When the legislature opens for business in January and Republicans stonewall the idea of a substantial increase to the K-12 education budget—a fairly safe prediction—they’ll remind us how generous they were when they decided to add $350 million a year to the school budget. Actually, they haven’t added the money yet. The voters have to OK the deal first. And most of it doesn’t come from the state budget since the legislature plans to make a big draw on the state land trust money that belongs to the schools already. And it’s not really new money, since the state is legally bound to provide it to the schools—really, it’s only 70 percent of what the state owe the schools. But still, Republicans will argue, $350 million is a serious chunk of change. The schools should be happy to get such a hefty increase.
But really, how much does a $350 million addition to the Arizona school budget amount to? It’s not enough to move us out of 48th or 49th or 50th place (depending on who’s doing the counting) in per student funding. It amounts to a measly 5 percent increase in our woefully inadequate education budget. Still, when you look at that dollar figure, it seems like a lot of money. So let’s take a look at what $350 million will buy.
There’s nearly universal agreement that Arizona teachers deserve a raise. We’re losing teachers who leave the profession or move to other states because our salary schedule is so low—45th in the nation. Our average teacher salary, $45,300, is more than $10,000 below the national average. Even if we limit the comparison to the eight states closest to us in per capita income, Arizona teacher salary levels are $3,300 below theirs.
So what would happen if we used some of the $350 million to increase average teacher salaries by, say, $3,000? That adds up to $180 million. And if we add in the money the districts spend on things like Social Security, Medicare, health insurance, etc.—say, an added 20 percent—we’re at $215 million.
For the moment, let’s forget about boosting the salaries of staff other than teachers to make up for their years of stagnant wages. We’ll leave that for some other time. Let’s see what else we can do with the rest of the money. We’ve spent $215 million of the $350 million total on the salary boost for teachers, so we have $135 million left. Let’s see. There are 2,000 public schools in Arizona, counting district and charter schools. If we divvied up what’s left among them, that would be $67,500 per school. That doesn’t make sense, of course, since school sizes vary widely. So let’s divide the money equally between the million Arizona students and give each school an extra $135 per student. A school with 200 students would get $27,000, about a half of an average teacher’s salary. A 2,000 student school would get $135,000, which would buy it two-and-a-half new teachers. Using up all the $135 million to pay for more teachers would mean lowering average class sizes statewide by two or three students.
Of course, schools could spend the $135 per student on books, computers, supplies—anything on their wish list. But a small, 200 student elementary school isn’t going to get much for $27,000, what with the cost of things these days, and a large high school won’t be able to make $135,000 go very far either.
No matter how you slice it, $350 million spread over a million students at 2,000 schools, while it’s money no school wants to refuse, doesn’t move the educational needle much. Remember, our schools were hurting financially before that money was cut in 2010. This would just get them back to the sorry financial state they were in before.
This article appears in Dec 17-23, 2015.
At 7k per head, 50,000 more illegals in the seats.
And where will the money come from?
If every illegal girl/woman brings or bears three children here in the U.S, that’s 21k for every woman making the journey.
For 350 million, that’s less than 17,000 new female ‘migrants’ ever year.
Documented that 80% of women crossing the Mexico border are sexually abused, that’s only 13,600 girls to be molested per year to attain the goal.
Have liberals no shame, no concern for human rights?
80% Of Central American Women, Girls Are Raped Crossing Into The U.S.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/09/12/central-america-migrants-rape_n_5806972.html
David, right in this very issue of this publication another blogger claims that 55% of Tucsonans spend in excess of 50% of their monthly income in rent. For a teacher earning $45,300 per year, that equates to $1258 per month in rent. Or, is their income in the upper 2/3 of the city’s residents?
Your conclusion is correct. This mess is not fixable. Get your kids out of the public schools.
By the way is it too much to ask that 50% of high school graduates could read and comprehend at an 8th grade level? Why don’t we set that bar that high and see what happens?
