PHOENIX – Today, Arizona Education Association (AEA) President Marisol Garcia released the following statement after Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Dewain Fox ruled in favor of AEA, the Arizona School Boards Association (ASBA), the Arizona School Administrators (ASA), Kathy Knecht, and four Arizona public school districts in a case that challenged Arizona’s systemic underfunding of capital needs for public schools:
“Today’s ruling is an important step in our union’s fight to get Arizona lawmakers to invest even the bare minimum in public schools,” said President Marisol Garcia, a middle school social studies teacher in the Isaac Elementary School District. “In the eight years since this case was filed, school safety issues have piled up as a result of years of short-sighted underinvestment in public education generally and in our school buildings and facilities specifically. Our members – librarians, custodians, cafeteria workers, classroom teachers, and more – stand alongside district leaders and other community advocates in this case because we care deeply about the conditions where we work and our students learn. We hope this ruling will be a wake-up call for lawmakers to do their jobs and fully fund the great public schools that Arizona deserves.
In today’s ruling, Judge Fox ruled that Arizona’s funding structure for the capital needs of public schools is unconstitutional and must be reformed, explaining: “After carefully and thoroughly reviewing the record . . . the Court concludes that the current public-school capital finance system does not meet the constitutional minimum standards established by the Arizona Supreme Court.”
In a joint statement, AEA and the other plaintiffs in this case wrote:
“Today’s decision declaring Arizona’s public school financing system unconstitutional is a historic victory for Arizona’s public-school students, as well as their teachers and staff. It will change the future for millions of students and their families. Our state’s constitution requires the legislature to fund our public schools. It’s time for our legislature to fulfill its constitutional obligation to fund public schools in every corner of Arizona so that all students, whether or not they live in a wealthy area, can receive a quality public education.”
Danny Adelman, the Executive Director of the Arizona Center for Law in the Public Interest, explained, “We presented mountains of evidence proving that the current system fails to provide even the most basic resources needed for a quality education. The state is failing to adequately or equitably fund our public schools. This is not only wrong, it’s unconstitutional.”
“This is an incredible victory,” said John Bullock of Osborn Maledon, who served as co-counsel with the Center for Law in the Public Interest. “Our clients have devoted their lives to educating students. But the State has set up a system that results in vast disparity between the haves and the have-nots. Whether schools can afford to have decent facilities should not depend on the amount of property wealth in the district. Unfortunately, due to a lack of state funding, that is exactly the system we have today.”
The case, Glendale Elementary School District et al. v. Arizona, was filed in 2017 by four Arizona public school districts (Glendale Elementary, Crane Elementary, Chino Valley Unified, and Elfrida Elementary), the Arizona Education Association, the Arizona School Boards Association, the Arizona School Administrators, and a taxpayer, Kathy Knecht. They sued the State of Arizona for failing to uphold the legislature’s constitutional obligation to provide a “general and uniform” system of public education. At several points throughout the case, AEA leadership testified about the consequences of inadequate capital funding for Arizona school districts. A full transcript of the most recent deposition is available upon request.
In the 1990s, the Arizona Supreme Court struck down the then-existing funding system as unconstitutional and established specific tests that any funding system must meet. The school plaintiffs in this case proved that the current system violates every part of those tests.