Article 11, Section 1 of the Arizona Constitution states: “The legislature shall enact such laws as shall provide for the establishment and maintenance of a general and uniform public school system.”
A lawsuit filed in 2017 argues that Arizona's school system isn't really uniform, however, and the Arizona legislature isn't adequately providing for its schools.
In August, a judge from the Maricopa County Superior Court determined that argument's correct.
In Glendale Elementary School District v. the State of Arizona, Judge Dewain Fox ruled that the state’s current capital funding system violates the Arizona Constitution and fails to meet minimum standards as established by the Arizona Supreme Court.
Glendale Elementary was joined by three other plaintiff districts in the lawsuit, including Yuma's Crane Elementary School District.
Dale Ponder, Crane's chief financial officer, explained that the district joined because "we have also become very reliant on our local property taxpayers to support the district. We're incredibly appreciative of their investments, but that's not something that the local taxpayers should have to carry the burden for."
Schools in Yuma and La Paz counties also played a central role in the evidence Judge Fox relied on, including Mohawk Valley School and Quartzsite Elementary School.
"The way Arizona had it set up is almost all of the capital funding—and capital is everything from facilities to air conditioners, your roof, but it's also things like buses, curriculum technology, security, infrastructure, all those things—the way Arizona funded that was largely dependent on the property values in each district and each school district."
— Danny Adelman, director of the Arizona Center for Law in the Public Interest
These schools serves as case studies illustrating how the state's system has created a divide between schools whose taxpayers are both able and willing to pay more in taxes to meet their schools' basic needs, and the ones whose taxpayers cannot.
If this issue sounds familiar, that may be because this isn't the first time the constitutionality of Arizona's capital funding system was called into question.
A Brief History of Capital Funding
In 1994, Roosevelt v. Bishop forced the state to rethink its model for capital funding, which is known today as District Additional Assistance (DAA) funding.
"The way Arizona had it set up is almost all of the capital funding — and capital is everything from facilities to air conditioners, your roof, but it's also things like buses, curriculum technology, security, infrastructure, all those things — the way Arizona funded that was largely dependent on the property values in each district and each school district," said Danny Adelman, executive director of the Arizona Center for Law in the Public Interest.
Adelman has served as the center's lead counsel on GESD v. the State of Arizona, but he was also part of Roosevelt v. Bishop.
He described that at the time of Roosevelt, the assessed property values from one district to another can vary greatly, with some possibly having as much as 30 or 40 times the wealth of a poor district. As such, wealthy districts could more easily raise the money they needed to have good schools whereas poorer districts could not.
"So we sued in the early '90s and the Supreme Court of Arizona threw out the way Arizona had funded the capital needs of public schools and said to the legislature, 'You need to fix this,'" Adelman said.
The state's response to the outcome was the Students FIRST (Fair and Immediate Resources for Students Today) Act of 1998.
"Students FIRST was a funding system where the state first inspected and found out what were the existing problems in schools, and they fixed those," Adelman said. "And then the Supreme Court said it's the state's job to make sure that every school in Arizona has the minimum of what they need to have a good school."
The state then developed minimum standards by which to assess public schools.
"And so they came up with different funding systems," Adelman continued. "They had funding systems to help districts keep their facilities in good shape, and it was given to schools every year and they could plan ahead."
Under the Students FIRST system, districts could plan around saving their yearly capital funding allocations for expected needs, such as replacing an air conditioning unit that's expected to fail soon. The reasoning was that emergency repairs are typically more expensive than preventative maintenance.
"Then bit by bit, they started taking that money away and then it wasn't like that," Adelman said. "They just started canceling whole funding systems, and so ultimately, they had to cut billions of dollars from the capital funding that they had to come up with when they solved this last time."
And thus Arizona fell back into a familiar trend of insufficient capital funding.
From Students FIRST to Building Renewal Grants
Ponder explained that the state moved on from Students FIRST to a grant system administered by the Arizona School Facilities Oversight Board (SFOB). The grants are overseen by the Arizona School Facilities Division (SFD), which supports the board’s work.
Under this new system, schools were now required to prove failure first.
"So you had to wait until you had a leaky roof. You had to wait until the classroom got hot because the air conditioning wasn't working. You had to wait until the building was no longer structurally sound. You had to wait until it was proved to be deficient before it would be eligible for funds in order to correct the deficiency."
