There’s a curious Arizona Supreme Court decision that looks like it’s going to cost the Tucson Unified School District about $8.1 million.

The TUSD Governing Board will get an update on the ruling and what it means going forward at their regular meeting Tuesday. It means not a lot but it’s an insult-to-injury thing.

This is just plain goofy and kind of complicated. I’ll be gentle.

The
first thing you have to understand is that there are two different
kinds of property taxes. There are primary taxes set by elected leaders
and secondary taxes typically approved by voters in the form of bonds or
by creating fire districts.

Related: Sparking a rant: Snoop Dogg’s bowl to get cash from Pima County – The Tucson Agenda

The Arizona Constitution caps primary
taxes for homeowners (owner-occupied, not landlords) at 1 percent.
That’s after all the different jurisdictions set their primary property
tax rates.

If a county’s combined property tax exceeds 1 percent,
the state picks up the bill for the excess. So if you owe $4,000 on a
$300,000 home, you pay $3,000 and the state pays $1,000. That allows
jurisdictions like TUSD to tax beyond 1 percent and get money from the
state.

The 1 percent cap amounts to a revenue control limit, established by the Legislature. It basically puts a kind of cap on school budgets.

The upshot was (from the paleo conservative Legislature’s point of view) that hippie school boards can raise the bejesus out of
taxes and the Arizona Legislature must pay the bill.  Lawmakers have never been happy about this.

In 2018, they figured out a way around part of it and targeted desegregation funds. The Legislature passed a bill Gov. Doug Ducey signed that moved deseg tax dollars from primary property taxes to secondary taxes.

OK, fine. TUSD still wanted their deseg money. The state had always paid it. They wanted the $8.1 million the state owed them.

However, the Ducey administration refused to pay it, because the state aid that funded deseg only applied to those programs paid for out of primary tax dollars. Deseg was now paid for with secondary tax dollars. Also, deseg money still counted against the 1 percent cap, even though the 1 percent cap was supposed to relate only to primary tax revenues.

However, desegregation funds – unlike bonds or fire districts – were never voter-approved, being imposed by courts. Therefore, they are secondary taxes that still act like primary taxes.

A court battle ensued.

Last month, the Supreme Court sided with the former Ducey administration. TUSD isn’t going to get its $8.1 million. Future deseg dollars are just part of regular spending.

What the court decided is that if a
school district is under a deseg order from a federal court, it’s going to take a hit to the rest of the school budget.

The court put it bluntly: 

“School
districts and counties must do what they did before the legislature
started reimbursing them for desegregation expenses in 1985: reduce
their overall expenditures either for desegregation or in other areas so
that their tax levy complies with the 1% limit or pay such expenses
with revenue not subject thereto.”

Know how Arizona ranks 48th among the 50 states in K-12 funding? The Legislature and Supreme Court just made it worse.

One of the things I find interesting and understandable is that new Gov. Katie Hobbs didn’t just drop this whole thing and send out the money. She wants more money for schools. Why cave?

The Democrat took over in 2022 and was in a position to maybe put an end to the challenge because the issue is debatable and she could say, “Hey, I decided the law allows the funding to continue.”

The Arizona Department of Revenue, which originally refused the payment, works for her.

Well, not really. Once lawsuits get rolling they are hard to stop. Lawyers at ADOR start acting on their opinions under the law and politics kinda stops. It’s the job of the executive branch to enforce the laws as written and not as people wish it were written.

It’s the job of the Deep State to figure out how to enforce those laws and not simply do the bidding of the newly elected chief executive. I’d like to see schools keep getting the money but the state must operate by the rule of law and not the whim and caprice of a new governor.

Even if Hobbs were to quash it, another plaintiff could pick it up and say, “Hey, that spending is illegal. Gov. Ducey said so.”

Bottom line is, if people want to change the law then they must change out the lawmakers.

Happier budget news

TUSD doesn’t sound like it was expecting this money in its 2024-25 budget because the district isn’t telling the school board it must make big cuts in spending. The case originated in fiscal year 2018-19.

The
district just has to negotiate the cap better moving forward plus, and
this is key, deseg dollars are no longer removed from the state’s
revenue control limit.

The good news for TUSD is that it just got word that the district will have an extra $23 million in fiscal year 2024-25 and is set, Tuesday, to revise its budget accordingly.

TUSD set its original budget based on guesstimates over what the Legislature would do with its final budget for fiscal year 2024-25. The state was late. The school districts had to wing it.

Well, there’s a state budget now and districts are making changes. 

Adjustments in base support levels, improved funding based on teacher experience and a one-time addition to school lunches offset losses from a one-time spike in funding from last fiscal year and a declining enrollment.

The TUSD board is looking at equipping middle schools and high schools with an additional 3,383 lockers for students.

The price tag depends on whom the district buys from. The cheapest bid is from (of course) schoollockers.com and their cost is projected at $2.4 million. Another vendor, 3×3 Locker Sets would cost $7 million. That’s for 3,383 triple tier locker sets.

Let me jump out of the schools for a moment and talk about election canvasses in Marana and Sahuarita.

Recount coming

Voters took to the polls for the July 30 primary election. The results are in and winners have been declared.

None
of it is official until the results are certified by the proper
governing bodies and that’s what Marana and Sahuarita will be doing
during respective special and regular meetings this week.

