Early results for Higley Unified School District's 15% maintenance and operations override continuance look bleak for avoiding further cuts.
The first round of results from Maricopa County show the override failing by nearly 1,500 votes with the Nos at 6,917, or 56.02%, while the Yes votes at 5,431, or 43.98%.
Turnout is at 21.19%.
Meanwhile, a ballot question of whether the district can sell, lease or exchange some of its real property is easily passing, 8,004-4,085, or 66.21%-33.79%.
At stake for Higley is staving off another round of cuts as its previous override is sunsetting.
Maintenance and operations overrides are good for seven years, but the final two years see the percentage step down by one-third until it fully expires, unless voters approve a renewal.
In 2024, the district put up a ballot question to renew the override before any cuts were made, but it failed by 314 votes, less than 1% of the total.
As a result, Higley reduced 80 positions and used $4 million from reserves known as budget balance carryforward to soften last year’s cuts.
Superintendent David Loutzenheiser said without override funds, the district would have to make cuts that touch classrooms directly.
“We were talking about increased class sizes for sure,,” he said. “That's got to be a given because that's an area where more kids per class requires less teachers, which would mean possible RIF, reductions in force or by attrition,” he said.
He added salary freezes and reduced extracurricular support are on the table.
Elementary specials such as art and music could also face changes.
Higley, which also has capital needs, had bond questions fail in 2022 and 2024, but kept a bond off this ballot to give the override a better chance to succeeding.
Opening up the possibility of a real-estate sale on vacant district land would be alternative means to raise some capital dollars.
Please submit comments at yourvalley.net/letters or email them to AzOpinions@iniusa.org. We are committed to publishing a wide variety of reader opinions, as long as they meet our Civility Guidelines. Tom Blodgett can be reached by email at tblodgett@iniusa.org or follow him @sp_blodgett on X.
Meet Tom Tom Blodgett joined Independent Newsmedia, Inc., USA, in 2022, when the company acquired Community Impact Newspaper's Phoenix-area properties. Raised in Arizona, he has spent more than 35 years in journalism in the state.
Community: He has served as an instructional professional in the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication since 2005, and is editorial adviser to The State Press, the university's independent student media outlet. He also is director of operations for an 18U girls fastpitch softball team from Gilbert.
Education: Arizona State University with a BS in Journalism.
Random Fact: He lived in Belgium during his freshman year of high school.
Hobbies: Tweeting enthusiastically about ASU softball (season-ticket holder) and grumpily about other local sports (pessimistic fan).
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