The Legislature’s decision to reduce the amount of money spent to repair and maintain public school buildings is legal, the Arizona Court of Appeals has ruled.

The 3-0 decision, released Aug. 14, is a blow to several school districts that had challenged the Legislature’s decision over three fiscal years to reduce the amount of money dedicated to school repairs under part of the Students FIRST legislation enacted in 1998.

The Students FIRST bill was designed to replace previous legislation that, according to the state Supreme Court, failed to meet the state Constitution’s requirement that Arizona provide a “general and uniform public school system.” In a landmark 1994 decision, Roosevelt v. Bishop, the state’s high court struck down the use of local property taxes to fund education because the great disparities that existed in property values from one district to another created disparities in educational funding and opportunities.

After a string of attempts to change the school funding formula, the Legislature in 1998 passed Students FIRST, which created three funds out of state sales tax revenue. The Building Renewal Fund created a formula for providing money to keep school buildings up to minimum standards.

However, once the economy slowed down and state revenue began to decline in recent years, the Legislature reduced the amount of money for the Building Renewal Fund that the formula would have raised by a total of $178 million through the 2003 fiscal year.

The Roosevelt Elementary School District, one of the plaintiffs in the Roosevelt v. Bishop case, again sued, claiming that the failure to fully fund the Building Replacement Fund again violated the state Constitution. Although a Superior Court judge last year agreed with the plaintiffs, the state Court of Appeals has reversed that decision. —