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.