Superintendent of Arizona’s Public Education Diane Douglas is looking for new and innovative ways that school districts can raise money for themselves. Talking to Bruce St. James and Pamela Hughes from KTAR News 92.3, Douglas stated that the solution for raising the funds needed for the 666 different school districts that exist within Arizona may have to involve less conventional ideas and more “outside the box thinking.”
Currently, with the issues facing public schools there is simply more buckets to fill then funds to fill them with. Douglas has stated that there are two major issues facing schools today, and those are finding ways to pay the teachers salaries and keeping schools safe. She is aware that in the past, Arizona residents have voted to increase taxes to benefit schools, but is not sure if that could pass again. They were often told that the money would go to teachers and the classrooms, but other issues popped up first that often needed the funds first.
Douglas is very concerned with the safety of the schools in Arizona, and especially with the lack of counselors for those schools. She thinks that there is a clear correlation between counselors and safe schools. Douglas is sure that when it comes to stressed students or mental health issues, enough counselors could play as important a role in keeping the schools safe in the future as proper facilities, and trained safety staff. She is concerned that Arizona runs high in the statistics for counselors to student’s ration, with only approximately one counselor per every 850 students, whereas many states boast one counselor for every 250 students.
Douglas did not have any specific out of the box fundraising ideas that she has shared with the public as of yet. The only idea she has stated for working towards increasing funds to the schools was publically supporting the extension of Proposition 301. Proposition 301 was first passed in 2000 and is a measure that increased sales tax specifically to help fund public education. It raised the sales tax by .6 percent, from 5% to 5.6%, and the six-tenths of a cent raise all goes to education. Proposition 301 was initially set to expire in 2021, but with the funds of schools being in such a dire situation, there has recently been talk about extending it…and Superintendent Douglas publically supports this.
Douglas has suggested that maybe they should raise it to a full penny, with the whole amount going to school funds. She acknowledges that the initial meaning of this proposition was to fund salaries for teachers, but it has gone to fill other buckets when needed. Douglas also has suggested that though she is against forced school district consolidations, she would be in support of any local districts that may want to consolidate to share funds. From there the only other thing she was vocal on was that parents, teachers and residents of the districts in general would have to be the spearheads of any other fundraising projects, with the support of the education department.
