By Cecilia Chan, Independent Newsmedia

In the Peoria Unified School District, voters have approved bonds over the past several years, but there are many capital needs that have been put off due to inadequate funds.

In the Deer Valley Unified School District officials have had to defer purchases of necessities such as textbooks, software and school buses over the years as the state snipped away at capital funding.

These districts are not the only ones facing this funding dilemma.

Public school supporters frustrated with the Legislature last week announced at Landmark Elementary School in Glendale they filed a lawsuit against the state, claiming it has not adequately funded public schools’ capital needs as mandated under a 1998 court ruling.

Attorneys filed the lawsuit on behalf of public school districts across the state. The plaintiff group includes the Arizona School Boards Association, Arizona Education Association, Arizona School Administrators, Arizona Administrators School Business Officials, Elfrida Elementary School District, Chino Valley Unified School District, Crane Elementary School District, Glendale Elementary School District, Peoria resident Kathy Knecht and Laveen resident Jill Barragan.

Officials with the governor’s office did not respond to a request for an interview by press time.
Ms. Knecht, a member of the Peoria Unified School District Governing Board, said she was asked to join the suit as an individual taxpayer.

“My individual role is to represent homeowners and taxpayers and illustrate how the state Legislature’s failure to fund the maintenance and repairs of public school buildings affects us all,” Ms. Knecht said. “Citizens own those buildings. The state has shirked its constitutional responsibility and cut roughly $2 billion from capital funding alone since 2009.”

Ms. Knecht, who announced she is running against state Sen. Debbie Lesko (R-Peoria), said the Legislature has been cutting taxes to corporations and shifting the burden onto local taxpayers.

“Homeowners have had to pick up the slack,” Ms. Knecht said. “Additionally, if the quality of my neighborhood school declines, then my property value declines along with it. That isn’t fair.”

In the years before the state-imposed reductions DVUSD spent between $8 million and $10 million on capital-related items annually. For last school year, the district spent $2.8 million because there was no more money to spend.

“Our district continues to suffer from the lack of capital funding,” said Jim Migliorino, deputy superintendent of fiscal and business services. “It is true that some of the capital needs can be deferred for a period of time. Unfortunately the deferrals have gone on for eight years and with that amount of time these needs are now becoming emergencies.”

Like PUSD, Deer Valley has had to rely on bonds — taxing property owners — to build and repair its schools.

“Our district is very fortunate that we have a voter-approved bond initiative that allows us to maintain certain standards, especially with our facilities,” Mr. Migliorino said. “Our bond has allowed us to maintain our roofs, paint our facilities, and keep major systems operational, all thanks to the local property taxes paying for the bond.”

As an example, he said, before the district’s most recent bond election in 2013, it went six years without a single school bus purchase, which significantly increased the average age of its fleet and put the replacement program behind schedule.

He said the District Additional Assistance, the capital portion of the education funding formula was cut by $13.7 million, or 87 percent of what the district should have received this year.

“This year is not an anomaly,” he said. “Over the past eight years the cumulative reduction is $84 million. This is just the reductions from the funding formula and does not include other sources that have also not been funded appropriately, like School Facilities Building Renewal dollars.”

For fiscal year 2018, which begins July 1, DVUSD is planning to budget about $3 million, possibly only $2.5 million for capital needs, he said.

“This is the amount we are working to include in our budget plans despite having over $4 million in capital we should be budgeting for in immediate needs and realistically having an annual capital need of $8 million,” Mr. Migliorino said.

This year in PUSD the district replaced carpeting at Heritage Elementary school that was 31-years-old, she said. “If emergency costs arise, we are forced to use funds that might otherwise go to things like teacher salaries,” Ms. Knecht said. “PUSD currently has a needs list that would cost in the neighborhood of $200 million for our 42 schools and our 37,000 students.”

Gov. Doug Ducey in a news release said his $9.8 billion budget, which the Legislature passed last Friday, invests in Arizona schools and teachers.

"The education budget just passed by the legislature is a historic win for public schools – including $80 million for the construction and maintenance of school facilities and over $68 million for permanent teacher pay raises," the governor said in a statement released to Independent Newsmedia. "These are lasting investments in our K-12 system and come on top of millions in new funding from the approval of Prop. 123 last year. We will continue to work with education stakeholders to build on these gains and prioritize education funding."

Ms. Knecht said the lawsuit was necessary because the state is breaking the law and there does not seem to be another way to grab the Legislature’s attention.

“Until and unless we have state leaders who have the will and the courage to address the problem, we have to use the courts to protect the people,” she said.

One of the plaintiffs’ lawyer is Tim Hogan of the Arizona Center for Law in Public Interest, who successfully sued the state over the same issue in 1994. He argued at the time that relying on local taxpayers to pay the bill by passing bonds to cover school-maintenance costs put schools in low-income areas at a disadvantage, which violates the state Constitution.

A settlement agreement came in 1998, which included $1.3 billion in one-time money to bring buildings to state standards, and about $200 million a year to schools for soft capital necessities such as textbooks, buses and technology, according to a news release.

Editor’s Note: News Editor Philip Haldiman contributed to this story.