Nearly a year after a critical public school funding plan expired, there is still no clear path to reviving it and teachers are opposed to the proposal being tentatively pushed by Republican lawmakers.
Last year marked the end of Proposition 123, which pulled in $300 million in annual revenue for K-12 public schools for a decade after voters narrowly approved the school funding boost in a special election.
The temporary increase was designed to settle a lawsuit that accused the state of failing to fund public education in line with yearly inflation rates. Prop. 123 made up for that by increasing the amount of money set aside from the state's land trust for public schools, raising the distribution rate from 2.5% to 6.9%.
But that rate reverted back to the lower threshold in June, and Republican lawmakers have so far been unable to agree on how to renew the funding plan.
What are Republicans considering?
Three separate proposals have been introduced this legislative session to send voters a replacement for Prop. 123, but only one of them has inched forward, signaling a continued lack of consensus among Republicans around how to extend the fund. Multiple efforts to resolve the problem over the past two years have faced a similarly lukewarm response.
When an agreement couldn't be reached last year ahead of the deadline, Republicans diverted money from the state general fund to ensure K-12 schools wouldn't have to scramble to make cuts or layoff staff to make up the difference -- but there's no guarantee that the legislature will continue to do that.
The only fix that has made any legislative progress would restore the 6.9% distribution rate until 2036, but it reserves the money for teacher raises, taking away the ability of school districts to decide how best to spend it. And only teachers who work full-time, spend a majority of that time on classroom instruction and meet or exceed performance requirements would be eligible for increases in pay. Some variation of that plan has been proposed for the past two years and failed each time.
The latest iteration is currently stalled in the state Senate and at risk of falling short of an upcoming legislative hearing deadline at the end of March that could kill it.
How is the public education community responding?
On top of facing a legislative deadline, the plan is opposed by public education groups and Gov. Katie Hobbs, a Democrat who consistently sides with teacher advocacy organizations. Republicans hold a majority in the state legislature and don't need Hobbs' signature or the approval of the public education community to put a renewal plan on the ballot, but opponents hope to wrangle a more appealing outcome behind-the-scenes as budget negotiations ramp up.
More than a dozen teachers gathered at the state Capitol on Wednesday to push for just that, urging Republicans to include school support staff like librarians, counselors and crossing guards in the pay increase.
Anastasia Jimenez, the president of the Phoenix Union Classified Employees Association, called support staff the "glue" that holds schools together and said the legislature needs to invest in the entire team that helps ensure students have a successful learning experience.
"I support raising teacher pay, but you cannot strengthen Arizona's public schools by excluding the very people who make teaching and learning a possibility," she said. "When you say teachers matter, but the people who feed students, keep campuses safe, transport students, assist classrooms, prepare facilities and provide health services don't matter, you're building inequity into the law.
"You are telling tens of thousands workers across Arizona that their contributions aren't worth investing in."
Marisol Garcia, who heads the Arizona Education Association, the state's largest teachers union, criticized the GOP for backing legislation that is hostile to her group and public schools while failing to revive Prop. 123. While the funding plan hasn't progressed, multiple Republican-backed proposals that crackdown on teachers for what they teach or how politically engaged they are racing forward. One bill bans teachers from striking against their school district and another punishes teachers or librarians with a class 5 felony for referring students to books that are considered "sexually explicit." And GOP lawmakers are pushing a ballot referral to make it harder for the union to exist.
"We are done with being politically attacked, we are done with being scapegoated for things that we are not in control of and we are demanding real investment in our schools," Garcia said.
For the past three years, Garcia's group has advocated for a Prop. 123 plan that benefits a wider array of public school employees and doesn't hinge on performance reviews. Doing so, she said, unfairly penalizes new teachers and ignores the fact that reviews can be affected by who is conducting the evaluation or the makeup of that year's classroom.
Despite the union's repeated objections to the Republican plan, it hasn't moved to place its own version on the ballot. That's because doing so is a costly and time-intensive process that involves legal considerations, signature-gathering, door-knocking and voter education campaigns.
And this year the group has its hands full heading a ballot initiative aimed at reforming the state's private school voucher system, along with strategizing how to defeat the GOP referral that would jeopardize the union's future activities.
Even so, Garcia stopped short of saying her group would advise Arizonans to vote down the Prop. 123 plan being considered if it ends up on the ballot in its current form. There's still time to revise it into something the public education community can support, she pointed out.
"There's plenty of time to have good discussions," she said. "And I think this should be a bipartisan, non-political issue. Kids are going to unsafe schools with educators who are leaving in droves. This is not a red or blue issue; this is a kid issue."
Where is the GOP plan going?
Sen. JD Mesnard, who sponsored the only proposal that has seen some movement through the state legislature, said the likelihood that voters get a chance to weigh in on the future of Prop. 123 this fall is still uncertain.
"All these competing measures and the dynamics of the budget and various interest groups paying attention out there -- how it all plays out, I have no idea," he said.
He noted that there are competing factions in the legislature who are pushing for their own versions of what should end up on the ballot.
Some, according to the Chandler Republican, want a clean extension that mirrors the original plan passed a decade ago, without new directives forcing public schools to spend the money in a specific way. Others want a plan that renews Prop. 123 while at the same time enshrining school choice protections, which would effectively block efforts from Democrats or the teachers union to overhaul the state's private school voucher system. Mesnard himself advocated for that last year, though the effort never materialized into concrete legislation.
Yet another group wants to use some of the revenue Prop. 123 pulls from the state land trust to restore the money Republicans earmarked for schools from the state general fund, when they failed to renew the funding plan before it expired.
Until Prop. 123 is revived, the state will continue to be on the hook for the missing revenue. And Hobbs is pushing for a Prop. 123 plan that isn't limited to teacher raises, but instead pays for school facility needs and increases overall public education spending by $271.3 million.
In the end, Republicans have the most influence over what shows up on the ballot. And despite some intraparty splintering, Mesnard said that a focus on teacher pay and an insistence on strict rules on how the money is spent is shared by all of them.
"I consider it exceedingly unlikely that a measure would ever go to the ballot that is just simple: 'Education funding, do what you want,'" he said. "I would bet everything I own that's never going to happen. Republicans won't go for just a blank check."
Mesnard added that funnelling the revenue in Prop. 123 toward a specific goal also ensures voters will back it. Arizonans overwhelmingly approve of public education investments. A 2024 survey from the Center for the Future of Arizona found that 79% of likely voters would support increased funding for K-12 schools.
But Mesnard pointed out that the original Prop. 123 won by a razor thin margin, and said that focusing on teacher pay would help a renewal sail to passage. Just 51% of Arizona voters backed Prop. 123 in 2016, and Mesnard warned that overcomplicating the referral would jeopardize its passage.
"If you pick something that's less appealing to the voters, you put it all at risk," he said.
While Mesnard's proposal is the one that's made the most progress, whether it reaches the finish line, undergoes revisions or is entirely upended by a different version remains uncertain. He said conversations are currently being had behind-the-scenes, but no plan is yet set in stone.
"(The) powers that be are having conversations pursuing these various possible categories of a (Proposition) 123 renewal and I'm waiting to see how it all shakes out," he said.