A bill touted by Republican leadership as the largest increase to public education in 15 years is being opposed by the some in the education community because they say it does more harm than good.

“I call it ‘The Good, the Bad and the Ugly,’ and there’s way too much bad in it to be any good,” said Rep. Linda Lopez, D-29. She is also a board member of the Sunnyside Unified School District in Tucson. “It’s not the answer to the problems we have with our system.”

But Rep. Tom Boone, R-4, the sponsor of H2830, says the bill will provide an average funding increase of 6.5 percent to each school district, save property owners almost $100 million in taxes and put all school districts on equal footing.

“What we’re doing is leveling the playing field,” he said.

The bill would create a second funding system for schools and give districts a choice of which one to use.

Currently, school districts receive $3,001 per student in basic funding, an amount that increases 2 percent each year for inflationary costs under the voter-approved Proposition 301.

A handful of school districts — 27 of the state’s 227 — also receive extra funding under the career ladder program, in which the state provides an extra 5.5 percent of the district’s budget capacity, which must be used to increase teacher salaries.

About half of the districts also take advantage of the excess utilities program, which allows them to levy a property tax to cover utility costs in excess of the statutory baseline. Under Proposition 301, the ability of districts to levy a tax for excess utilities expires at the end of the 2009 fiscal year.

H2830, which passed Mr. Boone’s Appropriations B Committee Feb. 21 by an 8-4 vote, would remove the competitive advantage he says the districts that employ career ladder enjoy. He said the effect of the program is that those districts can pay teachers 10- to 12 percent more than other districts. The bill “corrects” that, he said, by giving the other districts a 5.5 percent increase in funding, though without mandating it be spent only on teacher pay.

It also removes the strings from the funding given to districts under career ladder, allowing them to spend it however they want.

Excess utility funding

The bill also wraps excess utility funding into the new formula. On average, excess utility funding is about 4 percent of the budgets of the districts it affects. Because the average per-district increase under H2830 is greater than that, Mr. Boone says districts that opt to use the new funding system would cover their utility overages and then some. He also said it would allow districts to begin to reduce their utility usage and spend the savings elsewhere.

Districts that do not take advantage of the H2830 formula would lose out on the opportunity to recoup that excess utility money once the ability to levy that tax expires.

Ms. Lopez said the bill would cause career ladder districts — like the one whose board she sits on — to lose the funding they use to recruit and retain teachers.

“The districts that are behind this [bill] are districts that don’t have career ladder,” she said. “What do they care about what happens to districts with career ladder? They don’t.”

Mr. Boone says he understands why career ladder districts are irked that they are losing their advantage, but said those districts will still receive the extra 5.5 percent of funding they’ve always received under career ladder.

“We’re going to pay for it, 100 percent what [districts] are getting right now,” he said. “To take it to the point where [critics] say they’re losing career ladder is where I draw the line.”

Lobbyist: Districts to lose transportation costs

Chuck Essigs, a lobbyist for the Arizona Association of School Business Officials, says the plan doesn’t live up to the hype.

“This plan is being advertised as a 6.5 percent increase in school funding and a $100 million tax cut — it really isn’t,” he said.

The $123 million in new permanent funding the bill would provide to public and charter schools — based on last fiscal year’s costs — ends up being only about $44 million, he said, once the cost of charter schools, a transportation funding cap and $30 million for a building maintenance fund are taken out of the equation.

Under the proposal, some districts that currently receive excess utility funding will receive temporary money. When that money disappears, so, too, will the increase in basic funding for many of those districts, Mr. Essigs said.

Also, the majority of districts will be losing money used for transportation costs because the bill caps them, he said.

In total, Mr. Essigs said there were about 80 districts with either a permanent decrease in funding after the temporary money is gone or whose increase is less than the amount lost because of the transportation cap.

Furthermore, he said not all districts will receive a property tax break and even those that do could see higher taxes because an increase in the basic funding level would allow districts with existing budget overrides to increase their budgets more, thereby raising the property taxes.

“I think I have as much issue with the method they they’re using to do this as I do with what they’re doing,” Mr. Essigs said.