Hosted by The Center for
Education Reform
Hosted by The Center for
Education Reform
THE INADEQUACY OF DEFINITIONS OF ADEQUACY IN SCHOOL CAPITAL
FINANCE REFORM
By Lewis C Solmon
March, 1998
In Hull v. Albrecht, the Arizona Supreme Court points to the state’s constitutional obligation to fund a public school system that is adequate and to the legislature’s obligation to define adequacy. The court then tries to "help" by suggesting that "adequacy" should include a minimum quality and quantity standard for buildings, as well as the facilities and equipment necessary and appropriate to enable students to master the educational goals set by the legislature or State Board of Education. Then the state must pay for everything it includes in the definition.
Implicit in all this is the belief that there is some consensus about what is adequate in terms of buildings, facilities and equipment for public schools. Of course every interest group will be able to find an expert to testify that more of what they want is necessary and appropriate to achieve adequacy. Science teachers "need" state of the art labs with a one to one student to Bunsen burner ratio. Technology advocates will "require" every classroom to have a giant TV screen and a 5 to 1 student to computer ratio. Or is a computer lab or two sufficient? Librarians will want more books and more space, but others believe libraries with books rather than the Internet will soon be obsolete. And, of course, how can bureaucrats run a school without comfortable private offices?
Then we "need" size and space requirements for the buildings themselves: is that 35 square feet per student in classrooms, or 110 square feet per student per school? Question: what does the student do with her left over 75 square feet? If a great school has only 75 square feet per student per school, must the state pay to expand it? Are square feet in portables equivalent to square feet in permanent buildings? What is the ideal size of a school? Is it the same in a district with 200 (or 6) students as it is in Mesa?
Leaking roofs must be repaired, but when is a well-functioning building too old? Should we rebuild after 40 years regardless? What if a building does not have much outside light? Or if it is exceptionally dusty? Physical education is a requirement up to eighth grade, so should all schools have a gym, a track, a pool, a domed stadium!
The fact is that there is little or no evidence that any specific decisions on the above will guarantee or prevent students achieving their educational goals. Some students achieve honors in cramped schools and others fail in lavish ones. Technology can be more helpful to some students than to others depending upon, among other things, how the teacher uses it.
Nevertheless, some people in the legislature appear to be taking the court’s words literally and are trying to identify specific capital standards, price these out, and then figure out how to pay for them. If each student "requires" 100 square feet, and if we seek schools of construction quality reflected by $80 per square foot, and if we think elementary schools should house 500 students, then every elementary school will cost $4 million. But what if a district grows by 250 students—do we build half a school or keep "inadequate" class or school size.
We have determined that if every elementary school in Arizona had to be brought up to the suggested national standard of 110 square feet per student, the state would have to build 210 more schools at a cost of $840 million. If high schools had to meet the 145 square feet per student national standard, 9 new high school would be required at a cost of over $130 million. Would meeting these standards be worth $970 million? And that’s before we build a single new school to accommodate new student growth.
Different districts make different choices about how to use whatever capital funds they have. Some might prefer slightly more cramped classrooms in order to build a more elaborate gym or auditorium or fancier science labs. Some might prefer a smaller book library in exchange for a larger media center. Some might even prefer doubling up administrators in order to afford more education technology. And in every case, these decisions could be appropriate.
No set of specific building, facility and equipment standards will allow the types of variation we now see among the best schools in the state. Therefore, we predict that the Arizona legislature will not be able to agree on a set of such standards until the Salt River freezes over. And when they do no one will be happy.
The alternative is to give each district an equal per student amount for capital needs, and allow the districts to use that money as it sees fit, as long as students meet specified achievement goals. The figure that can satisfy all of the public schools’ legitimate capital needs appears to be from $450 to $1000 per student, depending upon what is included in the capital budget, how lavish you want schools to be, and how many students currently attend schools in the district that requires a new school. If a new district (or charter school) begins with 500 students for whom it must build an elementary school, an allocation of $1,000 per student per year would support ten-year revenue bonds. We believe that $650 per student generally will suffice. That is, a district with about 5,600 students that adds 500 more could pay cash for a new elementary school by using the $650 it would get for each of its 6,100 students in one year. A $650 allocation per student for capital spending ends up costing the state less than it now pays for debt servicing, and ensures both equity and adequacy as well.
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Lewis C. Solmon is an adjunct fellow at the Goldwater Institute and a former dean of the Graduate School of Education at UCLA.