Cooley Middle School needs a new roof. Chaparral Elementary School is supposed to have weatherization done to its exterior. Higley High School is half-painted.
But these projects and others will not be addressed anytime soon. The Higley Unified School District simply has no money to do them.
And there is no relief coming from the state, either. Though Arizona’s School Facilities Oversight Board can give grants to school districts for such projects, the $288 million the state allotted for fiscal year 2023-24 is already gone, HUSD Chief Financial Officer Tyler Moore said. The only projects being considered at the moment are those impacting life safety.
That is what the district is facing as it tries to address the needs of its 13 school campuses and other facilities. Moore painted the picture during the district’s annual public presentation of its capital bond and maintenance and operations override spending.
The presentation, required by state law, happened at the HUSD Governing Board meeting of Oct. 11.
In fiscal year 2022-23, the district spent the last $3 million it had in bond money from a 2013 bond issue on the Higley High School academic building, Moore said. Without any more money in that bucket, it has to rely on its unrestricted capital budget to meet the needs.
For this fiscal year, that’s $23.7 million, but it includes $5.6 million transferred from the district’s maintenance and operations budget to cover the cost of the district’s two middle school leases, a financial albatross for the district dating back 10 years ago from different administrators and board members.
It also includes a $3.49 million one-time payment from the state in this year’s budget and a $7 million budget balance carry-forward from last year, partially inflated because some bills from the Higley project had not been paid when the new year started.
The base-level of support from the state’s “District Additional Assistance” is for $7.61 million. That base-level support would be the only capital money the district can count on going forward, though the M&O transfers to cover the lease costs would be expected to continue.
The additional money this year is being used on safety and security measures and moving forward with some major maintenance needs, according to district budget presentations from the spring and summer.
But not all the projects can be completed on that money, as Moore illustrated. In the case of Cooley’s roof, for example, the state has told the district it will just have to patch it until other money becomes available, Moore said.
“Our maintenance director is at my door regularly, and we're working on making those repairs and prioritizing those,” he said. “But with a limited capital budget, we're doing the best we can.”
Moore said the result is the district may have to once again consider going to voters with a capital bond question on the 2024 ballot, something the district avoided doing this election season because its bond questions in November 2021 and 2022 were trounced at the polls.
He suggested that the district could put together a stakeholder committee to consider bond needs.
The district has other reasons to consider a bond. The district hopes to hear in December whether the facilities board will give it funding to build an additional academic building at Williams Field High School to accommodate enrollment growth at the school — a separate consideration from the repair grants.
But if the district gets that money, it only pays the bare minimum of a building — four walls and carpet. To bring the building up to standards of a modern classroom building, as was done at Higley, will require additional money to, for example, support technology in the building. That also will require a separate funding source.
“We get this new construction funding, but how are we going to make it match what is currently existing and keep those spaces equitable?” Moore said. “So all things to consider, but I do think the district should consider evaluating an option for a 2024 bond election going into next fiscal year.”
The district has made no formal bond proposal. Board Member Anna Van Hoek said she hopes the district will not take that route.
“I want to ensure that we utilize everything that we possibly can within our budget before we go to the community,” she said. “Because even with current inflation and everything else that's happening, people are having a hard time putting food on their table and living paycheck to paycheck. So I want to keep that in mind.”
Van Hoek also was hopeful the district could lower the secondary property tax paid by district residents and businesses by allowing its current 15% maintenance and operations override, approved in 2019, to expire.
Moore said the district uses its maintenance and operations override money to increase teacher compensation; maintaining and improving elementary specials such as arts, music, PE and district athletics; provide staffing to maintain average class sizes; supports gifted and special education; and fully fund all-day Kindergarten in the district.
That override is in its fourth year of a seven-year approval period, but it begins to sunset in fiscal year 2025-26 when it drops from 15% to 10% and then another 5% the following year before expiring.
“I mean, we all have a budget in our lives and we can't keep going to the bank and asking the bank to give us more money to be able to redo our bathrooms and redo our kitchens,” she said.
But Board Member Amanda Wade said there is a difference between a resident’s budget and a school district’s budget.
“It's important to keep a budget,” she said. “And I also understand that we as individuals budget, but the very big difference here is that we have a legal obligation to provide for the community. And with that we are also under a legal obligation to provide safety. And, unfortunately, the things that get cut the most do impact the students directly and by extension then impact the community.”
Van Hoek said the district should not allow cuts to affect what is offered to students and said she was concerned that the district, for example, brought on counselors through the pandemic’s third round of Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief funding, which will expire next year.
“I don't want to see any cuts being made to kids’ programs because ultimately kids should be able to have music and all the classes that they enjoy,” she said.
However, Wade recalled working as a teacher in the district when it did not have an override and the problems that created, like a lack of paper for the classroom and ballooning class sizes.
Wade said she had a minimum of 39 students in her classroom while a Spanish class had 50 and a chemistry class 49 for a period of time.
“These are the things that happen,” she said. “And then we then have to deal with the community being upset about the unsafe environments that we are creating. I literally didn't have enough desks in my classroom to be able to have all of these students sit. We had people sitting on the floor. We had people sitting on my desk in the back just where they could find them. And, sadly, it was nice when you had students who were absent because you were like, ‘Oh, well, there's a desk. Go take it.’ These things are hard.”
Vice President Michelle Anderson said she worked in the district’s human resources department at the time and called it “awful” when cuts took her department from seven employees to three, as well as seeing cuts to supplies, classrooms and in elementary school special classes like art and music.
She said the district has done a better job in transparency about its plans and spending after changes in administration.
“The boogeyman was real whenever it hit the district,” she said.
Tom Blodgett can be reached by email at tblodgett@iniusa.org or follow him @sp_blodgett on X. We would like to invite our readers to submit their civil comments, pro or con, on this issue. Email AZOpinions@iniusa.org.
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).
By 
Comments
No comments on this item Please log in to comment by clicking here