Marana will
require a recount to determine whether Roxanne Ziegler can hold on to
her 14-vote lead among 27,000 votes cast and fill one of two seats open
on the Town Council.

Ziegler finished with 6,893 votes and Melissa Zupi stood at 6,879.

State
law requires a recount when a margin is decided by less than a half
percentage point difference between the candidates in question. Patrick
Cavanaugh’s 7,091 votes do not count toward this recount. A total of
13,772 votes were cast for Zupi and Ziegler, so any margin less than 68
votes triggers a recount.

Also, the council must ask the court to
approve the recount. The council can’t just do one even if the math says
it’s required. That makes sense because the court will want to verify
the count is on the up and up.

So long as no evidence is provided to the contrary – with an emphasis on the word “evidence” – the recount will proceed.

In
Sahuarita, voters were electing four council members and the primary produced four winners. Steven Gillespie,
Kimberly Lisk, Edgar Lytle and Diane Priolo each received a majority of votes and will take their seats on the
town council immediately after the general election date. That’s when the current terms end.

No need for a run off because the race was without
competition. Four ran for four seats and four were elected, whether they
liked it or not.

And now, back to school …

The Vail Unified School District will do the most VUSD thing ever, during its governing board meeting on Tuesday.

School board members will vote on a new “tool” to measure the effectiveness of the district’s community programs.

If the tool is approved, it will measure the districts community programs along 29 different axes, on a scale of highly effective to ineffective.

From there, they will determine if the program is redundant, measurable and aligned with district goals.

Why is this the most Vail thing ever?

Because VUSD loves doing stuff like this. It’s constantly reassessing and measuring and nipping and tucking what works and what doesn’t. That’s what makes it a great school district and a bit of a parody of school districts.

The “tool” is basically a questionnaire but they call it a tool because that’s what highly effective districts call things.

It seems like a lot of buzz-word gobbledygook but it’s all important.

Vail never leaves well enough alone and even submits community outreach efforts to the same scrutiny they give classrooms.

You do you, Vail.

The Catalina Foothills Unified School District Governing Board will take up policy changes forced upon schools during the 2024 Legislative Session.

• Sex offenders will be barred from serving on the school board, but they are apparently fine for the White House.
• Children of service members on active duty or killed in the line of duty may be given preferences when it comes to open enrollment.
• Districts can now obtain a standing order for glucagon and store doses at schools, where it can be administered by trained professionals to students with diabetes. The new law will require Cat Foot to move around some policy language.

During a study session Tuesday, the Flowing Wells Unified School District Governing Board will hold a discussion about how to improve special education.

The board will also discuss recurring challenges like enrollment loss and funding constraints.

Over at the Amphitheater Unified School District, the governing board will vote during their Tuesday meeting to approve a series of textbooks.

A couple of them are no big deal and there’s a computer text book titled “Code Monkey.” Fine. Whatever.

Then there are the classics: “The Iliad,” “The Odyssey” and “Beowulf.” Now we’re cooking with gas. The kids will continue to read the foundational texts that define story writing. It’s not quite the Epic of Gilgamesh, but hey. I’ll take it.

Wait.

What’s that?

They are graphic novels? Beowulf: A Graphic Novel?

I’m not up on comic-book culture. I read a couple… when I was 10. So I Googled “what’s the difference between a graphic novel and a comic book?” The answer came back from the intertubes: graphic novels are longer.

Now, technically, Beowulf should be experienced in an Anglo-Saxon pub about 1,000 years ago. It was tale told by storytellers who did it for a living. 

I’m not a purist about this sort of thing. Shakespeare wrote plays. Don’t make kids read the text. Just play the performance after explaining iambic pentameter. In other ways, I am a purist. Don’t read Tolstoy in English. It’s not the same thing as the original Russian. Don’t read Russian? Don’t read Tolstoy, because you aren’t reading Tolstoy.

Graphic novels? I don’t know… this seems like reaching a little too much to be relevant to the kids. 

Here’s the other thing. It’s honors English. Really? The honors students can’t be bothered with original text and translations?

Aside from that, Amphi is just doing routine business.

Potty training and happy parenting

Up on the Northeast Side, the Tanque Verde Unified School District Governing Board will get a rundown on how faculty and staff prepared for the new school year.

A three-day back-to-school training seminar was held in July and discussed creating climates for learning, how to better plan and assess student progress – basic teaching stuff.

It moved on to paraprofessional training in preschool, kindergarten and special education.

A second open-day seminar provided a broader overview about how to best prepare for teaching.

None of this seems like rocket science and can fall under the “to-be-expected” category. When I taught at the University of Arizona, I didn’t get any of this stuff. So I’m always happy to see it.

At the Sunnyside Unified School District, the Governing Board will get a presentation about the district’s Family Resource and Wellness Center. In the presentation, they will learn about the word “remodelation.” The word is “remodel,” which is what happened to the new Family Resource Center.

The center, at 1725 E. Bilby Rd., actually seems pretty cool. Parents can take their kids to learn stuff like potty training, bubble play and fine arts as part of a program with the University of Arizona.

Another course teaches positive parenting. It’s amazing to me how little emphasis society puts on good parenting classes. Babies, it turns out, don’t come with instruction manuals.

The district doesn’t have any action items on the agenda.

Nor does the Sahuarita Unified School District Governing Board, which will meet Thursday and conduct rote business like approving minutes, payroll, items up for auction and student recognition.