Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Dewain D. Fox issued a ruling on Tuesday finding that the Arizona Legislature did not provide enough funding for public schools.
The decision in Glendale Elementary School District, et al. v. State of Arizona was the result of a lawsuit filed in 2017 by a group of school districts and left-leaning educational organizations. The Arizona Legislature intends to appeal to the Arizona Supreme Court.
The lawsuit alleged that the state shorted schools for capital funding for school maintenance, buses, textbooks, and technology for over 10 years. The school districts that sued were Chino Valley Unified, Elfrida Elementary, Crane Elementary, and Glendale Elementary.
The plaintiffs claimed that the funding violated Article XI, Section 1, of the Arizona Constitution, which states, “The legislature shall enact such laws as shall provide for the establishment and maintenance of a general and uniform public school system.” Since schools often use bonds and overrides to fund capital projects, the plaintiffs argued that poorer school districts lacked sufficient funds.
Fox claimed in his 114-page ruling that the schools couldn’t pay for these projects without bond or override funding, but failed to address alternative funding options, and how they spent the money on frivolous expenses instead, such as purchasing unnecessary new buildings while enrollment was shrinking. Much of his opinion consisted of photos of existing structures in need of repair.
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