Report: Arizona school districts reroute taxpayer dollars intended for teacher pay
(The Center Square) – A new report finds Arizona school districts rerouted millions of taxpayer dollars towards replacing, instead of increasing, teacher salaries. A representative for the state’s school administrators said there’s more to it.
The 2018 “20×2020” plan of Arizona lawmakers aimed to send hundreds of millions of dollars to public schools to raise teacher salaries by 20%.
The plan contained the funding to make Arizona public school teacher salaries 26th highest in America, according to the Arizona Tax Research Association. This would be the 16th highest when adjusted for the cost of living in Arizona. However, a Goldwater Institute report said the money did not go to teachers, resulting in local teacher pay falling to 45th, according to Business Insider.
The Goldwater report shows that teachers missed out on 170 million dollars. This, the authors said, is not a new occurrence.
Since 1980, teacher salaries have fallen from 37% to 28% of district budgets. This means that the decrease in school spending on teacher salaries has been worsening for decades.
School districts reported that the average teacher salary increased 13.3%, but the Goldwater report shows that other previous automatic state funding for teacher pay funded the increase. The 20×2020 was intended to add to such funds, thus increasing teacher salaries, not replacing them.
In 2019-2020, 20×2020 funding only provided a 6%, or $3,000, raise in average teacher salaries, according to Goldwater, $7,000 less than the intended raise.
Although districts have increased operational spending every fiscal year between 2001 and 2020, average teacher salaries remained stagnant. District revenues per Arizona student increased 11.8% (adjusted for inflation), though districts only increased teacher salaries by just 0.5% during the same period, according to the report.
Meanwhile, administrative positions saw a 30% higher growth rate than students and teachers in that same time.
Arizona schools received $4 billion in federal grants in 2020. Despite requests from state legislators, the Arizona Department of Education refused to release approximately $85 million. State Superintendent Kathy Hoffman said those funds would not have prevented teacher layoffs and couldn’t necessarily be allocated as such. Schools did lay off teachers and other faculty.
By Sept. 2020, over 750 teachers resigned statewide. The Arizona School Personnel Administrators Association’s annual survey of human resources professionals found that the COVID-19 pandemic, in tandem with low pay and other issues, led to more than 3,000 vacant teacher positions, leaving 78% of positions unfilled or staffed by someone who didn’t meet standard requirements.
A representative with ASPAA responded to the report Friday, saying parts of Goldwater’s report took measurements in a vacuum. Justin Wing, ASPAA data analyst, said the 20% pay increase was more complicated because it didn’t account for annual teacher pay increase that would have occurred absent the plan. He added that costs of teacher pension contributions as well as increasing health care costs affected the total amount districts were able to afford educator pay increases. The state’s minimum wage increase, Wing said, took a significant chunk out of district.
Voters approved Proposition 208 in the 2020 General Election. If it survives a court challenge to its constitutionality, it will impose a 3.5% marginal tax increase on individual filers making more than $250,000 annually. That tax revenue would go to increases in public teacher salaries and other educational expenses.
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