More than 20 school districts in Maricopa County went to voters for funding measures in Tuesday’s election. While most of them saw victories with their bonds and/or overrides, a handful did not. Now, those districts that saw a loss will have to find ways to cut between hundreds of thousands of dollars to millions of dollars from their budget next school year.
While some school districts asked individually for bonds or overrides, a few also asked for both.
A bond typically goes towards buildings and infrastructure, like a new school or renovations, as well as buses and more. Money from overrides usually goes toward staffing, salaries, as well as extra activities and electives for students, such as music and art. If voted upon by taxpayers, overrides allow school districts to increase their maintenance and operations budget up to a maximum of 15% above their current funding.
The Tolleson Union High School District, Higley Unified School District as well as Saddle Mountain Unified were among the few that are seeing voters reject their school funding measures. They’re now working toward figuring out what to cut next school year.
For Saddle Mountain Unified, Superintendent Dr. Michael Winters said they’ll have to reduce their maintenance and operations budget by $800,000 next fiscal year. The district’s bond was also rejected by voters.
"I've got 3 ‘Ds’: Disappointed, disheartened and devastated,” Winters told ABC15.
For a smaller school district, Winters said they may have to reduce positions. Without that nearly $800,000, they’ll also have to think about putting fees on programs that are currently free to families.
“There are some very upfront things that are just going to either be eliminated or cost will be passed along to families. For example, full day kindergarten, we can no longer operate full day kindergarten at no cost to parents,” Winters said.
As for the bond for a new school, Winters said some of their campuses may become overcrowded as they’re seeing new housing development pop up.
“Ultimately, at the end of the day, it affects our kids and that's really, really sad,” Winters said.
In the Tolleson Union High School District, Superintendent Jeremy Calles said they’ll have to cut out $5.3 million from their maintenance and override budget next year.
"They do have an immediate impact onto our system. It's disappointing because we are making significant progress, you can see it reflected on our letter grades,” Calles said, adding that their school is currently a ‘B’ rated school district and all of their schools are either ‘As’ or ‘Bs’ in the newly released scores.
Calles’ district has been under fire for making a financial deal to help the Isaac Elementary School District, which was under financial distress earlier this year. Students from the Isaac Elementary School District don’t typically feed into Tolleson Union.
Since then, lawmakers and some community members have spoken out against Calles and the district’s governing board, alleging financial mismanagement. In October, lawmakers voted and ordered an audit of the district. Calles previously said they would cooperate with the audit and have already started that process.
Calles believes the controversy surrounding all of this played a part in the district’s bond and override failing.
“The early returns show that we still have the same number of ‘yes' votes we typically experience. The increase that we're seeing is the ‘no’ votes, who we believe typically don't vote in off-cycle elections,” Calles said, and was confirmed by ABC15 looking at previous election numbers.
Since 2020, the district has asked for a bond measure four times, three of which were approved. This year’s bond failed, coming after criticisms of an $80 million "indoor field house,” or "domed stadium,” that was approved in last year’s bond. Rep. Matt Gress, who has been at the center of the dispute with Calles, urged the district to stop work on the stadium.
“It has a lot of benefits. It was going to give us a venue that’s big enough to hold some of our staff for some of our all-staff events and it would give us a place to hold our graduations,” Calles said.
With the rejection of bonds and overrides in several school districts, the respective school leaders will start making final decisions on what to cut for the next school year. Both Winters and Calles say they may go back to voters about the overrides next year and that will require a governing board vote to do so.