Many conveniently forget how much teachers spend on their education and must continue to their whole professional life. Many conveniently forget the amount of responsibility a teacher has to children which ultimately affects the whole community. We have teachers running from the field for a very good reason. It is very difficult work( especially if you pay attention to the negativity pumped through this blog on each and every article posted by David S on education and the facts behind what has happened in our country and predominantly our state). Very sad statements here on how little care there is for our children and their value and it is every single time they post. But I think most people recognize that even if they don’t.
As usual, the first three comments demonstrate how we get the leaders we get, and why Arizonans will never have nice things.
Pima Mujer – Tucson is the fifth poorest city in the country with a totally failed TUSD.
Tucson has been solely run by liberal democrats for the last twenty years.
Try something new. Socialism/Communism and basing our economy on illegals and the government funds that follow them has failed in Tucson.
Here is your TUSD!
https://arizonadailyindependent.com/2015/12/18/secrist-students-speak-truth-to-power-as-tusd-administrators-spin/
Find the problem and move them to the southside. Problem solved? It is if you are TUSD.
I am going to go with…..Fraud and Waste.
I wish I was joking, or being clever. But, this is what I honestly believe.
Money isn’t going to fix this, reform is.
“States spending the least per pupil included Utah ($6,555), Idaho ($6,791), Arizona ($7,208), Oklahoma ($7,672) and Mississippi ($8,130).”
“States receiving the highest percentage of their revenue from the federal government: Mississippi (16.0 percent), Louisiana (15.2 percent), South Dakota (14.8 percent), New Mexico (14.8 percent) and Arizona (14.6 percent).”
https://www.census.gov/newsroom/press-rele…
It seems funny that so many replies are focused on Tucson tax payers money funding Tucson schools when they are barely funded and a high percentage is funded by the federal government. To have the nerve to approve such dismal spending and then attack the product received is telling of mental illness.
Natasha has a good point. We should ceebrate the failure of public schools as long as it’s not our money. Wait a minute, we all pay federal taxes also, don’t we? Well at least 30% of us do.
David W, your reading comprehension is lacking, or it’s just willful ignorance.
http://www.pgpf.org/budget-basics/how-much…
The lowest brackets can’t pay taxes because they aren’t paid enough, mostly by corporations, to pay taxes and survive. The highest brackets including corporate tax rates are less than 40%. A disproportionate amount of tax burden is being placed on the middle class. The reason we can’t fund anything is because the extremely rich and big corporations have been making out like bandits paying increasingly lower wages AND lower taxes. This works as a literal conveyer belt, conveying money, wealth, and resource control to increasingly fewer at the top while undermining the middle class.
The middle class should be wondering why their tax rates are so similar to the top 1%, not demonizing people who don’t make enough money to even pay taxes and still show up to their jobs to make money for their bosses and take home subsistence wages.
This growing income disparity is what is destabilizing our sociological environment and it will get worse unless it is addressed. Making vague, hateful, generalized statements that don’t contain any information and only fuel irrational belligerence is not helpful in anyway.
Increasingly lower wages Natasha? So are you for closing our borders? You can’t have both. Pick one.
It makes sense to me that our state would definitely attract more rich, successful corporations if we had good schools with a dedicated corps of teaching professionals and smart, upwardly mobile graduates. Everybody would gain, including all of those who complain about the slightest increase in benefit to an underpaid, overworked and discouraged group of decent people. Also – I would like to know exactly what the basis is for immediately blaming the “illegal” children who are overloading the systems in place. If this is so obviously true, I want to see the statistics and not so many more knee-jerk comments that pop up with predictable acrimony.
I’m just convinced that the vast majority of people in America…the world… are mentally ill and it manifests in black and white thinking patterns. That’s why it’s so easy to pretend that either Americans or immigrants, Muslims or Chrstians, the rich or the poor, (pick dichotomous label) are to blame for everything. There are “good” guys and “bad” guys instead of individuals with privately competing interests living together with interconnected interests that create and effect each other. The latter takes thought, acknowledgment of reality, the possibility that we aren’t the chosen people and effort beyond parroting what the leader of the current in-group is saying.
David, do you believe that low wages are solely the product of immigration? If so, why do you believe this? What studies convinced you?