Funding on fumes
Shiny object syndrome ... Guns on campus again ... And the Sun saga continues.
State lawmakers are up in arms this week over a West Valley school district that was so badly mismanaged that it’s now facing a $28 million hole in its budget and no way to cover its teachers’ salaries.
But many more schools will be in a similar position if lawmakers don’t focus on the big picture.
We’ll get to that.
For right now, let’s stay with the Isaac Elementary School District, which serves about 5,000 K-8 students in West Phoenix. As we noted in our first edition, the state Board of Education took the rare and drastic step of appointing a “receiver” to oversee the district two weeks ago – which is the closest thing Arizona offers to a state takeover of a school district.
Since then, things have only gotten worse at Isaac. In the last week:
District Superintendent Mario Ventura resigned to a loud round of applause at last week’s school board meeting.
The district’s governing board president suggested it should merge with another district.
Gov. Katie Hobbs and Attorney General Kris Mayes asked the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors to step in and fund the school.
The Maricopa County Board of Supervisors declined to intervene and save the district from financial ruin.
Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Horne announced that the U.S. Department of Education had released about $6 million to the district, but the Maricopa County Treasurer's Office said the money could only be used to reduce the district's debt, not to cover payroll.
Teachers’ last hope of continuing to get paychecks rests on the state Legislature, which is never a good position to be in.
Now, Isaac has become the shiny object at the state Capitol.
Republican lawmakers are demanding accountability. They want the Attorney General’s Office to investigate. They’re promising to swoop in and save the day.
That’s all good. Somebody needs to save the day. And some heads must roll at Isaac.
But the legislation that Republican Rep. Matt Gress sponsored to save the district would only offer a short-term reprieve.
The amended version of Gress’ HB21601 would force the district’s superintendent out (he already resigned), fire all the school board members and offer the school district enough money to pay teachers for another two weeks while lawmakers work on a new plan to save Isaac.
But not long after that money dries up, every district in Arizona will effectively run out of cash unless lawmakers act fast.
Yes, that was a really long way to get to today’s actual topic: Arizona’s Aggregate Expenditure Limit (AEL), or our school spending cap if you’re not an education policy wonk.
Let’s get to it.
Every year, lawmakers know that the school spending cap is going to be a problem.
Every year, schools freak out that they could see Isaac-sized holes in their budgets if lawmakers don’t act fast.
And every year, lawmakers wait until the very last minute to solve the problem.
This year is no different. Republican Rep. Matt Gress, who chairs the House Education Committee, has filed a bill to lift the cap for the upcoming fiscal year and ensure every school in Arizona doesn’t go broke.
But he hasn’t yet scheduled it for a hearing in his own committee.
There’s also legislation to ask voters to amend the state Constitution and revamp the AEL formula so we don’t hit it every year. But it’s coming from a Democrat, Rep. Mariana Sandoval, so it doesn’t stand much of a chance in the GOP-dominated Legislature.
Meanwhile, the clock is ticking…
Despite a looming March 1 deadline to lift the cap, lawmakers haven’t bothered to talk much at all about the AEL.
So we will!
Q&A: The AEL Explained
Q: What is the Aggregate Expenditure Limit, anyway?
A: It’s a constitutional cap on how much money K-12 schools statewide are allowed to spend in a given year, regardless of how much money they actually have or need. It’s based on 1980 formulas that don’t account for today’s realities – like inflation, increased enrollment or changes we’ve made to how we fund schools in the last 45 years.
Q: Wait, so even if schools have money, they can’t spend it?
A: Exactly. Schools could have millions of dollars (that lawmakers appropriated) in the bank, but they still need lawmakers to override the AEL before they can spend the final chunk of it.
Q: What happens if lawmakers don’t override the AEL by March 1?
A: Schools would have to slash budgets mid-year. Teachers might not get paychecks, extracurricular programs could get axed, and districts might even shut down early. Imagine the chaos of the Isaac School District…multiplied across the state.
Q: Who does this affect?
A: Literally every public school in Arizona. If the Legislature doesn’t act before the March 1 deadline, schools can’t legally spend somewhere around $1.4 billion they’ve already budgeted. That’s payroll, programs, toilet paper, everything.
Q: Why does this keep coming up every year?
A: Because the Legislature has to vote to override the cap each year if school budgets exceed it. And, as you might expect, lawmakers leave it until the very last minute, which creates unnecessary panic for schools and teachers.
Q: Has the Legislature ever failed to override the AEL?
A: Not yet – but every year they flirt with disaster. The override usually comes down to the wire, after weeks of schools scrambling and bracing for the worst.
Q: Why don’t they just get rid of the AEL?
A: Good question! Repealing it would require voters to approve an amendment to the Arizona Constitution. Plus, Republican lawmakers really like to point to the cap as evidence that they’re funding schools. Until there’s political will to fix it permanently, we’re stuck in this yearly cycle.
