Arizona School Children Face Rough Year Ahead
RSSBy Lauren Barack -- School Library Journal, 04/27/2010
Arizona’s children will face public school next fall with fewer teachers, shorter kindergarten days, and higher costs to join sports teams—even if voters approve a 1 percent sales tax increase on May 18.
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Arizona State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Horne. |
Requests by phone and e-mail to interview Arizona State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Horne were not returned.
However, if voters do pass the sales tax increase, which would temporarily rise from 5.6 percent to 6.6 percent for three years, school districts from the Tucson Unified School District to Mesa Public Schools will still lose $280 million collectively for the 2010-2011 school year, says Hartsell. Gone is state aid for full-day kindergarten classes, as well as subsidized sports programs, requiring parents to pay about $100 per student for team activities, he adds.
About 3,000 positions in the public schools will be eliminated as well, which could balloon up to 11,000 if the state cannot increase revenue from the additional sales tax. Hartsell says school libraries already are being affected as librarians have lost jobs in many districts, and teachers and aides are trying to maintain collections.
“They try to keep books in the right order,” he says. “But they can’t teach how to best utilize materials.”
What concerns Hartsell and many educators in the state is that asking for Arizona’s citizens to pay more, even one cent, is difficult during such stressful economic times. And worse, linking funding for public schools to what people buy is not, in Hartsell’s opinion, the best way to ensure a solid educational system.
“Right now, we’re far too reliant on consumption taxes, and lacking a solid base on income and property taxes,” he says. “By relying on consumption taxes, it’s become a very volatile environment for our schools.”