— Crane School District CFO Dale Ponder
"So you had to wait until you had a leaky roof. You had to wait until the classroom got hot because the air conditioning wasn't working. You had to wait until the building was no longer structurally sound," he said. "You had to wait until it was proved to be deficient before it would be eligible for funds in order to correct the deficiency."
Ponder noted that school districts that can successfully pass bond and override elections don't have to apply for building renewal grants in order to correct those needs. Instead, they could be proactive and limit disruptions to classroom spaces that might otherwise arise from the fact that systems can fail at different and, typically, unscheduled times.
Further compounding the SFD grant system's shortcomings is the fact that the state's minimum adequacy guidelines for facilities haven't been formally updated since Students FIRST, so schools are struggling even more to keep up with modern demands.
"There's a statement in there about a fence or a wall, and that means that you have a secure facility," Ponder said. "And so we know that the structure and the needs of communities have evolved over time, but the standards haven't followed that same suit."
Arizona Governor Katie Hobbs issued an executive order in 2023 calling for a modernization of the guidelines, which led to the submission of a final report with recommendations in November 2024. But they have yet to be formally adopted.
As the minimum adequacy guidelines currently stand, Ponder's assertion about the state's definition of secure facilities can be easily confirmed:
Under Arizona Administrative Code Title 7, Chapter 6, Section R7-6-205(E), a school site provides adequate security if "there is a fenced or walled, outdoor, play or physical education area." But schools that can't provide this may be deemed adequate by the SFOB depending on other factors as listed in the section.
Outdated standards aside, there’s another issue with the grant system: it doesn’t have enough money, so the grants have become competitive.
"The last report from the School Facility Oversight Board, they said that they have nearly $400 million in needs and only received an appropriation of 200 million, so it requires them, that agency, to then prioritize and determine what deficiency is a greater deficiency than another," Ponder said. "... If there's a school district that has a classroom that can't meet the temperatures prescribed by the standard, that may be a lower priority in certain areas than maybe water infiltration. So what they call weatherization or roofing projects—those may be of a higher need.
"Maybe flooring is a lower need, maybe exterior concrete may be a lower priority. So it really does cause the agency to prioritize how do they use the funds that they receive, which then creates this disparity between school districts."
Grants Do Not Guarantee Timely Follow-Through
"The last report from the School Facility Oversight Board, they said that they have nearly $400 million in needs and only received an appropriation of 200 million, so it requires them, that agency, to then prioritize and determine what deficiency is a greater deficiency than another."
— Dale Ponder
The reality of the competitive grant system came up in an interview Jamie Sheldahl did with KAWC in May 2025 before he retired from his position as superintendent of Yuma School District One.
He shared that what actually happens is projects get pushed out from one year to another because of insufficient funding. In his anecdote, District One had grants approved for five schools in 2022, three years ago.
"We qualified at the time — the estimate was about somewhere around 22 or 23 million, if I remember right — and we had five schools that qualified for what they called an envelope assessment," Sheldahl said. "So basically what that meant was the roofs were old enough, the doors were in bad shape and leaking like a sieve and we have single pane windows, right?
"... They approved five schools for basically new roof, new windows, new doors, maybe new insulation, depending on what the assessment called for to make them more efficient so they'd be less costly from a, you know, from an energy standpoint, which energy costs keep going up.
"So of those five that were approved, now here we are — I think that was in 2022 — here we are in 2025 going into the '26 fiscal year. One of them has been funded. So what happens is the money that gets allocated for the grants is insufficient. So projects get approved, and unless it's an emergency, very few of those projects get funded in the year they're approved, and then the rest of them get pushed into the next year."
District One's current superintendent, Denis Ponder, has confirmed this is a "pretty accurate picture of where we are today."
"The responsibility that the building renewal grant or the School Facilities Board group has is really — I mean, it's a challenging one," he said. "You have $200 million to service the needs of the entire state, over 250 school districts in the state of Arizona, I wanna say — over 200 for sure, I don't know the exact number. But just think about that for a second: how far is $200 million going to go across the entire state?"
