Caught in the crossfire

Horne and Yee go at it … What a deal … And geomagnetic what?

A tiny school district in Maricopa County is getting pulled into a political battle between the top GOP candidates for Arizona’s superintendent of public instruction.

Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Horne was already beefing with Treasurer Kimberly Yee, who’s running against him next year, over how strictly to enforce rules on school voucher spending.

They’re both big supporters of vouchers, but Yee and her Freedom Caucus backers in the Legislature say Horne overstepped when he supported even basic accountability in the voucher program.

Now, Yee and Horne are fighting over whether the Nadaburg Unified School District should get a $3 million advance in state funding.

It’s not going well.

Horne and Yee are trading barbs via letters and news releases, with no end in sight. It’s a political tit-for-tat that includes name-calling and accusations of politicizing the school’s financial situation.

Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Horne and Treasurer Kimberly Yee.

Asking for help

The issue popped up this summer when Nadaburg officials said they needed some financial help from the state.

At first, district officials reported a $5 million budget deficit, but that turned out to be a clerical error by the district. The district actually had a $1.3 million surplus as of this summer.

But the underlying problem remained. District officials said they expected to run out of money before the next round of property tax revenue comes in at the end of the year.

Unlike other Arizona school districts that have found themselves in financial trouble lately, Nadaburg’s problem stemmed from what fans of public schools might consider good news: The district’s enrollment has grown so quickly over the past four years — it now stands at about 1,500 students — that officials are struggling to keep pace.

So Nadaburg officials asked for an advance on the money they would get next year from the state. Those types of advances are allowed under state law, as long as the state superintendent (Horne), the state treasurer (Yee), and the director of the state Department of Administration (who is staying out of this spat) approve.

Horne gave the green light for the $3 million advance, saying the district was entitled to the funds. But Yee rejected the request and claimed there could be “gross financial mismanagement” at the district.

Horne asked Yee to reconsider, but Yee said she has some concerns with how the district made its request.

District officials didn’t mention anything about growth in student enrollment when they first asked for the advance, she said. The request also mentioned classrooms and facilities, but cash advances are not meant for capital funding purposes.

Yee went on to say her office has learned the district’s cash shortage might be due to a $1.7 million loan from last fall that came due this summer. The district’s business manager and chief financial officer left the district about a year ago, which could mean the remaining district officials were unaware they had to pay back the loan.

“Contrary to your suggestion, [the Treasurer’s Office] is not somehow politicizing the District’s request,” Yee wrote.

Horne, as he often does, sent out another news release. He called Yee “irresponsible” for not approving the advance. His office “did its research” and found the Nadaburg district was “operating within its budget.”

“If the Treasurer does not change her mind, the irresponsible failure to advance the funds will have a negative impact on the education of nearly 1,500 students,” Horne wrote. “This should be our first priority.”

Horne also needled Yee, saying “the Treasurer could have done the same review because she has the necessary forms.”

That same day, Yee sent a letter to Horne saying she wouldn’t consider Nadaburg’s request until the district supplied detailed financial information.

Horne was “incorrect” that the Treasurer’s Office was “somehow unaware” of its duty to review the Nadaburg request, Yee wrote. She noted that Horne forwarded the Nadaburg request to her office before Horne’s office realized there was a clerical error.

“Your press release avoids addressing these serious concerns that are critical to determine whether a cash advancement is ‘necessary’” under state law, Yee wrote.

On Thursday, Yee sent out another news release “in light of recent public commentary issued by the State Superintendent.”

She said she “approved a number of qualified cash advances” to districts, but “this one raised significant red flags.”

She reaffirmed her decision not to approve the cash advance to Nadaburg, and said she was referring the matter to the Arizona Auditor General for further investigation.

The political aspect of the Horne-Yee fight wasn’t lost on Nadaburg Superintendent Aspasia Angelou.

“I think our students and our school community are caught in a political battle; we’re in the middle of that,” Angelou told 12News. “My entire 27 years in education have been in Republican states. We practice by necessity, very conservative fiscal management here, and it’s very difficult to be caught in the middle of that because it’s students who’ll be suffering from the decisions of adults.”

She fired back at Yee, saying the district “has never overspent its adoptive budget” and the district’s audits have been clean for five years.

Financial fights

The tussle over Nadaburg also dovetails with another big political battle.

State lawmakers are keying into the financial troubles at schools as a way to show that district officials don’t know how to manage their money, which would feed the narrative that public schools aren’t worth keeping.

They can point to a pretty high-profile example at the Isaac School District. Last year, the district announced it was $28 million in the hole. A nearby district, Tolleson Union High School District, bailed out the Isaac district by agreeing to lease a middle school building in the Issac district for $25 million.

Since then, the Isaac district was put under the watch of a state-appointed receiver, and state lawmakers have been digging into the Tolleson district’s finances.

Lawmakers held a hearing in July, where they questioned Tolleson officials for three hours about the Isaac district deal, along with student grades and school safety.

And last week, a group called Citizens for School Accountability filed petitions to recall two members of the Tolleson school board.

They cited the board’s bailout of the Isaac district as one of the main reasons they’re trying to unseat the board members.

What a bargain: Last week, the Trump administration offered the University of Arizona and eight other universities the chance to get preferential treatment for federal funding. But first, they have to sign a compact and commit to follow Trump’s political agenda on most hot-button topics in education, as the Tucson Agenda reported on Friday.

Caveat emptor: UA officials have until Oct. 20 to tell the Trump administration whether they’ll sign the compact. In the meantime, they’re getting an earful from faculty about the compact. The Faculty Senate voted overwhelming to ask UA officials and the Arizona Board of Regents to reject the compact, saying it would “endanger the independence, excellence, and integrity” of the university, the Tucson Sentinel’s Paul Ingram reports.

Not much wiggle room: If you’re wondering whether the UA could tweak the deal to make it less onerous, it’s not looking good. Trump officials said they’d accept “limited, targeted feedback” from universities, but the compact is “largely in its final form,” the Arizona Daily Star’s Prerana Sannappanavar reports.

Of course there is: As always seems to be the case lately, there’s a billionaire behind it all. Marc Rowan, CEO of Apollo Global Management, was one of the main people drafting and pushing the compact. He circulated a document last winter that contained most of the measures in the compact, and in some cases, the exact wording, the New York Times reports.

These billionaires keep popping up all over the place! Click this button and help level the playing field.

If there’s one thing we like at the Agenda, it’s innovation. Especially when it comes from kids who will run the world someday.

Three Arizona students pulled off some sophisticated projects this year, and they ended up being selected by the Society for Science as the Top 300 Junior Innovators in the country.

• Luca McGill, an eighth-grader at Emily Gray Junior High School in Tucson, for “Low-Cost Drone-Based Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide Monitoring Exploring CO₂ Levels Across Urban, Suburban, and Rural Areas in Southern Arizona.”

• Simone Smith, an eighth-grader at Saint Cyril of Alexandria School in Tucson, for “Catching Deadly Butterflies.”

• Akshay Lakshminarasimhan, a seventh-grader at BASIS Scottsdale, for “Exploring the Interplay Between Earth’s Magnetic Field, Solar Activity, Climate Variability, and Human Settlements (1750-2024)”

Lakshminarasimhan spoke with KTAR’s Shira Tanzer about what he learned from his project, and well, this kid’s going places.

“What did I conclude? Well, first, solar activity shows a more pronounced correlation with El Niño-La Niña activity, specifically with El Niño events following solar maxima, typically by a year or so,” he said. “My second conclusion is that geomagnetic field variations actually impact and affect upper atmospheric wind patterns.”