and who receive merit- and performance-based compensation and incentives for that effort. Arizona needs teacher compensation to be fair, adequate, and competitive. Arizona needs an absolute minimum of district overhead and waste. Arizona needs to foster an environment and a culture–in the districts, in the legislature, and in the public–that encourages every child to learn, to invest in and independently work toward his or her own education, and to excel in school and in the workforce. Proposition 123 does nothing toward any of those ends.

123 is as useless and wrong as Common Core math. When it comes to school funding, boys and girls, “123” is a negative.