PHOENIX (AP) - Gov. Doug Ducey is moving ahead with his plans to overhaul Arizona’s school finance laws by filling out a panel he created by executive order to come up with recommend changes.
Ducey on Friday named himself to lead his “Classrooms First Initiative Council” that starts meeting next month. Its final recommendations are due by the end of the year.
The other 11 members include state schools chief Diane Douglas and the head of the state Board of Education, Greg Miller. Miller and Douglas have been at odds over control of the board’s staff.
Most of the remaining members are school administrators. A teacher and Ducey’s education adviser round out the list.
“The council’s charge is to develop a funding formula that recognizes and rewards performance, efficiency and innovation through flexible distribution of funds for every successful education delivery model,” Ducey said in a statement. “Our goal is to align funding to student achievement, and with that as our target, we will shift the focus to the increased spending in the classroom.”
The state budgets $3.9 billion in general fund money for K-12 schools in a complex formula that includes basic school aid, transportation money and other specific funding. Federal dollars round out total school funding that nears $10 billion.
Ducey has focused on getting more money into classrooms. An auditor general’s report for 2013 shows schools spent 54 percent of their available operating cash on classroom instruction, more than 7 percentage points below the national average.
Schools in Arizona have higher energy, transportation, food service, counseling and other expenses than the national average, but administrative costs are less.
Ducey also named several organizations to provide technical and policy assistance to the panel. They include the Goldwater Institute, the Reason Foundation and the Arizona School Boards Association.
Last week, Ducey held a “leadership summit” where he laid the political groundwork for making major changes in the state’s school system.
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