Schools in Arizona, specifically charter schools that sprung up since 2006, got too much money from the state, and now a court says they can keep it.
Judge Dean Fink of the Superior Court in Maricopa County, Ariz., issued an order on Feb 3 barring the state’s Education Department from asking schools to refund money that they received in error, the Arizona Daily Star reports.
The issue has been years in the making, and that’s part of the basis for Judge Fink’s ruling.
Voters approved a 0.6-percent increase in the sales tax in 2000 as part of Proposition 301. The extra money was put into a “classroom site” fund, designed to increase pay for public school teachers. The law put the Education Department in charge of dividing the money up to the schools, including charter schools, based on the number of students at each school. This is a typical method for allocating government money among the schools in a state.
But when the recession started affecting sales tax revenues, the classroom site fund was shorted in order to compensate for shortfalls in other budget areas. This started in 2006 and continued for a few years until revenue started meeting expectations once again.
During the shortage, all schools got less money than they were supposed to receive. And when the shortage ended, the Education Department went about making up for the lost revenue by overpaying schools. This practice started two years ago and continues today.
This is where the errors occurred. The (over-)allocation formula starting in 2011 is, of course, based on 2011 enrollments, but the shortages that the funds address occurred based on enrollments in 2006 and following. Some schools receiving compensatory funding didn’t even exist in 2006, yet they’re being compensated for shortages.
The court even agreed that the payments were incorrect. Some schools are getting more and some less, and the dollar amounts at traditional public school aren’t high. At charter schools, though, where enrollment increased substantially between 2006 and 2011, the state overpaid by about $5.9 million, the suit claims.
But ultimately, Judge Fink ruled, the overpayments were made pursuant to a valid law, and it would be unfair to current students at the schools to take money away after so many years.
“Under the department’s interpretation, the effect of a shortfall is felt not by those pupils who benefited from the original excess funding, [but] by a new cohort who received no benefit yet [must] now suffer the detriment,” the East Valley Tribune quoted the ruling as saying.