District One is Arizona's third oldest public school district. Established in 1867, the majority of its schools are more than 60 years old. In fact, Fourth Avenue Junior High is over 100 years old, and next year, Roosevelt Elementary will turn 100, too.
Aging facilities are a big challenge for the district, and now that its most recent bond measure was rejected by voters in November 2024, District One has joined the ranks of what Dale Ponder referred to as "have not" districts.
"The state has created this disparity and so, really, requires this, quote, 'have and have not' type of system where Crane is considered a have district as we have bonds and overrides to help support our needs," Ponder said. "And maybe another school district who does not have that support is considered to 'have not,' so they become heavily reliant on the state in order to provide them the needs to meet their deficiencies when the state itself does not have enough money to meet the statewide needs."
"So what happens is the money that gets allocated for the grants is insufficient. So projects get approved, and unless it's an emergency, very few of those projects get funded in the year they're approved, and then the rest of them get pushed into the next year."
— Jamie Sheldahl, retired superintendent of Yuma School District One
The Burden on Local Taxpayers
While discussing Crane's reasons for joining the lawsuit, Ponder expressed that one reason was the current system places an undue burden on local taxpayers. Adelman echoed this perspective.
"It's also unfair to local taxpayers, right? So like if you vote yes for a bond, what you're doing is you are taxing yourself for something that is a state responsibility, which is really unfair to taxpayers," Adelman said.
He explained that when the Arizona Supreme Court addressed this issue with Roosevelt, it said that the state's job was to pay for all the basics needed to have a good school. If local taxpayers want something more, like a state-of-the-art football stadium, they could agree to more taxation.
"But the basics, the state is supposed to pay for," he said.
According to Adelman, it wasn't until the state started taking money away from schools that districts needed to hold bond elections in order to keep their facilities in shape. While he considers this unfair to local taxpayers, he considers it even more so for those in rural and low-income areas.
"Say you need $50 million. If you're in Scottsdale, where there's a lot of property wealth, you can raise that $50 million with a very tiny tax increase," he said. "But if you're in a little rural district where you don't have Scottsdale's wealth, then to raise that same $50 million costs 20 or 30 times as much."
Other States
While Ponder cited the 2008 recession as one reason for cuts from the legislature, Adelman argued that it was an excuse.
"During the worst recessionary year, I think there's some validity to that," he said. "But Arizona had started taking money out of these systems way before the recession, and they kept doing it way after the recession. Arizona cut more school funding than any other state in the United States during the recession. And then, you know, by the time we sued, it was 2017. So it just wasn't a valid excuse anymore."
Moreover, Arizona's position is comparatively worse when factoring in other states. The state is often ranked near the bottom for education quality and funding. One recent study from Consumer Affairs, a journal of consumer research, ranked Arizona dead last for school funding and resources.
Considering per-pupil spending specifically, the Education Data Initiative's most recent look at public school spending statistics demonstrates Arizona is near the bottom—second to only Idaho ($9,387 per pupil) and Utah ($9,977 per pupil)—at $10,090 per pupil.
The Education Data Initiative's report also published a map of public K-12 spending by state as a share of taxpayer income.
Public school funding as a share of income is the marker Adelman pointed to as an indicator of effort.
"We're at the very bottom when it talks about effort, and the way they gauge that is, like, there are some states that are very poor," he said. "So, like, Mississippi is very poor and they have a similar amount of per-pupil funding that we do, but they're a very poor state. So as a percentage of their income, they give way more than Arizona. As a percentage of our income, we're about the worst in the country."
The State of Arizona's Public Schools
As part of his work on this case over the past seven years, Adelman visited many public schools throughout the state.
"Honestly, it was heartbreaking. You know, like, in the mountain area, I visited schools where they had, like, plastic chutes coming from the roof into classrooms where there were big garbage cans to try to collect the water because the roofs were leaking so badly," he said. "I was at districts that had kind of cloudy, gross-looking water. I was at districts where there was mold in the walls, in the ceiling, all that stuff. Broken air conditioners, failing roofs, walls that weren't water-tight. Almost complete lack of any security, poor air quality."
He added that the state conducted air quality inspections and found excessive carbon dioxide in the vast majority of places they looked.
"So it's not carbon monoxide; it's carbon dioxide," he said. "But when it's excessive, it makes you less able to learn, more sluggish, more tired and less alert."
