DVUSD Superintendent Curtis Finch

(Courtesy DVUSD)

By Richard Smith
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The Deer Valley Unified School District spends several percentage points higher in its classrooms than the state average, according to the annual spending report measuring fiscal year 2023 levels recently published by the Arizona Auditor General’s office.

The district beat the state average in everything from classroom spending and teachers, teacher’s aides, though student and instructional support spending lagged behind state averages.

Deer Valley Unified School District spent 72.4% of its budget onclassroom costs in 2003. That is 3.3% more than the state average of 69.1%.

Superintendent Curtis Finch stated in an email that this number is consistent with the district’s data trend.

“It’s a philosophy that the most impact is made closer to the student. One of our tenets of the strategic plan is to identify students who need interventions and get them what they need as fast as possible,” Finch stated. “Research says the sooner the intervention for the student, the quicker they will be on-step with their peers and need less remediation in the future — earlier is better. The longer you wait, the further the student gets behind; it’s basically an exponential curve once the student hits the third grade.”

Neighboring public school districts spend in a similar range, with Glendale Union High School District to the south at 74.6%, Peoria Unified on the west at 72.5%, Paradise Valley further east at 74.4% and Dysart Unified further west at 72.2%

The report and Finch define those districts and a few others in the Valley as peer districts. Rural district and charter schools — which have popped up more frequently in the district's boundaries during the past decade — have different scenarios, and in the case of charter schools, different standards.

“I would say that we are ‘pushing the envelope on the maximum dollar (percentage) that can reach the classroom and still provide the specialty services a school district offers such as cafeteria services, busing, special education, facilities, athletics, competitive salaries, etc... The only reason why we can hold this difficult number is our commitment to efficient systems,” Finch stated.

The largest portion of classroom spending falls into instruction, a category that includes things like teachers, teacher’s aides and substitute teachers.

The district spent 60.2% of its budget in this category last year, with the peer average being 56%.

However, that 60.2% falls a bit short of the highest level of 62.8% spent in 2004. The Arizona Auditor General’s Office began tracking these statistics in 2001.

The district’s student support spending, 7.4%, and instructional support spending, 4.5%, in 2023 were a couple percentage points lower than the state average of 9.5% and 6.2% for last year.

“I don’t put too much into the instructional support and student support percentages being below the state averages. Again, if your interventions are timely, consistent, and vigorous, these two numbers should take care of themselves indicated in the other numbers,” Finch stated. “Since we get great academic results, we have found the right balance. One of the main problems with those two numbers is the coding side of what discretion schools have to code to those categories. There are too many variables in that equation to take those numbers too seriously — i.e. school districts can code many things to those two categories that would be different than what DVUSD codes.”

In all, the district spent $12,762 per student in 2023. That is $1,202 more than in 2022 but $1,662 less than the state average in 2023.

On average, the district paid its teachers just under the state average in 2023. The district’s average teacher pay was $62,751, while the state average was $62,934.

At the same time, teachers in the district generally had less than a year more of experience than the state average. The average years of teaching experience in 2023 for a teacher in the district was 12.5 years while the state average was 11.9 years.

Meanwhile, the average student to teacher ration was 16.4 to 1, while the state average was 17.7 to 1.

Finch stated the ratio is as delicate balancing act. If it costs about $1 million dollars to lower that number to 15.1, the converse is probably true as well.

If you hypothetically added “one student” to each of the 2,000 classrooms (and HS periods) in the district, you would “make” $1 million dollars that you could spread out to staff.

“But what does the research say about class size? The research basically says that if you have a great teacher, class sizes don’t show significant academic gains as a single variable until you can get the class size down to the 12-13 student to teacher range. We do know the top numbers that research says class sizes lose academic gains when they get too big, so we have class-size maximums with that in mind,” Finch stated. “What is deceiving about that number is context, even for DVUSD. Yes, we may have a district-wide number of 16:1, but there may be 35-40 kids at Mountain Ridge High School in a make-up graduation requirement class like history, but we may have a second grade class in New River with nine kids in it.”

Richard Smith
Associate Editor | Surprise & West Valley Preps

rsmith@iniusa.org

Richard Smith has been with Independent Newsmedia since 2016, and worked at a Sun City-based news outfit covering the Northwest Valley for 22 consecutive years.

An NAU alum and lifelong Arizona resident, Richard began as a copy editor and page designer at Surprise Today and the Daily News-Sun, then rekindled his love of sports writing by taking the reins on West Valley Preps in 2008.

For most of the mid-2010s he was the Surprise editor and West Valley Preps reporter. Now he’s the West Valley Preps Editor and Surprise Associate Editor.

As COVID restrictions slowly lift, Richard is cautiously optimistic he will visit book stores, football fields and gyms again this fall.