Arizona lawmakers are considering whether the state should continue funding its recently launched school finance transparency portal.  

The portal launched in mid-February and serves as a one-stop destination where people can view school finance data for public school districts and charter schools. The website is operated by Allovue, a technology company that builds software tailored for K-12 finance. 

Lawmakers in the House of Representatives held an Appropriations Subcommittee on Budgetary Funding Formulas hearing March 9 to discuss the transparency portal. Rep. Matt Gress, R-Phoenix, said the portal helps Arizona residents more easily navigate finance data rather than sifting through numerous governing documents from before Allovue’s website launched.  

“This lack of transparency not only makes it difficult for taxpayers to hold their school leaders accountable, but it also creates opportunities for waste, fraud and abuse of public funds,” Gress said during the hearing.  

The Legislature funded the transparency project in 2022 with a $3 million appropriation to develop the portal. Funding is scheduled through fiscal year 2025 to total $6 million over the three years of funding.  

The portal includes total revenues generated by public and charter schools weighted by student count; total federal, state and local revenue; allocation of classroom site fund monies, amounts allocated for teacher pay and benefits; and student demographics academic achievement. Allovue CEO Jess Gardner made clear during the subcommittee hearing that the website shouldn’t be used to determine if a school’s spending is good or bad.  

“Financial data in and of itself is not a value assessment,” Gardner said. “You have to apply your own sense as a parent in terms of your own criteria or your sense as a legislator in terms of your criteria.”  

Some Democrats are less enthusiastic about the portal. Rep. Judy Schwiebert, D-Phoenix, asked Gardner why Allovue’s tool was necessary when all its data is already publicly available with school districts and the Department of Education.  

“Our schools report to elected school boards, they have websites with full information on them – all the financial records,” Schwiebert told the Arizona Capitol Times. “I’m not sure why we’re devoting so much more funding to that portal when really we desperately need that investment in our schools.” 

Rep. Nancy Gutierrez, D-Tucson, also told the Arizona Capitol Times she was concerned the tool could be used to attack certain schools or districts, particularly under the administration of Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Horne.  

“I would like (empowerment scholarship accounts) to be as transparent as the schools have to be because those are also public dollars,” Gutierrez said.  

Horne’s office recently established in early March a hotline that parents or residents can contact to report “inappropriate public school lessons that detract from teaching academic standards,” with an emphasis on seeking reports of lessons that focus on race or ethnicity, promote gender ideology, social emotional learning or inappropriate sexual content.  

Arizona School Administrators Executive Director Paul Tighe wrote in a text that the methods used in the finance transparency portal can lead to confusion when calculating pupil expenditures by district because the website includes bond and override dollars. Although he noted the association supports financial transparency. 

But Republicans say the finance transparency portal is helpful for their constituents. In an email to the Arizona Capitol Times, House Education Committee Chairwoman Rep. Beverly Pingerelli, R-Peoria, said she was pleased with the portal as it presents a lot of information that isn’t overwhelming to users – which Republicans argue was the case trying to pull the same information from various education sources. 

“Presently the information (from school districts) is very difficult to get to and requires a considerable amount of knowledge to understand. Reading complex tables on an annual financial report is not something we should expect of voters and parents. Putting the info in an easier format is the least we can do,” Pingerelli wrote in her email. 

Pingerelli also drafted a bill to expand the portal’s functionality. It would expand the data presented to include the number of full-time equivalent positions at each school, the average salary range for each type of position, each entry into the school district’s or charter school’s general ledger, money allocated for capital projects or facility expenses, and funding sources for each project. District budgets would also be available on the website under House Bill 2537. 

The bill was held in the House Education Committee earlier in the session and it likely won’t become law this year. In her email, Pingerelli also said she’d like to see more academic data in the portal with schools such as average ACT scores. 

“An academic portal that ties into this financial transparency portal that goes beyond the current A-F rating portal would be great,” she said.