Politics killing district rescue
 Bill for takeover of schools falters
 
By Pat Kossan
The Arizona Republic
 
A political fight over when and how the state should take over a mismanaged school district could kill a bill designed to prevent the financial collapse of a northern Arizona district.

In October, the Colorado City Unified School District began bouncing teacher paychecks despite buying its own airplane.

For more than three years, the 350-student district hasn't paid teachers and vendors on a consistent basis and has missed state and Mohave County deadlines to account for its spending.

Unlike a corporation, the Arizona Attorney General's Office said, teachers and vendors can't force a school district into bankruptcy, and the state has no authority to push it into court.

The district, along the Arizona-Utah line, is $1.5 million in debt at 6 percent interest to the Arizona School Risk Retention Trust, a corporation that insures Arizona schools, said Jim Mullen, administrator of the trust. The Retention Trust has been covering checks to prevent lawsuits, Mullen said.

The Colorado City District School Board is expected to vote next month to raise property taxes to pay back the debt, said Michael File, Mohave County school superintendent.

"They keep spending and spending and spending, and no one up there is going to hold them accountable," File said.

The Attorney General's Office found itself powerless to shut down Colorado City Unified or put it into receivership. It consulted with Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Horne and other education leaders this fall and created legislation to change that.

The proposal passed the House and Senate, but lawmakers decorated the proposal with all sorts of new amendments and language. Now the once-harmonious creators of the proposal are fighting over exactly when, why and how the state can take over a district.

It's a fight that could sink the bill.

State schools chief Horne wants the proposed law to go beyond allowing the state to take over school districts in financial trouble. He supports a version of the bill that also would expand the state's power to step in if a district has "grossly mismanaged its other duties" in addition to mismanaging its money.

"People were shocked when a dysfunctional situation arose and no branch of government had any power to do anything about it," Horne said. He said Colorado City Unified mismanaged funds, but the state must have the power to deal with gross mismanagement, such as a district that refuses to hire licensed teachers or administer standardized tests.

Richard Travis, lobbyist for the Attorney General's Office, said Horne's proposal is too far-reaching. The original bill was carefully crafted to include only districts that are insolvent or have grossly mismanaged finances so local boards and education leaders would support it. As the bill expands the state's power, support from education leaders is fading and the bill could die, Travis said.

"The bill we worked on with the education community, which was narrow and had language to address the issue of a financially insolvent school district, has been expanded to be so broad that parents, teachers, school board members and elected officials can no longer support the bill," Travis said.

Colorado City and the neighboring Hildale, Utah, are home to about 6,000 to 10,000 members of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, a breakaway sect, which, unlike the mainstream Mormon church, practices plural marriages. Colorado City Unified District's 18 administrators belong to the FLDS, but its students and teachers live in Centennial Park, a nearby community, whose residents are members of a different polygamist sect. The district has 60 teachers and staff members. Its superintendent, Alvin Barlow, did not want to comment on the legislation.

Mohave County Superintendent File is frustrated that the problems at Colorado City Unified continue to compound.

"If you don't have power over finances, you have nothing," File said. "I've seen schools get their teeth kicked in for far less," said File, who does not expect anyone in the community to recall the board.

Janice Palmer, lobbyist for the Arizona School Boards Association, said the existing versions of the proposal have strayed so far from the original bill she can not support it.

The state already has the power to overrule a district's locally elected school board and intervene in a school where children are consistently failing to improve test scores. Palmer is worried this new proposal is so far-reaching that it would continue to erode local control of neighborhood district boards. It's the locally elected board members who are held accountable for what happens at a district each time they face voters, Palmer said.

The Arizona School Boards Association could only support a bill if it would be confined to districts in financial collapse and would make the Maricopa County Superior Court, not state officials, responsible for defining the terms of a takeover, Palmer said.

"This is a difficult proposal for us," Palmer said. "We did sit down and try to craft something that at least would do it the right way. We tried to work it so it wouldn't become a political issue but a financial and legal one."
 
azcentral.com
Originally published April 16, 2005
 
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