Adelman suggested KAWC take a look at the court order for the ruling since it documented the evidence Judge Fox used to make his determination.
The court order's evidence focused on a variety of issues. In addition to identifying these issues as they affect districts throughout the state, one section about districts without access to local funds focused on specific districts as case study examples and included photo evidence.
That section in the order states, "The preponderance of the evidence established that school districts without access to local bond and override funds--because of a lack of adequate property wealth and/or unsupportive voters--languish with substandard facilities for years."
It focused on districts from Elfrida, Bowie, Snowflake, Blue Ridge, Mohawk Valley, Holbrook, Glendale, Ajo, Wickenburg, Quartzsite and Chino Valley.
Although these were sample districts, the order also noted that the record includes evidence of additional districts that lack such access to meet their capital needs.
"The existing three restrooms in the mail building (1930 & 1996 renovations) are in a failed state. The urinals in the boy’s restroom leaked into the walls and have been closed off. The flooring structure is damaged and has a large crack in the foundation. In certain times of the year a fungal-type mushroom plant grows up where the foundation meets the wall."
Yuma County's Evidence: Mohawk Valley School
Two school districts from Yuma and La Paz were used as case studies with photos: Mohawk Valley School and Quartzsite Elementary.
Mohawk Valley School was identified as a school with facilities in dire need of repair. Per the order, it has not received sufficient state funding "since 2000 or 2001."
When capital funding was cut, Mohawk Valley was only receiving about $70,000 a year for capital, or DAA, funding. But even after the state restored capital funding to the statutory formula, needs remained.
The order cited multiple deficiencies — including the lack of classroom projectors and teacher computers — but the school’s restrooms became a focal point.
At the time of Superintendent Shanna Johnson’s deposition in 2021, the restrooms had been in serious disrepair since before 2014. Sinks, toilets and vents were broken. Some plumbing didn’t work. The bathrooms were not handicap accessible, and sometimes their conditions were dangerous.
The Arizona SFD liaison to the school described a black mold condition in one of the restrooms: “That’s the one where when I got to see it, all the tile was taken up. There was black mold underneath. There was black mold along the walls. The urinals and the toilets were covered. It was disgusting, for lack of a better way to put it.”
Mohawk Valley applied for a renewal grant from the SFOB in 2019. It was denied.
Why? In her deposition, Johnson said the reason given was “because preventative maintenance is inadequate and ADA accessibility is not yet required as there are currently no students for which accommodation is needed.”
When Mohawk Valley applied again in 2021, conditions had worsened considerably.
"The existing three restrooms in the mail building (1930 & 1996 renovations) are in a failed state. The urinals in the boy’s restroom leaked into the walls and have been closed off. The flooring structure is damaged and has a large crack in the foundation. In certain times of the year a fungal-type mushroom plant grows up where the foundation meets the wall."
The restrooms weren't the only issues identified, however. Mohawk Valley School was also dealing with a sunken foundation, cracks in walls and floors, peeling walls, major electrical issues with the fire alarm system and unsafe drinking water.
The water issue is more unique to the school’s rural location. Because Mohawk Valley is “out in the country” as Superintendent Johnson described, it doesn’t have access to a municipal water system. Locals typically get their water from canals and store it in cisterns, but the school has long relied on its own water plant.
The plant has had a history of needing repairs since before 2014, but stricter regulations from the Arizona Department of Environmental Quality also made it more challenging for the school to keep up.
After chemical tests performed at the school yielded failing results, ADEQ informed Mohawk its water was unsafe for students to wash their hands, let alone drink. Because of this, the school had to post "Boil Water Advisories" and signs warning that the water was unsafe to drink or consume.
Since Johnson's 2021 deposition for the case, Mohawk Valley has gone on to address these needs with the help of funding from various sources.
In June 2022, Mohawk Valley School celebrated a master renovation project.
“Every inch of Mohawk Valley School will be touched in the coming year," Johnson had told the crowd at that morning's celebration. "Every door, every window, wall, ceiling, floor, roof, exterior walls and bathroom will be renovated. The kitchen and cafeteria will have much-needed repairs. Lighting, wiring and technology will be fixed and upgraded. We will have a new fire alarm and intercom system. It will be like having a brand new school.”
