District considering bond issue

Needs money for capital improvements

Posted

Despite the passing of Prop. 123 last year, Arizona public schools — especially K – 12 — continue to struggle in the wake of further legislative budget cuts to their capital funds. These funds are typically used to pay for large-scale infrastructure repairs, school buses and technology upgrades. Many districts are turning to bond and override proposals to pay for desperately needed infrastructure upgrades, and the Page Unified School District has its own bond proposition in the works that could be on Page area voters’ ballot sheets this upcoming November.
PUSD’s new Business Manager Kevin Dickerson, who has been the primary force in assembling the nuts and bolts of a PUSD bond plan, said his chief goals in the process have been to put together a comprehensive list of capital needs for the district and obtain community input.
During a special meeting at the high school between PUSD administration, members of city government and varying other community stakeholders, Dickerson told those in attendance he wanted the community to be as well-informed on the bond and the current state of Arizona schools as possible.
“A bond puts the financial responsibility on the community in a case where the state has shown it won’t do it,” he said. “This isn’t the district spoon-feeding information, it’s about transparency and understanding what our community will support and what our kids need.”
Before the bond can be put up to the taxpayer vote, it still has to be approved by the district’s governing board no later than June 2017. It would be the district’s first bond proposal since 2013, when the last attempt failed.
It will also fall on the heels of a Coconino Community College override attempt in the 2016 election, which also did not pass.
To understand why PUSD and another 150 of the 230 districts throughout the state feel the need to request a bond, it helps to look at how legislators have recently been funding public schools.
How we got here
Arizona voters narrowly passed Prop. 123 in spring 2016 — a “good faith” settlement in response to a more than three-year long legal battle between Arizona schools and state government — that will inject unpaid inflation-adjustment rates back into Arizona public schools. Specifically, the money increases an annual injection of funds made from profitable returns in the state’s land trust fund until 2026.
However, Prop. 123 only brought baseline per pupil funding back to levels in previous years.
Schools’ capital fund budgets, which have been continually slashed by decisions made at the legislative level, are, in fact, likely getting hit even harder under Gov. Doug Ducey’s newest budget proposal.
When the recession hit in 2008, legislators pumped the brakes on several laws, which included Prop. 301 and Prop. 100 — voter-passed state statutes that slightly increased Arizona sales tax to inject more money into public schools.
While Prop. 123 helped restore some of that lost money, many Arizona schools are still floundering in their capital expense budgets.
Capital funding for districts, known as District Additional Assistance, has been cut by 85 percent since 2007, with some of the heaviest cuts occurring in the last year.

Despite baseline per pupil funding recovering somewhat, which includes maintenance and operational costs, capital funds are categorized differently and distributed by a formula based on population on a per district basis.
Specifically, Page Unified School District — a district that has lost a per-year average of 300 students in the last decade, is receiving a fraction of its capital allowance when compared to the last 10 years.
An all time low for the district, next year’s budget likely leaves only $168,000 for capital expenses.
“I don’t like that,” Dickerson stated bluntly. “To give an idea of how low that is, a new roof for the CAB will cost $1 million and a new school bus is $178,000. That number does not stretch very far.”

The nuts and bolts
Dickerson describes a public school bond as essentially a loan on which “the voters agree to pay off for the district,” and with the trust the money will genuinely benefit student learning. That “paying off” usually translates to increased taxes for the voters.
So why is capital funding so important for a district’s health, and therefore the health of a student, he asked those at the meeting.
By Arizona law, a bond can only pay for things like new buses, furniture, kitchen equipment, infrastructure upgrades such as new roofs or parking lots, HVAC units, phones, alarm systems and computer and technology upgrades. Some of the things a bond cannot pay for include teacher salaries, textbooks, white fleet (maintenance) vehicles and maintenance and operations costs, which includes utility bills.
Although the district received upwards of $570,000 as part of Prop. 123’s first distribution of money last year, Dickerson said it’s pennies on the dollar — millions more were still lost during the budget-wide slashes. The same slashes have also forced the district to consolidate classrooms and implement small-scale layoffs.
Most of that first injection of money went to teacher salaries, as it did in many Arizona school districts.
Dickerson said current high-priority targets for a potential bond to pay for are a new roof and rework of the cultural arts building, a steady replacement of school buses, general infrastructure repairs to all PUSD schools, and 1:1 electronic devices, like tablets or laptops, for high school students.
“I want everyone to note the reoccurring theme here: replacement… We’re not going for the moon; we’re going for basic needs for the district,” he said.
Dickerson put special emphasis on the technology upgrades for students, saying he was looking at Google Chromebooks so each high school student could have their own device, saying “these days, technology is education.”
Dickerson also noted how Page’s school buses are some of the most traveled in the country and rack up mileage exponentially faster than buses that serve metropolitan areas. The current fleet is desperately in need of a staggered replacement plan, he said.
The district has been working with the Phoenix-based architecture firm Orcutt Winslow to assess the immediate infrastructure needs of the district, which include new roofs and furniture for all the schools.
Although he was adamant that the current bond outline was a “living-breathing document,” the working figure he and those in attendance evaluated was right around $18 million. Dickerson commented it likely could be lower if the school board approves it, which will then require it to become finalized within 30 days.
Dickerson concluded that with assessment values on Coconino County properties going up this year, and with a lower PUSD student count than in previous years, two factors which will work in taxpayers’ favor, the tax burden for voters could potentially be low or nonexistent.

Another lawsuit in
the making
And because Arizona schools are continuing to feel the effects of waning capital budgets, another lawsuit is in the works with many of the same school districts that were in the previous one resulting in Prop. 123.
Ducey and Arizona lawmakers have proposed an additional $98 million this year to put toward teacher salaries, kindergarten programs, low income school districts and excelling districts. He says the core of their education plan is to close the education gap between low income and minority students in Arizona schools.
Part of that figure includes an additional $17 million to the School Facilities Board — an entity districts can appeal to for grant money for building maintenance.
However, Ducey’s plan still continues the trend of hundreds of millions of dollars in capital budget cuts.
Two schools in Glendale were shut down last year after it was found structural deficiencies were posing a safety risk to students and teachers. An Arizona Republic investigation also led to their finding nearly 30 percent of all Arizona school buses failed basic safety standards in 2015, primarily due to maintenance issues.
In addition, 24 of 28 school districts in Maricopa County passed bonds in last year’s election — a wildly disproportionate rate when compared in previous years. Some of those bonds were upwards of $200 million in cases where district’s needed a new building. Almost all reported bond monies would be used to replace school buses.
Education leaders say they have warned for years that schools’ infrastructure would reach critical mass soon unless changes were made at the legislative level to increase capital budgets.