Q: So, what should we watch for next?
A: Keep an eye on the Legislature. If they start seriously debating the AEL this week, that’s a good sign. If they’re not talking about it by Valentine’s Day, start to worry.
We’ve never really been able to wrap our heads around why people thought the AEL was a good idea.
Luckily, we have a friend who can explain it to us.
In a past life, Robert Robb was a lobbyist for the Arizona Chamber of Commerce and he helped spearhead the 1980 effort to institute the school spending cap. That was before his other past life as a columnist for the Arizona Republic, a gig he left in 2022 to join the Substack revolution.
Robb still supports the idea behind the AEL – in theory. But it doesn’t really fit today’s realities, as he told us in this quick interview.
We’ll let him explain.
We’re using Skywolf, our legislation tracking service, to keep tabs on a long list of education bills this legislative session.
The full list – which our paid subscribers can find a link to at the bottom of this email – is already over 100 bills long.
But here are three that cleared their initial committee assignment this week. They’ll likely go up for a vote from the full House and Senate soon.
HB2022: school safety; employee certification; policies
Sponsor: Republican Rep. Selina Bliss
Summary: Establishes the Save Our Children School Safety Program in the Arizona Department of Education to enhance school safety through employee training, emergency preparedness, and crisis response. Establishes training and certification programs and a fund for school safety initiatives.
Allows eligible schools to authorize employees to carry firearms on school grounds under specific conditions, including notification to law enforcement, training certification, and confidentiality of employee information. Provides immunity from liability for certified employees acting in good faith during active threat events.
HB2020: teacher retention; study; report
Sponsor: Republican Rep. Matt Gress
Summary: Requires the Arizona Department of Education (ADE) to conduct an annual study on teacher retention and vacancies, including detailed demographic, geographic, and subject-specific data. Requires ADE to maintain the study results on a publicly accessible interactive dashboard.
Appropriates $100,000 in FY2025-25 from the Teacher Certification Fund to ADE for implementation.
SB1028: high school graduation; requirements
Sponsor: Republican Sen. John Kavanagh
Summary: Requires Arizona public school students to achieve a minimum performance level on the statewide assessment to graduate from high school. The Department of Education is tasked with establishing the method and standard for this minimum performance level and prescribing a schedule for administering the assessment, ensuring at least two opportunities for students in grades 11 and 12. Students are exempt from this requirement if they either obtain a passing score on a technical skills assessment for an approved career and technical education program or earn an industry-recognized certification or license.
Speaking of tracking lists, we’re making a list of some of Arizona’s most … colorful … school board members.
Of course that list starts with Leezah Sun, the former lawmaker who was pushed out of the Legislature after threatening to “b*tch slap” a lobbyist and throw her off a balcony, among a very long list of other weird stuff she said and did.
Sun is now the president of the Tolleson Union High School District.
And she’s already beefing with her new colleagues.
There’s a lot of backstory here and we’ll get into it all someday, but the short version is Sun attempted2 to censure fellow board member Elda Luna-Nájera at last night's board meeting.
Luna-Nájera is also a state representative (she won the appointment to replace Sun) and she has her own backstory going on – essentially district superintendent Jeremy Calles accused her of sexually harassing him. The board hired an independent investigator to sus the whole thing out, but Sun and others voted to block that report from being released.
It’s a whole mess of drama.
Anyway, who else should we add to the list? Comment or hit reply on today’s email to put them on our watch list!
The bill is an emergency measure, so if it gets a two-thirds vote in the House and Senate, it can go into effect as soon as Hobbs signs it. But it’s worth noting that there’s no mirror bill in the Senate, meaning it’ll take at least another week for the bill to be heard there. If it gets heard at all.
We say Sun “attempted” to censure Luna-Nájera because the board went into executive session for more than three hours and we stopped watching. It was late.
Good explainer of AEL and what should be done - however, you should clarify that AEL has nothing to do with the poor financial condition of the Isaac school district or the other 46 districts, state wide, that have been identified as being at financial risk. https://www.azauditor.gov/arizona-school-district-financial-risk-analysis-january-2025
There is a much bigger story here, which is the evolution of public education and school choice in Arizona and elsewhere. And, as many of us have predicted in the past - and despite being in a fast growing state - the availability of good education alternatives is resulting in families fleeing from the poor administration/governance and lack of focus on teaching kids that characterize many traditional school districts (one example being the district in which Leeza Sun is on the governing board, along with the other characters you describe - what is the ranking of those schools?). And it is not about underfunding education - the reality is charters and ESA-supported schools offer a better education experience and manage to do it on skinnier budgets, whereas many low-performing traditional school districts, despite override after override, continue to underperform (for example, the Creighton/PUSD districts, consistently among the lowest performing in the state, have property tax burdens approximately 30% higher than neighboring SUSD - yet, if you look at the charters and other alternative education institutions in those two districts, which have no access to property taxes, you see much better outcomes).