Commission to discuss school-unification ideas

©The Arizona Republic

Plans to unify 34 elementary-and high-school districts into six K-12 districts in the Valley was discussed by a state commission during a forum at Phoenix College.

Voters on Nov. 4 will consider proposals for 76 school districts to be merged into 23 new school districts. Another forum will be held Sept. 9 at Estrella Mountain Community College. Additional public forums will be scheduled in September for voters in Cochise, La Paz, Mohave, Pima, Pinal, Santa Cruz, Yavapai and Yuma counties.

“While improving education is our primary goal, we also want to eliminate salary disparities in non-unified districts, where elementary-school teachers are paid less than their colleagues at the high-school level,” said Martin Shultz, chairman of the School District Redistricting Commission (SDRC), which created the plans being presented to voters in November.

“Elementary-school teachers play a vital role in helping children acquire the essential reading and reasoning skills they need for a successful education, and they should be paid accordingly. When schools are unified, these disparities go away and the new, larger districts can budget more of their money to meeting the needs of teachers and students alike.”
In Maricopa County, voters will consider creating new districts by combining the following:

• Phoenix Union High School with its 13 feeder districts.

• Glendale Union High School with feeders Washington Elementary School District and Glendale Elementary.

• Tempe Union High School with elementary feeder districts Kyrene and Tempe.

• Agua Fria Union, Buckeye Union and Tolleson Union with their 11 elementary feeder districts to create three K-12 districts in the southwest Valley.

The idea behind the proposal is to align curriculum for students and to place more funds into the classroom. Critics say the measure has too many unanswered questions, such as what unification would cost if the salaries of elementary and high-school teachers were aligned.

Some commission members, such as Mesa Public Schools teacher Joseph Thomas, like the idea of unification but are critical of the maps used to draw the plans. Unification could work but has yet to see “a groundswell of support,” Thomas said at a forum held April 21 at Arizona State University’s West campus.

“You can call them plans, but all they are are lines drawn and they are maps,” Thomas said. “We (as commission members) were asked a lot of questions about, ‘What’s going to happen to this? What’s going to happen to that?’ The frequent answer is, ‘It’s up to the school board.’ So we can tell you what’s going to happen, if you’ll take as an answer, ‘Well, your school board will decide that afterwards.’ “