The percentage Arizona schools spend in the classroom is down this year, and TUSD’s percentage is especially low. You can look at this morning’s Howard Fischer/Alexis Huicochea article in the Star which gives an overall look at and analysis of the stats, and you can get more detailed information from the Auditor General’s Report of Arizona School District Spending for Fiscal Year 2015 which gives a breakdown of spending in every school district in the state.
The information can be taken apart and put together in any number of ways. The most obvious takeaway is, when less money is allotted per student—and as can’t be repeated too often, Arizona is 48th, or lower, in the amount it spends per student—the percentage goes down in the classroom. Fixed costs remain fixed costs. You may be able to trim a bit from what you spend on building maintenance, transportation, food services and the like, but they’re stubborn costs. You can’t make a school too much colder or warmer to save on energy usage, you can only put off building maintenance so long, you can’t make bus transportation much more “efficient” without cutting back on safety and student convenience, and you can’t cut back too far on food services without cutting back on safety and nutrition. But you can always put a few more desks in a classroom for a few more students, hold on to outdated textbooks a few years longer, cut back on paper and other consumable supplies—and, of course, cut teacher salaries.
Look at teacher salaries. Arizona’s are low. By cheating teachers of the compensation they deserve, we’re lowering the amount we spend in the classroom. If we did nothing other than give teachers a salary boost while we kept all other district spending constant, we’d increase the percentage we spend in the classroom. But giving teachers a fair wage means districts have to spend money they don’t have, thanks to our deadbeat legislature (#deadbeat).
Then look at class size. More students per class means less money is spent per student on our already-low-paid teachers. For example, if 25 students are in a classroom with a teacher who makes $40,000 a year, that comes to $1,600 per student. With 35 students, the cost goes down to $1,143, or $457 less per student spent on teachers. If we did nothing other than lower the number of students in a class, we’d increase the percentage we spend in the classroom. Add that to a raise for teachers, and the percentage increases still more. But if the state doesn’t value education enough to spend closer to what other states spend, low teacher salaries and large classrooms are the inevitable result. You gotta keep costs down somewhere, and all those fixed costs are, well, fixed.
If you want to save money on administration, well, I’m certain there are ways to cut back, but Arizona already spends the lowest percentage on administration of any state in the country. Note, that’s not just the lowest total dollar amount. It’s the lowest percentage of the amount spent per student. So if you think there’s a lot of administrative fat to cut in Arizona schools, then you’re going to have to concede that schools in the rest of the nation, which spend a larger percentage than we do in the classroom, are morbidly obese administratively.
When overall spending per student decreased in Arizona starting with the recession in 2009, the percentage spent in the classroom decreased as well. According to the Auditor General’s report (page 3 if you’re following along), between 2001 and 2008, Arizona spend between 57.7 and 58.6 percent of its education dollars in the classroom. That’s lower than the U.S average, which is closer to 61 percent, but remember, Arizona was spending less per student than the national average during those years as well, so fixed costs still ate up more of the budget than in better funded states. But when our legislature decided to cut $330 million a year from schools in 2009—violating the express will of the voters and a court order, as can’t be repeated too often (#deadbeat)—the percentage in the classroom fell each year, to the 2015 level of 53.6.
But what about TUSD, some of you are asking. Why does the Tucson district spend a lower percentage in the classroom than the state average? That’s the subject of another post, which will be coming soon.
This article appears in Feb 25 – Mar 2, 2016.
The ship has already sunk. This is a lot like blowing up beach balls on the Titanic. Public schools are being replaced.
And there it is: ” By cheating teachers of the compensation they deserve,”
Never mind the student, the parents or the tax payers. Putting teachers first has created an air of hostility from every direction. And it will continue to. But I guess you have to side with the admin to try to get help for the teachers.
It is astounding to me that anyone (commenter #1 in this stream, if I understand the comment correctly) is prepared to blame TEACHERS, of all the actors in the drama of Arizona’s disastrously mismanaged schools, for the sad decline of our public school system.
God forbid anyone working in support of children should ask for a living wage or decent working conditions. The notion that teachers asking for just wages are “selfish” and should self-abnegate themselves out of existence to make way for students, parents, and TAXPAYERS is a notion transferred into the field of K-12 teaching from the realm of sentimentalized and misogynistic views of what the mother-child relationship should be. Dana Goldstein wrote about it well in the chapter, “Missionary Teachers: The Common Schools Movement and the Feminization of American Teaching,” in her book The Teacher Wars: A History of America’s Most Embattled Profession.
Actually, children’s interests are best served when the teaching profession is well paid and adequately professionalized. It is neither in the state of Arizona. We cannot staff our classrooms with adequately qualified professionals here, but it is not because there is a shortage of qualified teachers. We have a shortage of qualified teachers WILLING TO WORK IN THE PROFESSION, given the pay levels, working conditions, and toxic lack of respect they encounter in this state.
Mr Safier,
You are answering the wrong question. The questions should be why is TUSD’s operating efficiency so poor when compared to is PEER districts (not the state average), why is classroom spending percentage still at it lowest point since 2001 (despite getting $1300/student in deseg funds most of its peers do not get), and why has it lost 13,297 students while AZ’s population has exploded in that time?
Sorry TAtBfAoT, that is the exact opposite of what I was trying to say. The teacher is positioned as the pawn by a system that is more than ready to use and abuse them. Funding issues aside, the sad decline of our school system has plenty of guilty parties to point at. And it’s finally time we do.
Ms. Weiss:
TUSD’s peer districts would be massive poor urban public school districts under desegregation orders, so how could there be “peers” of TUSD not receiving supplementary desegregation funding? Apples should be compared to apples, not oranges, as I know you are aware, since you have made a similar point about why, in your opinion, Safier should not be comparing charters’ finances to those of public district schools.