The school had finally received money from the Arizona State Facilities Board, which Johnson agreed in her KAWC interview was a very unusual outcome.
"It was a model project, a project that the School Facilities Division is very proud of," she said. "It was great because we had one contractor instead of multiple semi, subcontractors."
“There's a discrepancy when walls are — if you read our court order — walls are crumbling, schools are falling apart. And part of what I believe is, yeah, we made it beautiful — aren't you supposed to try to make your school clean and inviting? But we were crumbling. Our plumbing was crumbling and things like that were just not working.”
— Shanna Johnson, superintendent and principal of Mohawk Valley School
Johnson pointed out, however, that it took securing $1.5 million from a voter-approved bond measure first.
"I think part of the success of that is that we had a bond that helped us get started, and then we were very lucky that we got excellent project manager and an excellent architect team that came in and saw the possibilities," she said. "And they just—they’re the ones that really was like, 'Watch this happen,' and they did. And so they proposed the idea to wrap this into one contract and it was very successful."
Other funds came in the form of federal resources, including E-Rate grants, a National School Lunch Program grant, and Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief (ESSER) money.
Today, Mohawk Valley's addressed nearly all of its capital needs. The remaining item pertains to some construction for the water plant which Johnson is hoping will start at the beginning of 2026.
But the superintendent is concerned about other schools. While Mohawk Valley is a model project, she noted that “it hasn’t been replicated.”
“I have the passion to go help other schools try to make that happen, but until the state has funding or until a school has at least a little bit of bond to get that started, then that’s gonna be a hurdle,” she said.
When discussing the lawsuit, Johnson wanted to give an analogy:
“Right now, the state of Arizona is up to $1 billion in ESA expansion scholarships, and the parents are taking to go to private schools, homeschool, whatever they're doing with it. And we only gave 250 million to school facilities, so just roll that around in your mind. If I can make any case to anybody that will listen to me. There's a discrepancy when walls are — if you read our court order — walls are crumbling, schools are falling apart. And part of what I believe is, yeah, we made it beautiful — aren't you supposed to try to make your school clean and inviting? But we were crumbling. Our plumbing was crumbling and things like that were just not working.”
Johnson was referring to Empowerment Scholarship Accounts (ESAs), Arizona’s school voucher program. ESAs were expanded to universal eligibility in 2022. Originally, vouchers were created in 2011 for students with disabilities to access services and therapies to meet their needs outside of the public school system.
The latest report from the Common Sense Institute confirms that Fiscal Year 2026 spending is on track to reach $1 billion. It estimates that about $567 million of that figure can be attributed to universal ESA eligibility.
"The SFB encouraged QUSD to 'think outside the box' and proposed replacing the modular buildings at Quartzsite Elementary School with recycled storage containers. But the SFB ultimately determined that it could not proceed with the storage container alternative because it can only 'renovate like for like.'"
La Paz County's Evidence: Quartzsite Elementary School
From La Paz County, the court used the Quartzsite Elementary School District as a case study.
The court order states:
"Since 2018 or 2019, the condition of Quartzsite Elementary School has become unsafe to the point that even the district’s business manager 'wouldn’t want [her] children going to school in those buildings.'"
These conditions included flooring problems, inadequate heating and cooling, roof leaks, mold and rotting wood, and poor air quality. The school was paying to put "Band-Aids on" the fire alarm system because fixing the panel would have required rewiring the entire school.
At the time of the business manager's deposition in 2021, three main classroom buildings were shut down for structural safety reasons.
The assessment that led up to SFOB grant approval concluded that it would cost more to correct the school's conditions than to demolish the site and construct a new classroom building.
Another option mentioned in the order involved storage containers.
"The SFB encouraged QUSD to 'think outside the box' and proposed replacing the modular buildings at Quartzsite Elementary School with recycled storage containers," the order states. "But the SFB ultimately determined that it could not proceed with the storage container alternative because it can only 'renovate like for like.'"
Despite receiving approval to renovate its modular classroom buildings in 2022, the school’s operational status remains unclear.
The court order noted that as of trial in June 2024, the SFD's records still show the project as active. District governing board minutes also indicate that the campus has yet to formally reopen. In fact, the most recent minutes that refer to students on campus were from July 10, which states that there were two open enrollment days held on campus. The June 18 minutes show that the classrooms were being connected to internet.
