Dive Brief:
- On Tuesday, negotiations over school funding between the Arizona's legislature and a coalition of school districts and education organizations broke down.
- The group brought a lawsuit against the legislature for failing to meet school funding needs, and if the court rules in their favor, the state could be forced to come up with as much as $1.3 billion in funds for schools.
- The state courts ordered the two sides to try and craft an agreement to avoid further court intervention.
Dive Insight:
In the past several years, a number of states have seen court cases related to insufficient school funding. In Kansas and Washington, the courts ordered the states to rethink and boost the funds available for schools. But legislatures in both states have been reluctant to raise taxes in order to make up the difference. A similar dynamic is playing out in Arizona, where Republican-controlled chambers have been reluctant to bring in more school revenues through taxes.
“In 2012, voters rejected a plan to raise taxes to fund education by an overwhelming margin. There clearly is no interest to increase taxes for this purpose. This proposal keeps faith with the voters by responsibly investing billions of dollars into Arizona’s classrooms without a tax hike,” Arizona House Speaker David Gowan told the Phoenix Business Journal. A similar ballot initiative to fund schools with an increase in taxes failed in Colorado last year.
Gowan and his state Senate counterpart have unveiled a plan that would reallocate some existing state funds and put more revenues from state lands towards schools. On the other hand, education groups have called for a slight sales tax increase along with reallocating resources.
Elsewhere, states struggled to raise enough revenue from non-tax sources to cover the deficits required.