One of the major local ballot initiatives on this year’s general election on Tuesday, Nov. 6, is a continuation of Proposition 447, the Sedona-Oak Creek School District Budget Increase Override.
Residents already pay about $60 a year, or $5 a month, toward the override. The override is merely a continuation of the existing override, so its passage will not increase your taxes.
The override allocates tax funds of 15 percent of the school district’s budget. With an annual budget of about $7 million, the override funds total just over $800,000.
The majority of SOCSD’s budget is already allocated to teacher and staff salaries and their benefits. Funds from override are directed to supplemental programs that directly benefit our students, such as art and music programs, extracurricular activities, physical education programs, reimbursing the Sedona Police Department to have a school resource officer who serves on SOCSD campuses and helps reduce class sizes so teachers have more time allocated to each student.
Without the override, these programs will see cuts or be eliminated altogether. Override dollars also pay for additional school bus routes to take home students who stay late to participate in after-school activities.
Due to the state’s education budget formula, a small drop in student population can result in major cuts to an annual budget. The state has reduced the amount districts receive for their elementary and high school students by 13.5 percent since 2008 and kindergarteners by half. Schools are paid state funds per student enrolled, but for a kindergartener, a school district receives 50 percent of the funds they receive for older students, making these vital educational years more costly. The override helps balance the equation and provide full-day kindergarten funding for these, our youngest students.
Financially, the SOCSD has suffered a great deal in past years. Due to declining enrollment, the SOCSD Governing Board made the agonizing decision to close Big Park Community School in the Village of Oak Creek.
While fiscally the only decision to keep the district as funded as they could, the board was forced to close Big Park or cut massive programs at both schools. Big Park students were reintegrated back into the student body at West Sedona School.
The Arizona State Legislature has gutted the state’s public education funding over the last two decades, in some cases funneling millions of public tax dollars into privately-owned charter schools, some of which are run as for-profit schools. Several state legislators own or are on the boards of some of these private charter schools and are directly profiting from the legislature’s maneuvering at the expense of public school students in Arizona.
The budget override puts a small stop to this, at least on the local level and directs our tax dollars toward our students, where our education tax dollars should go, not the pockets of legislators.
The Arizona State Legislature’s action have been so heinous that it was ordered by the courts in 2013 to refund $317 million back into public schools but negotiated a one-sided deal with desperate schools who could not afford to wait to refund only a portion of what they had promised in legislation they themselves passed.
Even with this court order, additional funding from Proposition 123 passed over the legislature’s objections by Arizona voters in 2016, as well as the funds squeezed out of the legislature following a week of Red for Ed teacher strikes earlier this year, education funding is well below what is was 2008, before the Great Recession.
The budget override is up for vote every five years and has passed historically. Should the override continuation fail, SOCSD will lose one-third of the funds from the override every year for the next three years. There is not more SOCSD can cut beyond the $1 million it already has in the last year.
Sedona’s students desperately need the override to continue to fund the programs that will help them succeed in school, in college and beyond. The cost to us taxpayers is minimal.
Vote yes on Tuesday, Nov. 6, to continue the Sedona-Oak Creek School District Budget Increase Override.
Christopher Fox Graham
Managing Editor
