FAQs

We absolutely do live within our budget. The District always ends each year “in the black.” The problem is that our budget is steadily declining, causing major changes in the level and quality of service being provided to students and our community.

Imagine this overly simple scenario. Up until now, your monthly bills amount to $1000. This includes everything, food, rent, car payment, and utilities. You earn $1500 per month after taxes. That leaves you with $500 extra each month. Your boss comes to you and says, “the companies profits are down and we have to decrease your after tax pay to $1000 per month. You think, okay, it will be tight, but I can make it.

The next month, your boss gives you the same story, only this time it is $800. Now, your bills are $200 more than your pay. You have to cut. So you cut some of the “luxury” items and become mindful of where your thermostat is set at on your house’s AC; and you do your best to consolidate errands as to cut down on your gas costs.

Then two months, later, the same story again, only this time is $600.

At some point, you can’t keep cutting expenses and watching your pennies. You have to eat, you have to have lights on in your house and you have to maintain some reasonable, minimal standard of living.

This is what is happening to Vail. The monthly bills represent the Vail Budget. The boss is the State of Arizona. The take home pay is the tax revenue that supports all schools. The “luxury” items are things like art, music and PE teachers last year, and reasonably price athletic fees this year.

At some point, Vail can’t just keep cutting.

Parents who open enroll from outside the district are not actually saving money. Parents who live in the Sunnyside or TUSD districts, for example, actually pay a higher combined tax rate than do parents who live in Vail USD. Vail still receives additional funding for those kids that do open enroll. So, it is not at all the case that those parents are getting a free ride and that Vail USD is just picking up the slack for other districts.

This measure was approved by the voters in May, 2010 as a stop gap for the significant tax revenue losses the State of Arizona was experiencing.

It was, and still is, a band aid on a bullet wound.

67% of the money from Prop 100 was allocated to be distributed amongst ALL education in Arizona, kinder through Universities. With that in mind, there is very little money to be had once the pie gets cut 200+ ways for all of the school districts in Arizona, and then for the Universities and Junior Colleges in Arizona.

It was not meant to make education whole. It was meant to “stop the bleeding” from the cuts that had been made up to that point. That reason is precisely why it is, by law, only a 3 year tax increase. It was mean to stop the bleeding while the economy corrected.

That correction of course, hasn’t happened yet, which is why people are saying, “What happened to the money.”

The best metaphor to explain this is this: imagine you’re standing at the top of a water well. The level in the well keeps going down and down because of a leak in the bottom. The leak represents the economy and profound reduction in tax revenue which funds the schools. You decide that you want to refill the well, so that there is more water to get (tax revenue). The tool that you chose to refill the well with is a 1/4 cup measuring cup. Not very effective.