The Arizona Republic interviewed Danny Adelman of ACLPI for a front-page article about Arizona’s inadequate funding for public schools’ vital safety measures. Danny is representing several school districts, as well as the Arizona School Boards Association, the Arizona Education Association, the Arizona School Administrators, and an individual taxpayer in a lawsuit against the state based on the unequal and inadequate system for funding schools.
Spurred by the hundreds of school shootings across the country, updated school safety measures include modernized alarm systems, more secure entrances, and improved fencing. Yet, the state will not provide funding for these important safety features. Thus, in many cases, only districts with sufficient property wealth to pass locally funded bonds and overrides can afford to make their schools reasonably safe, and many districts have not been able to implement these important upgrades.
“School districts need the ability and the funding to take care of their facility,” Adelman says in the article. “And what’s going on now is only districts that can bond and pass capital overrides can take care of those kinds of needs.”
The Center has been fighting for equal funding for Arizona’s public schools since the 1990s. The most recent lawsuit, filed in 2017, demands uniform funding for schools across the state, as outlined in the Arizona Constitution. The Center successfully sued the state over the same issue in 1994.