Affluent public districts have active, vigilant parent communities that hold administrators’ feet to the fire and ensure accountability to the constituency. Who does that in poor urban districts? The press? Not in Tucson. The closest thing to an effective “fourth estate” reporting on TUSD is the Three Sonorans blog, but unfortunately not enough people read it, so when it comes time to vote in elections for the district’s governing board, the constituency does not fulfill the role it is supposed to fulfill in a democracy, removing bad leadership. Past a certain point, the leadership positions in institutions like this become so difficult to occupy that no one who has the needed qualities is willing to step forward and assume the role. We may have already reached and passed that point in TUSD, unfortunately.
I’m looking forward to Safier informing us about “Why [TUSD] spend[s] a lower percentage in the classroom than the state average.” No doubt he won’t mention the Superintendent’s $400K compensation package or the $10K bonuses he awards to central administrators or the many positions added to central administration in the district during the last 2 and 1/2 years. Perhaps he’ll talk about how burdensome, expensive, and time-consuming it is for beleaguered district administrators to deal with the impossible-to-satisfy plaintiffs and Special Master in the desegregation case. Just a guess. But perhaps I’m wrong — perhaps he’ll surprise us with a story line different from that being promoted by his friends on the board, their chief employee and the various political operatives who’ve bought the bill of goods they’re peddling.
One problem, among many, is that taxpayers don’t want to pay to educate children of illegal immigrants. They also aren’t interested in the idea of schools as social engineering projects however noble.
The defining principle of a nation is that we all contribute so that we get some greater benefit in return, not that we selflessly pay taxes to help other people with no benefit to ourselves. That’s a nice idea, but about as rare as unicorns.
When it comes to additional funding for public schools, taxpayers see nothing in it for themselves Until that changes, expect funding to remain low.
The reason we cannot unite behind the public school system is we don’t have a common value system, and that is a structural feature of this nation, guaranteed by constitution under the rubric of “freedom of religion.” Thus: some taxpayers don’t think a child’s citizenship status is the most important thing to take into account when considering whether or not to allow them to receive an education in a public school; others do. Some taxpayers think delivering education to a child now is better than paying the expense of incarcerating them later in a private prison; others do not. Some taxpayers believe they have a responsibility to contribute to the common good; others believe their highest responsibility is to benefit themselves. Belief in the common good, desire to exercise compassion, serve the community and respect human dignity even when it presents itself in the guise of a so-called “illegal” are neither as rare as unicorns nor as frequently encountered as some of us think they should be.
Another structural feature of this nation is that, in some matters at least, the majority opinion (right or wrong, good or bad) rules. If you want to understand what the decisions of a majority that believes self-interest should be the highest value in our nation look like, take a good, long look at the current front-runner in the Republican presidential field.
One troubling question that those of us who would like to see better funded, more humane public schools should think about: to what degree is the public school system, which, whether or not its “market share” may be declining, is still the institution that has provided “education” to the majority of the citizens in this nation, responsible for producing an electorate that is behaving the way our electorate is currently behaving?
Hi ATAP,
The report says that 4 of 10 TUSD’s peers in the auditors report received deseg funds, with only one similar to the tremendous amount TUSD receives. Those peers are…
(Per Student Deseg Funds)
Gilbert USD
Mesa USD ($145)
Chandler USD
Phoenix UHSD ($1968)
Deer Valley USD
Peoria USD
Dysart USD
Scottsdale USD ($317)
Paradise Valley USD
Tucson US ($1301)
Yes, that’s right, Ms. Weiss. In Arizona it’s Phoenix Union that would be the relevant peer. Beyond PUSD, you would need to look to large, poor, urban districts under desegregation orders in other states.
From Phoenix Union’s website:
“Phoenix Union High School District is one of the largest high school districts in the country, with 16 schools, over 27,000 students, and nearly 3,000 employees. Phoenix Union covers 220-square miles of Arizona’s capital city. If the K-8 students in its 13 elementary partner schools were included, it would be among the 25 largest school districts in the United States, with over 110,000 students.”
“12 magnet programs at seven schools”
“Diversity is a hallmark at The Phoenix Union–94% of its students are minority, including 80% Latino, and the students, including a large refugee population, represent over 60 languages. More than half of the students come from a home where English is not the primary language spoken.”
It is dealing with some of the same issues TUSD deals with, and on a similar scale (tens of thousands of students).
One thing worth looking into further is this passage:
“Student support is important at Phoenix Union. Every comprehensive high school has a nurse, social worker, psychologist, dean of students, security staff, School Resource Officer, a community liaison, interventionist and a team of academic counselors with the best counselor-to-student ratio in Arizona. Its Special Education Department is a model for school districts, offering services for gifted to medically fragile, hearing impaired and children with autism. The English Language Learner program is as comprehensive as any in the state, from placement to testing to reclassification.”
You have to take the information these kinds of districts self-publish with a grain of salt. As those of us who follow TUSD know, their PR may be extremely misleading. However, I’m interested in this statement: “The best counselor-to-student ratio in Arizona.” That may be something they’re achieving through the use of their deseg funds. Increased student-to-counselor ratio is the sort of thing TUSD schools could certainly benefit from. Why did TUSD invest deseg funds in insufficiently administered “LSC’s”, later dumped because they had no proven student benefit, rather than in reducing counselor-student ratios?
I’m sure an apples-to-apples comparison looking at how Phoenix Union applies its deseg funds v. how TUSD does would be very instructive. Perhaps Safier will take it on as one of his research projects.