School boards across the state are panning a commission’s ideas to combine many of Arizona’s elementary and high school districts into K-12 unified districts.
Formal comments submitted by many of the affected districts’ boards said unification would kill local accountability without delivering on expectations of saving taxpayer dollars or improving student achievement.
“Students are not just attendance numbers, families are not demographic statistics and teachers and staff are not fungible commodities,” according to the elected leaders of the Madison Elementary School District, a 117-year-old Phoenix district.
Numerous comments warned of uncertainties regarding specifics on teacher pay, tax rates, districts’ debts and other circumstances.
“It is a high-stakes gamble that will affect countless students, parents and teachers for years to come,” the Glendale Union High School District’s board members said in their joint response.
The state School District Redistricting Commission was appointed to implement a 2005 law calling for recommendations to merge many of Arizona’s 15 high school and 108 elementary districts into new unified districts.
The commission has initially proposed unifications of districts in nine of the state’s 15 counties, typically suggesting mergers of a high school district with several “feeder” elementary districts.
However, alternatives were offered in some cases. In the case of Glendale Union, the high school district could be either merged with two feeders to become one unified or cut in half to form two new unified districts.
Phoenix Union High School District would see a larger carve-up. That megadistrict would be divided into five parts of at least two high schools. Each part would be combined with one or more elementary districts to form new unified districts.
Disricts comment
Now that the districts around the state have provided their comments on the commission’s preliminary report, the 13-member commission is to submit a final version by Dec. 31.
Recommended unifications would be submitted in November 2008 to voters in the districts involved. Rejection by voters would kill a proposal.
If most of the district boards that submitted comments have their way, the state commission won’t even put unification proposals involving those districts to voters.
President Mary Duarte of Picacho Elementary signed a letter with fellow board members saying that unification with other small Pinal County districts would be devastating.
“Our reputation of educational quality and parent satisfaction would be eliminated overnight,” the Picacho officials wrote.
Phoenix Union said the proposed carve-up into five unified districts would dilute minorities’ voting rights and create new districts that might not have enough property wealth to provide for bond issues or budget overrides without prohibitively expensive tax increases.
“The long-term effect of this disparity would be economic segregation,” Phoenix Union warned.
Some districts’ leaders cautiously said unification proposals had merit or were at least worth further exploration.
Washington Elementary board President Kate McGee wrote a letter saying one of the merger plans for her Phoenix-area district could put more money in classrooms, provide flexibility in programming and help address inequities in salaries.
“I do not view the redistricting legislation as a fix for broken districts. I see it as a way to make two great districts even better,” she said.
Nine Yuma County districts’ board presidents and superintendents signed a joint letter proposing that the commission abandoned its two unification proposals and instead just ask voters only whether the districts should consider unifying.
Then, under the districts’ joint proposal, they could take five years to figure what to do and how.
The six counties with no districts proposed for unification are Apache, Coconino, Gila, Graham, Greenlee and Navajo. 
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