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The process behind approving new school facilities and why not every school gets what it wants

By Mia Osmonbekov

February 3, 2025

Arizona public school enrollment has remained relatively stagnant after a slight post-pandemic dip in 2021, with just over a million K-12 students enrolled in public and charter schools across the state.

Where they’ve enrolled, however, continues to be in flux; new schools have been approved in central Phoenix and Deer Valley, while school boards in south Phoenix and Paradise Valley made the difficult decision to close a number of facilities due to low enrollment.

But who decides what will close and where money for new facilities will be invested? While closing schools is a local matter delegated to school board members, securing money to expand is a lengthy, bureaucratic process that critics say is due for an overhaul.

What’s the process?

When district public schools look to expand, they submit an application to a state governing board within the Arizona Department of Administration. The School Facilities Oversight Board reviews applications from schools to add new facilities, and bases its decision in part by examining districtwide enrollment growth or decline. Consequently, if a school’s enrollment numbers are up but its district’s numbers are down, it likely won’t receive funding for new facilities.

Declining K-12 enrollment in some public schools is already affecting districts across Arizona. Five schools in the Roosevelt School Elementary District will close at the end of the school year, and Paradise Valley Unified School District closed three due to declining enrollment last year.

Schools that submit expansion plans also go through a rigorous two to three-year process before even starting construction, according to Rebecca Perrera, the deputy assistant director at the School Facilities Division.

“There’s the two checks: there’s approval when we’re looking at the capital plan — are they projected to grow? — and then before they break ground,” Perrera said. “There’s a lot of touch points in between there in terms of reviewing the design of the school.”

Critics question enrollment projections

That’s why Glenn Farley, the director of policy and research at the conservative-leaning Common Sense Institute, said that the school financing system based on optimistic enrollment projections is “grossly overbuilt” in a presentation to the Arizona Senate Education Committee.

“We cannot expect in perpetuity to effectively insulate the system from these declines by throwing more money in,” Farley said in reference to funding public schools. “We designed and built a system counting on 2% plus annual enrollment growth in K-12, and we funded and perpetuated that system ever since.”

In a separate interview with The Copper Courier, Farley said that there’s a need for the School Facilities Division to “identify districts that are shrinking” and manage “that excess space responsibly and efficiently so that it doesn’t reach a crisis point.”

Perrera said that she was aware of the Common Sense Institute’s report criticizing spending on school facilities, and attributes that sum to ongoing overhead costs.

“No matter how many kids are enrolled in a given year, and dollars are tied to that enrollment, you still have all these facilities to maintain,” Perrera said. “There’s a lot of space around the state, and that’s going to continue to be a cost.”

Tyler Kowch, the communications manager for Save our Schools Arizona, said that schools are facing the opposite problem: lack of funding for needed facilities. He also said the geography of schools complicates the issue by making it appear like there is excess underused space.

“As a state, we have not done our job to fully fund these facilities,” Kowch said. “The problem is if this area in north Phoenix has an extra facility, but then north Peoria needs one, it’s not like you can just shift the facility in north Phoenix to north Peoria.”

Districtwide focus a ‘pain point’

Callie Tyler, who oversees the administration of the School Facilities Oversight Board, said that the funding formula’s focus on evaluating districts rather than individual schools has been a “pain point for a lot of school districts.”

“There’s some schools that feel pretty crowded, even though they have space at the other side of the district, but for our purposes, we, under the statute, do have that district wide look at space.”

Jeff Gove, the director of the performance audit division for the Arizona Auditor General, criticized the Board’s evaluation model during the Senate Education Committee. Gove said that the Board’s projections overestimated student enrollment by more than 11% for two districts in 2021, the same year the Board rejected the Auditor General’s recommendation to change its projection model to estimate best-case, expected, and worst-case outcomes.

“Overestimating enrollment projections could result in districts receiving New School Facilities monies to accommodate student enrollment growth that does not materialize and the inefficient use of district resources,” Gove said.

Potential for preferential treatment

Tyler told The Copper Courier that the Board rejected the multiple projection model to prevent inequitable funding to schools, and that the Board’s model already takes multiple factors into account.

“Our concern with… making a decision on whether to award new space is that it would be fraught with the potential for politics — essentially where it’s like, OK, you’re going to award one district based on the low end of a projection, and one district based on the high end,” Tyler said. “That could cause a lot of room for just questions of fairness, for appeals of decisions.”

Going forward

While Farley’s presentation concluded with a number of suggested reforms—including one overhaul that would move authority to close schools from school boards to the state Board—the education committee voted to have the School Facilities Oversight Board continue as-is, with only minor revisions.

Sen. David Farnsworth, R-Mesa, who chairs the committee, indicated interest in the state facilitating support for schools dealing with vacant or unused buildings, which could signal legislation on the matter later this year.

Author

  • Mia Osmonbekov

    Mia Osmonbekov is a reporter for The Copper Courier covering education and immigration. She has previously worked for Arizona Capitol Times and La Voz del Interior, and is expected to graduate from the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication at Arizona State University in 2025.

CATEGORIES: EDUCATION
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