Drive around the valley these days and you will see that a new season is upon us. I’m not talking about the coming of autumn; I’m talking about election season.
Almost 30% of the Maricopa County school districts are hitting up their taxpayers for bonds. Once again, during an off-election year, counting on exceedingly low voter participation many of the valley school districts are looking to increase your taxes all while student enrollment and academic scores continue to decline.
For those of you who may not remember or may not have lived in Arizona at the time, school bond elections were to become a thing of the past. The Supreme Court ruled in Roosevelt v. Bishop (179 Ariz. 233, 1994) that district capital funding based on local property taxes was unconstitutional under Article XI Section I requiring the “…maintenance of a general and uniform public school system…” due to the inequities of the assessed property values from one district to another.
This resulted in the 1998 Students FIRST (Fair and Immediate Resources for Students Today) legislation, which created the School Facilities Board (SFB) (It is now the School Facilities Oversight Board (SFOB) as it was rolled into the AZ Dept. of Administration in 2021) essentially turning over the responsibility of funding to build and maintain schools to the state. We were promised that school bonds would become at best obsolete; at worst minimal to allow for upgrading above the state standards.
Here are a few examples of these “minimal” bonds from the 2023 ballot:
Deer Valley Unified School District is asking for $325 million in addition to the $217 million in existing, outstanding bonds bringing the combined debt service with estimated interest to over $700 million.*
Mesa U.S.D. is requesting $500 million; existing $264 million for a combined debt service of $988 million.*
Paradise Valley U.S.D. requesting $340 million; existing $366 million for a combined debt service of $1,052 billion.*
This is in additional to your tax dollars that the legislature appropriates to the SFOB to build and maintain schools.
Each one of these districts has experienced a decline in student enrollment and yet all three cite construction of new educational facilities as part of their bond requests. Interestingly according to their Informational Pamphlets none of these three districts have applied to the SFOB for funding for additional schools. Could it be that they are grossly under-utilizing the available square footage already within their districts?
As an aside, both Deer Valley and Mesa are also going out for a 15% budget override – the maximum allowable by law. Also, Deer Valley received $53 million and Mesa $246 million in additional ESSER 1, 2 and 3 (Covid) funding. But I digress.
These bond and override elections are now conducted as vote-by-mail elections. And while, with a few exceptions, I personally don’t support mail-in ballots in these elections it is a good thing. Every registered voter in the district will received a ballot. Whether or not they return it is another issue. In the past an infinitesimal number of voters (primarily district employees???) have gone to the polls to impose these tax increases, in off-year elections, upon their fellow citizens. It is long past time for the legislature to address these off-year bond and override elections. If it involves voting to tax our fellow citizens then November of an election year is the only acceptable ballot.
Hold onto your hats autumn breezes are in the air. Hold onto your wallets bond elections are coming your way!
*Voter Informational Pamphlets
Diane Douglas was AZ Superintendent of Public Instruction 2015-2019. She served on PUSD Governing Board 2005-2012; President 2008, 2009; the State Board of Education and the State Board for Charter Schools 2015-2019.