“You have a handful of working days to prevent students and families from waking up to the consequences of political indifference – and failing to act will harm students and families. The money is already in district bank accounts. You are not adding new money or raising taxes – just letting them spend all the money you budgeted to them last year. There is no other choice but to suspend and repeal the cap. Can I count on you to vote for a clean fix to keep our schools open before February 28th?”
With those last words in her annual State of Arizona Education address, State Superintendent of Public Instruction Kathy Hoffman again relayed to foot-dragging Republican legislators that it was vital to suspend the state expenditure cap on traditional public schools by March 1, 2022. Otherwise, a ticking time bomb will go off across the state’s schools and a financial doomsday will occur, worse than what happened to educational institutions during the 2008/09 Great Recession.
Stating, “inaction is not an option and it’s appalling that this wasn’t the first issue addressed when the session started a month ago,” Hoffman stressed that “schools will not be able to maintain their current day-to-day operations without action by the State Senate Education Committee.
Hoffman’s theme: suspend and repeal the expenditure cap
Instead of a speech focusing on the important education issues — like catching children up on their post-Covid learning or the crippling teacher shortage across the state — Superintendent Hoffman was forced to devote her entire address to suspending and repealing the state expenditure limit on traditional public schools.
This limit, enacted by voters in 1980, when as Superintendent Hoffman pointed out, “Arizona’s total population was smaller than that of Phoenix today,” threatens to deprive all traditional Arizona school districts of allocating more than $2 billion that is already in district bank accounts.
With a two-thirds vote, the state legislature can — as proposed by State Senator Christine Marsh and State Representative Jennifer Pawlik — suspend the cap so schools can spend the money that these same legislators already said they could have in last year’s budget.
Hoffman correctly pointed out that if the legislature fails to act “schools (will) close because they are not authorized to spend money already sitting in their bank accounts, the blame will lie with you – not our public schools.”
Unfortunately, Republican legislators have been stalling and have not even assigned the Marsh and Pawlik proposals to committees yet.
Instead, their educational agenda has consisted of legislation to:
- Ban or restrict books.
- Make teachers’ lives more onerous by requiring them to do more paperwork.
- Forbid transgender athletes from playing sports according to their gender preference.
- Require children to learn a sanitized inaccurate version of history that does not dwell on the mistakes people made (especially against minorities) in the development and growth of the United States.
Watch the video below for Superintendent Hoffman’s response to these issues ahead of the State of Education address in a Sunday Square Off Interview with Brahm Resnik.
Superintendent Hoffman points out how the public schools in each Senator’s district would be affected if the cap is not suspended.
- For example, in chairperson Paul Boyer’s legislative district, the Washington Elementary District would lose $25 million.
- In Senate Majority Leader Rick Gray’s legislative district, Peoria Unified would lose $43 million.
- In Senator Tyler Pace’s legislative district, Mesa Unified stands to be unable to spend $73 million in its bank accounts.
During the speech and in a question and answer session with reporters after the address, Superintendent Hoffman warned that districts would have to adopt harsh measures like:
- Cutting and furloughing staff.
- Cutting programs.
- Closing classes or even schools.
In her comments to the Senate Education Committee, the Superintendent stressed: “These are unprecedented cuts, worse than those made during the great recession – and they will have a devastating effect on the many Arizona students and families that are served by district schools. Families that do not have time for political games or brinksmanship on this issue. And nor do our students, who are smart enough to know a bad deal when they see one…And if these cuts happen, our students will lose opportunities – to learn a new skill, to follow a career path, to be taught by a high-quality educator.”
During questioning, Senators Boyer and Gray did not demonstrate that they understood the gravity of the financial time bomb ticking on traditional public schools.
Boyer, almost dismissively, actually called the situation “a hypothetical.” But Hoffman was having none of that, replying that this hypothetical was already “putting stress on our families,” “the legislature set the budget for this year. If they don’t act, we will have school closures,” and, to Boyer, “are you saying the schools can afford to lose a billion?”
Boyer responded to Hoffman by asking if she wanted legislators to overturn the will of the voters regarding the 1980 measure establishing the cap. It was strange that Boyer is concerned about the will of the voters 42 years ago, when he and his colleagues are continually looking for ways to strangle the voter-approved Invest in Education – Proposition 208 measure and enact voucher expansion programs that the people have already rejected.
Boyer also said one of the reasons we are in this situation is because we have budgeted too much for education. Hoffman replied, “thank you for the investments. To cut a billion dollars would be devastating.”
Senator Gray was more absurd. He contended that the school districts had no one to blame but themselves by not planning ahead of time for the possibility that the cap would not be suspended. He also caused a stir among attendees when he suggested only “MBA’s” should be school superintendents. The Superintendent replied to Gray that the “districts trusted the legislators” to take the responsible action of suspending the cap.
Senator Christine Marsh came to the defense, stating: “We gave the schools this money to spend. The voters also have the ability to override this with a two-thirds vote. We gave the schools the money. We are the only ones that can allow them to spend it.”
Senator Sally Ann Gonzales, who represents many districts in the Tucson area called these looming cuts potentially “devastating” and, like Marsh, said “we can fix this with a two-thirds vote.”
Hoffman takes questions from reporters
During a question and answer session with reporters, the Superintendent explained that the reason for needing to suspend the cap stemmed in part from declining school enrollment last year due to the COVID 19 Pandemic and the now inclusion of Proposition 301 funding (about $600 million) in the cap calculations. She was also upset that this issue of the cap was becoming “political” in the latest of a series of educational “culture wars and funding disputes that are getting in the way of obvious solutions.” She concluded by stating her hopes that “the lawmakers will get this on the agenda, and take action, so districts and parents can have relief.”
Please click below to hear the Superintendent’s full speech before the Senate Education Committee and how each district will be impacted if Republicans do not act.
District At Risk Budgeted Expenditures