{"id":18245,"date":"2025-06-27T05:31:09","date_gmt":"2025-06-27T05:31:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/18245\/"},"modified":"2025-06-27T05:31:09","modified_gmt":"2025-06-27T05:31:09","slug":"arizona-schools-dealing-with-funding-shortfall-as-budget-deadline-looms","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/18245\/","title":{"rendered":"Arizona schools dealing with funding shortfall as budget deadline looms"},"content":{"rendered":"

PHOENIX (AZFamily)<\/b> \u2014 As Arizona schools are serving up summer meals<\/a>, they\u2019re hoping to get served a little more money from the state soon.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think it\u2019s really a question of priority. Why are we prioritizing a private school voucher program instead of public schools that serve 90% of our kids,\u201d said Save Our Schools Arizona executive director Beth Lewis<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The Arizona Department of Education<\/a> is currently facing a $206 million shortfall<\/a> in basic state aid. Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Horne<\/a> says $45 million is from West-MEC estimations being off, $69 million from the Qasimyar v. Maricopa County<\/a> lawsuit, and $52 million from the ESA program<\/a>, among other reasons.<\/p>\n

\u201cSome people are going to try and blame ESAs but ESAs are only 25% of the problem,\u201d explained Horne.<\/p>\n

This shortfall has led to districts and charters getting only around 63% of their June payments so far. \u201cLarger districts can probably kind of cushion the blow a little bit, whereas small and especially rural school districts are really going to feel the pain,\u201d said Lewis.<\/p>\n

On Thursday evening, House and Senate Republicans announced<\/a> they had come to a budget negotiation agreement that includes supplemental funding for K-12 schools in Arizona, but the budget has not been signed by the governor as of Thursday night.<\/p>\n

\u201cThese are bills that have to be paid, and I feel confident that they will pass it,\u201d said Horne.<\/p>\n

An Arizona Department of Education spokesperson says the department will work as quickly as possible to pay that final 37% as soon as a budget is official, but Lewis says the last month is just a small piece of a bigger problem.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think that all of our districts and charters will be made whole. It doesn\u2019t mean that there weren\u2019t disruptions during the summer. But the other problem there is now we\u2019re prioritizing this backfilling of voucher funding, there\u2019s the backfilling of Prop 123 and so there\u2019s no new funding for K-12 schools,\u201d explained Lewis.<\/p>\n

Prop 123 is set to expire<\/a> on June 30. It was narrowly passed in 2016 by voters.<\/p>\n

If it expires, the distributions from the state land trust will go from 6.9% down to 2.5%. The 4.4% difference, more than $200 million annually, will still be paid to schools moving forward but will come from the state\u2019s general fund.<\/p>\n

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Copyright 2025 KTVK\/KPHO. All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"PHOENIX (AZFamily) \u2014 As Arizona schools are serving up summer meals, they\u2019re hoping to get served a little…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":18246,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5131],"tags":[5229,5643,1587,7182,17453,17452,17454,1589,7183,17456,17455,17451,67,586,132,5230,68,2969],"class_list":{"0":"post-18245","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-phoenix","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-arizona","10":"tag-az","11":"tag-azfamily","12":"tag-budget-shortfall","13":"tag-department-of-education","14":"tag-k-12-schools","15":"tag-phoenix","16":"tag-phoenix-news","17":"tag-save-our-schools","18":"tag-state-land-trust","19":"tag-tom-horne","20":"tag-united-states","21":"tag-united-states-of-america","22":"tag-unitedstates","23":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","24":"tag-us","25":"tag-usa"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/114753692491887517","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18245","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18245"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18245\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/18246"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18245"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18245"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18245"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}