Castle Dome Middle School’s campus has reopened after a temporary closure for cooling system repairs March 11–13.
According to Yuma School District One, the system’s operating properly and students resumed regular classes Monday.
“We are grateful for the many teams across the district who responded quickly to help ensure a safe and comfortable learning environment for our students. Their collaboration and swift action helped minimize disruption to instruction while repairs were underway,” a district statement issued Friday said. “We are also grateful to the principals and staff at Desert Mesa, Otondo, and Sunrise Elementary Schools for accommodating our students during this time.”
A representative for District One previously told KAWC that the repairs were being done sooner rather than later because temperatures are getting unseasonably high, and Castle Dome classrooms were becoming too warm.
This wasn’t a result of willful negligence, however. Governing board member David Ibarra’s comments at the regular meeting on March 10 revealed that the matter boiled down to funding.
“I wanted to see the air conditioning chillers and the water towers that have been at Castle Dome since 1998. I found that these units are beyond their shelf life,” he said, reporting on his recent visit to the school. “Throughout the years, purchase orders to replace this equipment has been submitted to the state to have this equipment replaced. These requests have been kicked back and they were—they told Mr. Tamayo (director of facilities) that the repair projects are not approved.”
This is a common experience for public schools in Arizona. Cooling systems fall under school facilities funding, commonly referred to as capital funding.
The state’s current capital funding model, however, has a troubled history of inadequately providing for schools. In an August ruling in Glendale Elementary School District v. State of Arizona, a judge determined the state is not providing for a general and uniform public school system as required by the Arizona Constitution.
Now, Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Dewain Fox has issued a final judgment giving the state eight months to fix its school funding system.
Under the current system, a school might apply for a Building Renewal Grant from the Arizona School Facilities Board. The grant program replaced an earlier formula that automatically allocated money for facility maintenance based on factors such as building age and size.
According to the board’s site, the grant fund that exists now was established “for the purpose of maintaining the adequacy of existing school facilities. School districts may apply for these monies to fund primary building renewal projects, including major renovations and repairs of a building, upgrades to building systems that will maintain or extend the useful life of a building, and for infrastructure costs.”
But facility needs across the state exceed available funding, making the grants competitive. District officials say that gap can leave schools in situations like Castle Dome, which had to close its campus during the school year.
“I think this is a perfect example that supports returning back to the building renewal formula. If the formula was still in place and IF it were fully and properly funded, we could have been proactive in resolving the issue,” said District One Superintendent Denis Ponder.
Castle Dome’s temporary closure also sheds light on how districts navigate the current system.
In a November interview with KAWC, Ponder commented that maintenance deferrals happen because districts are juggling different needs and because the grant system essentially requires failures before funding maintenance.
“The program is designed for us to wait for our air conditioners to fail, then the classrooms are impacted, the students are impacted. But then we can apply for money to replace the cost of that,” he said. “And so that’s one of the things that we have to look at when we’re balancing our budget, too, is could we go and spend our capital budget and say, ‘Well, these are old-ish, so we’re just going to go ahead and replace them’?
“I mean, we could absolutely do that, but at what cost to other things that we could get done in the district?”
He explained that typically, the district will pursue state funds it’s eligible for when possible, but sometimes maintenance can’t wait.
“If there are things that are going to impact the structure, the safety, the foundation of a building, then those are not things we look at for deference; we don’t defer those items,” Ponder said. “We handle those how we need to. Sometimes that’s through insurance claims, sometimes that is SFB – School Facilities Board – or the state’s funding, and sometimes that’s our own funding.”
Judge Fox’s ruling may result in an improved system that won’t require schools to pick between letting facilities systems fail or eating the cost themselves, but for now in the case of Castle Dome, Ponder said District One is doing what it can to secure the funding it’s owed.
“As it currently stands, the state still hasn't approved funding to fix the issue for which they are responsible. This delay displaced over 900 kids in our community and impacted many others,” he said. “We are currently forging a path forward to resolve the issue permanently in hopes that the state will recognize their duty and take over the payment of the solution as we move forward.”
Reporting for this article is supported by a grant from the Arizona Local News Foundation.
