Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Dewain D. Fox issued a ruling on Tuesday finding that the Arizona Legislature did not provide enough funding for public schools.
The decision in Glendale Elementary School District, et al. v. State of Arizona was the result of a lawsuit filed in 2017 by a group of school districts and left-leaning educational organizations. The Arizona Legislature intends to appeal to the Arizona Supreme Court.
The lawsuit alleged that the state shorted schools for capital funding for school maintenance, buses, textbooks, and technology for over 10 years. The school districts that sued were Chino Valley Unified, Elfrida Elementary, Crane Elementary, and Glendale Elementary.
The plaintiffs claimed that the funding violated Article XI, Section 1, of the Arizona Constitution, which states, “The legislature shall enact such laws as shall provide for the establishment and maintenance of a general and uniform public school system.” Since schools often use bonds and overrides to fund capital projects, the plaintiffs argued that poorer school districts lacked sufficient funds.
Fox claimed in his 114-page ruling that the schools couldn’t pay for these projects without bond or override funding, but failed to address alternative funding options, and how they spent the money on frivolous expenses instead, such as purchasing unnecessary new buildings while enrollment was shrinking. Much of his opinion consisted of photos of existing structures in need of repair.
He quoted a previous decision by the Arizona Supreme Court, Roosevelt Elementary School District No. 66 v. Bishop, which held that funding public schools “need not be exactly the same, identical, or equal.” Fox admitted about the Legislature’s funding, “Here, the State at least arguably established … [that it] creat[ed] minimum adequacy standards for capital facilities.”
Special Intervenors State Senate President Warren Petersen (R-Mesa) and then-House Speaker Ben Toma argued in briefs defending the budget that disparities in school facilities across districts stem from discretionary budgeting decisions, failure to apply for Building Renewal Grants (BRG), or inadequate maintenance by the districts themselves, rather than flaws in the state’s funding system. The State Legislature asserted that the state has the authority to administer funding on its own timeline and according to its own priorities.
The State Legislature argued that districts made poor choices in prioritizing their budgets, allocating funds to non-essential projects or programs instead of critical capital needs like facility maintenance or repairs. Their briefs said districts neglected routine maintenance, allowing facilities to deteriorate over time. They suggested that this lack of proactive maintenance led to higher costs for repairs, which districts then attributed to insufficient state funding rather than their own mismanagement.
They noted that districts spent funding on administrative costs, extracurricular activities, or other operational expenses that could have been redirected to infrastructure.
Petersen and Toma said the adequacy of the Minimum Adequacy Guidelines (MAG), which set standards for school facilities, is a non-justiciable issue. In other words, determining whether MAG is sufficient is a political and legislative matter, not subject to judicial review.
Finally, the State Legislature argued that some districts, particularly wealthier ones, used local bond measures and property tax overrides to fund capital projects beyond the minimal level required by MAG, creating false perceptions of underfunding. In Roosevelt, the Arizona Supreme Court stated, “As long as the statewide system provides an adequate education, and is not itself the cause of substantial disparities, local political subdivisions can go above and beyond the statewide system. Disparities caused by local control do not run afoul of the state constitution because there is nothing in art. XI that would prohibit a school district or a county from deciding for itself that it wants an educational system that is even better than the general and uniform system created by the state.”
The higher court acknowledged, “The quality of elementary and high school facilities in Arizona varies enormously from district to district.”
Glendale Elementary announced in 2022 that it was closing five of its 17 schools due to declining enrollment. A new report from the Common Sense Institute (CSI) found the fastest-shrinking districts are increasing capital spending the most, with 20 percent of districts, which serve 73 percent of students, receiving 81 percent of that funding.
Public school enrollment in the state has been declining in recent years due to parents opting out and putting their children in private schools, charter schools, or homeschooling, which was made possible by Arizona’s expansive Educational Savings Accounts (ESAs). Arizona public district school enrollment peaked in 2008 at approximately 931,000 students. By 2024, it had dropped to 859,519 students, a 5 percent decline since 2019 alone.
AZ Free News noted in analyzing the report, “Despite a 5% drop in district school enrollment since 2019, Arizona’s public-school districts have continued to expand facilities, increase capital spending by 67% to $8.9 billion, and boost transportation costs by 11.3% to $561.2 million, even as eligible bus riders plummeted by 45%.” Additionally, “Arizona’s district schools have doubled down on expansion. Since 2019, districts added 499 new buildings, increasing gross square footage by 3% to 148.6 million square feet — 78 million square feet more than needed, enough to accommodate 630,000 additional students.”
While class sizes have remained the same, staffing has increased along with teacher salaries, the report found. Administrative staffing surged 6.7 percent since 2019. Additionally, Arizona’s school-aged population shrank for the first time in 2022, losing 30,000 children by 2023.
Despite the increased spending, Arizona’s public schools have declined academically faster than the rest of the country. CSI found in 2023 that “Arizona’s 4th and 8th grade Mathematics scores declined -2.4% and -3.3%, respectively, between 2019 and 2022. These were larger declines than for the U.S., and the state is now ranked 37th in the country for 4th grade Math scores.”
The State Legislature further argued that the plaintiffs did not demonstrate that funding disparities negatively affect student achievement, which they said is a necessary element to prove a constitutional violation.
Anticipating an appeal, Fox concluded his ruling, “Although the Court will enter a final judgment that grants declaratory and permanent injunctive relief in a form to be determined, the Court does not intend to impose an artificial deadline for compliance with the permanent injunction because the Court recognizes that its ruling will be the subject of appellate proceedings.”
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Rachel Alexander is a reporter at The Arizona Sun Times and The Star News Network. Follow Rachel on X/Twitter. Email tips to [email protected].
