PHOENIX -- The percentage of tax dollars that wound up in the classroom was lower in last school year than at any time since the state began studying the issue seven years earlier.
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Auditor General Debra Davenport said the number should be higher, if for no other reason than schools began receiving more cash from the state in the 2001-02 school year after voters approved a hike in state sales taxes. And Davenport said virtually all those dollars were used for classroom spending.
But Davenport reported that it appears some school districts used those new state funds to replace other dollars they had been spending on instruction, a move she said violates state law. She said if all that new money were added to what was being spent when the extra cash started flowing, the statewide average for classroom spending would have been 59.7 percent.
Davenport also said proper use of those dollars would have resulted in teacher salaries, on average, being $7,500 higher.
The report, however, does not identify which school districts may be breaking the law.
Not all of the decline can be linked to shifting funds.
Davenport said schools are now spending more on support services ranging from teacher training to physical and speech therapy for students. And she said that many districts are contracting out for those services, a move that increases costs.
She also reported that, in general, larger school districts put a higher percentage of their dollars into the classroom because they can spread fixed administrative costs over a larger number of students.
But Davenport said some small districts beat the statewide average. She said some had employees perform several jobs or hired part-time staff.
Among the largest districts -- those with more than 20,000 students -- Gilbert Unified topped the list with 63.2 percent of all dollars going into the classroom. Tucson Unified was at the bottom at 53.4 percent.
At the other extreme, Valentine Elementary, at 77.3 percent, spent more in classrooms than any other district with fewer than 200 students. Mobile Elementary weighed in at 31.3 percent.
State School Superintendent Tom Horne said the report buttresses his argument that the state's more than 200 school districts should be consolidated.
Special elections did occur in November in more than 70 districts in an effort to shrink them down to just 27. But none of those got enough votes to pass.
Horne said that should not end the matter. He wants the Legislature to force the issue.
He acknowledged that will bring complaints from residents of some districts that consolidation would result in the loss of local control: Residents would no longer elect school board members from their local community but instead would be part of a larger district.
"But you have to measure that against the academic benefit of spending more money on teacher salaries and less money on administration,'' Horne said.
Horne did have one dispute with the report: What it does -- and does not -- consider to be classroom spending.
"The auditor general has been measuring things like librarians, nurses, air conditioning so kids can learn, transportation to get them to school as an administrative cost,'' he said. "That's not a good measure.''
Horne said that pure administrative costs -- superintendents, principals, business managers, clerical staff, human resources and information technology specialists -- on average amount to only 9.2 percent of all money spent by schools.
The report comes six years after former Gov. Janet Napolitano, in her first State of the State speech, said she would work to ensure that schools spent at least 62 cents of every education dollar in the classroom. But the figures for 2008 are less than when Napolitano took office.
Napolitano, who quit in January to become homeland security secretary, did not respond to repeated phone calls and e-mail messages to her press office.
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