The Arizona Department of Education warned state lawmakers this week that it would be unable to distribute billions of dollars in state and federal funding for schools if the state doesn’t give it $17.6 million for its data systems.
State schools Superintendent Diane Douglas and the department have been sounding the alarm since the release of Gov. Doug Ducey’s budget proposal earlier this year. The proposal did not include any money to maintain the department’s information-technology programs.
One of the Department of Education’s chief responsibilities is calculating and administering $10 billion in local, state and federal funding for Arizona public schools. Every calculation and transaction surrounding Arizona school funding goes through the 100-plus programs used by the Education Department.
In a letter sent last month to school administrators, Douglas said “schools will not be able to receive their state aid payments” without the money to maintain the department’s data programs.
The $17.6 million would pay for data maintenance, 40 programmers and an ongoing transition to replace antiquated software.
Douglas and Education Department officials said they were surprised to see that the governor’s proposal — unveiled almost a month ago — did not include any IT funding.
Since then, Douglas and Education Department officials have tried to convey to state budget gatekeepers the importance of sustaining the programs that they say drive Arizona school funding.
Stefan Swiat, spokesman for the Department of Education, told The Arizona Republic on Thursday that the department has not received any assurances from either the Governor’s Office or state lawmakers that they would be getting the money.
Swiat said the department has relied on “one-time funding” to support IT maintenance in previous years. The amount they have received has varied in recent years, though Swiat said “this is the first time that we have been zeroed out” by the state, a development he called “baffling” partly because the governor’s budget included IT funding for other state agencies.
Daniel Ruiz, spokesman for Ducey, said in an email Thursday that the Governor’s Office has met several times with the Department of Education about its IT-funding request, “and we will continue our discussions with them throughout the budget development process.”
Schools use various data programs to report information — such as daily student attendance, enrollment and withdrawal transactions — to the state. The state then uses that information to determine things such as the amount of money schools will get for each student.
Michael Bradley, Douglas’ chief of staff, told members of the House and Senate appropriations committees this week that without any IT money, the department won’t be able to pay programmers and “things shut down.”
“There’s no prettier way to say that,” Bradley said. “We’ve already lost two of our programmers. … We’ve told them, ‘Please don’t panic that you’re zeroed out,’ but they’re finding other jobs.”
The state Department of Education has spent $38 million in recent years on a transition to a new student-enrollment reporting system, AzEDS, which the department said gives more accurate funding calculations. Arizona school finance is largely determined by student enrollment.
Some state lawmakers on the appropriations committees, such as state Rep. Heather Carter, R-Cave Creek, expressed support for the department’s IT-funding request.
“I value this data system a great deal and realize that it requires investment from the state to continue to keep it working and improving because we need good, accurate data in a timely manner to make policy decisions,” Carter said.
