On March 1, the AZ Auditor General released its annual School district spending analysis—Fiscal Year 2023. In many ways, this was very much like other recent reports. It indicates that some of our long-term problems are not being resolved despite a huge increase in funding over the last two years.
Before we delve into some of those deficiencies, we should place this report in the proper perspective. There are two items that should be kept in mind:
First, we recently learned that school districts are hanging on to a surplus of over one billion dollars, while crying that they do not have enough money and demanding more from the AZ legislature. For more information on this, one may check out a recent AZ Daily Independent article on the subject, by clicking HERE
Second, in March, 2023, the legislature passed house bill HCR2001, which increased the Aggregate Expenditure Limit by 1.4 billion dollars. This was done to accommodate the huge education appropriation that took place via the FY2023 budget. It should be noted that the limit is very generous. It allows an annual increase equal to the sum of the increases in student enrollment and consumer price index, plus and additional 10%.
In other words, recently there has not been a shortage of education funding, notwithstanding the claims to the contrary by some organizations like Save Our schools.
The three items in this report that got our attention were the large increase in per-student funding, the reduction on the Instructional Spending Percentage, and the lack of progress in student performance.
This substantial increase in per-student funding should debunk the notion that ESA’s are taking money from public school students.
Except for a short period, from 2017 to 2021, the ISP has been going down consistently. It hit its lowest point ever in FY2023.
Perhaps the most alarming revelation in this report is that student performance in three key areas (Math, English, and Science) has been either decreasing or stagnant, despite massive funding increases.
In addition to whole state data, this report contains a section for districts. This is handy because those who want to know how their own school district performed, may bring up the data for that particular district.
Here is the link to the full report:
https://www.azauditor.gov/arizona-school-district-spending-fiscal-year-2023-analysis-and-data-file
Hopefully, most voters, even those who do not have kids in school, will read this report and become better prepared to evaluate policies and legislation as they develop.
Have a better system of hiring teachers, have legitimate performance evals, pay an excellent teacher for what they’re worth…all just starters! The way dishonesty and lack of integrity are growing people need to be highly vigilant! Not everyone can homeschool, just get fed gov out of indoctrination in public schools!
tusd is an open pit of waste even with your charts and analysis. Most teachers are not of very high quality nor are the kids being taught the basics of reading, writing , arithmetic so they can carry on a conversation, write a coherent sentence/paragraph or figure out the simplest of math. Instead they carry on with field trips, feel good get togethers and the kids are mostly lost. A lot has to do with the parents and what they are or are not doing to help. There are 1 or 2 good schools but the rest are almost a waste of time. I drove a school bus for over 10 years so I was exposed to the kids and could hear and see what they knew and well thee results were not good. Current trend is to teach high level math which most will never utilize and simple science projects. The spoken words show little concen for communication abilities. It was a big concern that ADMIN WAS MORE IMPORTANT AND THE SHOWERING of the big $$ on supposed impressive administrators was important, thus tusd had some very poor choice in that area. The physical plants are aging badly the use of modulars has spread and they too are showing the neglect. Cooling systems are not really functional in all schools and the list goes on. BUT they have WOKE agendas, like no deciplining of trouble makers, holding anyon accountable for their actions etc, yes all the items you read about going on in the country.
Yet all the sheep keep voting to tax themselves to fund schools further.
Homeschool your kids. And demand your tax dollars returned. This is bullsh!t.