Meanwhile, QESD's official Facebook page shows recent events for Ehrenberg Elementary School but none for Quartzsite.
"If the District goes into receivership it won't be what the community wants. They will come in and shut this school down and [it'll] never open again ... The challenge is the state already wants us to close this school and the board fought to not do that. We know we will be upside on the budget due to not having the ESSER funding that has kept the district afloat the last few years."Quartzsite Elementary School District board minutes, April 22, 2025
A Dec. 11 post about bus routes includes stops specific to Quartzsite — such as the Quartzsite Improvement Association and Mountain Quail Cafe —suggesting that while Ehrenberg Elementary is operating, students may be transported from Quartzsite rather than attending classes at the Quartzsite campus.
While September's minutes indicate fire alarm repair on Quartzsite, October's show there's no update on the school's status.
Older board minutes from this calendar year paint a more dire picture.
In an April 22 work session, board member Monica Timberlake referenced an audit the Arizona Auditor General's office conducted on both QESD campuses.
The audit concluded the district doesn't have enough students to justify operating two campuses. The board expressed uncertainty there's enough funding to keep Ehrenberg Elementary open either.
"If the District goes into receivership it won't be what the community wants. They will come in and shut this school down and [it'll] never open again ... Our district is on that list of 25% that is teetering on financial collapse because school[s] aren't funded properly," the minutes read. "... The challenge is the state already wants us to close this school and the board fought to not do that. We know we will be upside on the budget due to not having the ESSER funding that has kept the district afloat the last few years."
KAWC has reached out to Quartzsite Elementary School District with a request for an interview but has not received a response as of publication time.
What Comes Next
Adelman explained that the ruling is not a final judgment, but a form of declaratory and injunctive relief.
"Basically, declaratory just means he declares that the system is unconstitutional; the injunctive relief is where he can demand the state to fix it," he said.
The plaintiffs have since submitted a proposed form of judgment, and the defendants have filed objections to that proposal.
Adelman expects the judge to issue a decision on the injunction by late February or early March.
The president of the Arizona Senate and the speaker of the House have said they intend to appeal the ruling. Crane CFO Ponder believes the better way forward is through unity, not opposition.
"While that is their right to do that, I think what we could do instead is bring the governor's office, bring members of the legislature, bring the plaintiffs together and see what we can do to work through these issues," he said. "Instead of continuously paying lawyers, let's put this money back into education and let's try to correct these deficiencies. Let's get everyone around the room and say, 'How can we solve this?'"
"I always say a child only gets one chance to be a third grader, and, you know, taking years more of the appeals leaves that third grader, you know, behind, and it's just not right and it's not fair. So we should care about that third grader. We should care about, you know, his or her teacher, and we should fix this. That's our overarching message is — this is fixable. We just have to care enough to do it."
— Danny Adelman, director of the Arizona Center for Law in the Public Interest
Even if the state appeals after the judge issues a final injunction, Adelman said he is confident in the case.
"The law is very clear, and the evidence was overwhelming that the present system doesn't comply with these minimum standards that the Supreme Court explained 30 years ago," he said. "So, you know, I mean, there's always a chance. Nobody ever says never when you're dealing with lawsuits. But the judge who heard this case was extremely careful and methodical, and he made it very clear there is this minimum that our Constitution says, and we're below that minimum and that's unconstitutional."
While the legislature's leadership has made its intentions clear, we thought to ask the state's schools chief for his position.
During a December visit to Gowan Science Academy, a Crane District school in Yuma, Arizona Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Horne provided his response.
"Yeah, we have divided jurisdiction. So there's a board that deals with building and that's their jurisdiction, and if I impose on their turf, I'll get into trouble," he laughed.
But considering the broader implications of Arizona's capital funding system and the delays that will come from appeals, Adelman concluded that the real bottom line is the impact on kids.
"I always say a child only gets one chance to be a third grader, and, you know, taking years more of the appeals leaves that third grader, you know, behind, and it's just not right and it's not fair," he said. "So we should care about that third grader. We should care about, you know, his or her teacher, and we should fix this. That's our overarching message is — this is fixable. We just have to care enough to do it."
Reporting for this article is supported by a grant from the Arizona Local News Foundation.
