凍結 天然氣 火車

"The Kyrene School District receives $3,246 annually for each kindergarten student, $5,060 for each student first through third grade and $4,816 for each fourth- through eighth-grade student"

So on a daily basis schools get about $25 a day per student for each student that attends.

Source

Valley districts battle for students, state subsidies

by Allie Seligman - Jan. 21, 2012 10:49 PM

The Republic | azcentral.com

School choice is king in Arizona, but one Pinal County district is tired of losing more than 1,000 students and thousands of dollars in funding each year to competing districts.

For years, the Maricopa Unified School District has lost students to the Kyrene and Tempe Union High school districts, particularly those in Ahwatukee Foothills. Students bring with them additional per-student state subsidies, and competition for students among many districts across the state can be fierce.

Deputy Superintendent Ember Conley said Maricopa Unified is losing fewer students than in years past, but "if I'm losing one student, that's one student too many."

At stake is the loss of thousands of dollars in per-student state subsidies that go to the district that actually educates the students. In Maricopa Unified's case, that means losing anywhere from $3,000 to $5,000 for each student who goes to either Kyrene or Tempe Union.

This school year, 779 Maricopa children are attending Kyrene schools, records show. Another 299 are in Tempe Union schools.

Some families choose those districts because parents work in Phoenix and it makes more sense logistically to drop their kids off along the way, Conley said.

But for about 75 percent of the Maricopa students who go to Kyrene or Tempe Union schools, transportation is provided, making it easy for parents to send their students to another school district. State law allows buses to travel up to 20 miles each way from a school to pick up children; Kyrene and Tempe Union said their practices fall within those limits.

Rob and Stacie Weyrauch moved to Maricopa in 2006 and put their oldest children in Maricopa schools. At that time, the schools "were severely overburdened," Stacie Weyrauch said, and there were too many students in each class.

Now all four Weyrauch children attend Kyrene schools.

Weyrauch said she would transfer her kids back to Maricopa schools if she knew they were up to par with Kyrene, but "it's hard to give up what you know is so great for what might be as good, or might not be." State law faulted

After hearing complaints from Maricopa and other school-district officials, state Rep. John Fillmore, R-Apache Junction, introduced a bill this session to limit the number of miles school buses can travel each way to 15. The bill would also cap the distance a bus can travel to transport special-needs students, which is currently unlimited.

The current 20-mile limit is "denying Maricopa the opportunity to excel," Fillmore said.

The issue, he said, isn't the district's compliance, but the law itself.

"You have one school district literally stealing from another public school district, and I'm saying, 'Hey, that's not fair,' " Fillmore said.

Parents should be able to choose where their children go to school, Fillmore said, but the state shouldn't pay for them to get there at the expense of other districts.

"They're creating a situation which is extremely detrimental to the other kids in Maricopa," he said.

When a district loses students to another district, the accompanying loss of the per-student subsidies makes it more difficult for the home district to serve the students who remain, Fillmore said, adding, "It's like internally we're attacking ourselves."

While cutting the 20-mile limit would affect all public school systems in Arizona, it could hit hardest those districts that have started or are contemplating aggressive marketing campaigns to lure out-of-district students to their schools.

Fillmore is not optimistic about the chances for his proposal in this session of the Legislature, but said he wanted to get his colleagues thinking about the idea behind it.

Districts seek full schools

Kelly Alexander,Kyrene's director of community education, said the buses are provided because there is demand for the service.

Many families moved from Ahwatukee Foothills to Maricopa about seven or eight years ago for more-affordable housing, Alexander said. At the same time, enrollment at Kyrene de los Lagos Elementary and Kyrene Akimel A-al Middle School was declining as the population near the school aged. Both schools are in Ahwatukee.

Now 181 of Lagos' 524 kids and 218 of Akimel A-al's 1,124 students are from Maricopa, district records show.

While educators don't like to equate students with funding, Alexander said, full schools run more efficiently and maximize what the district can do financially.

The amount of money districts receive per student varies and is based on a number of factors, including disabilities or special needs, grade level and teacher-experience level. Since the 2009-10 school year, the base per-student funding in the state has been $3,267.72.

The Kyrene School District receives $3,246 annually for each kindergarten student, $5,060 for each student first through third grade and $4,816 for each fourth- through eighth-grade student. Tempe Union gets just over $5,000 per student.

Arizona Department of Education spokesman Andrew LeFevre said competition among districts breeds innovation and, ultimately, a better product for students.

Part of the Department of Education's job is to make sure parents have a reliable way of determining what school is best for their child, LeFevre said. The department revamped the state school-rating system, which now grades schools A through F, and is working on a project to make data about schools around the state easy to navigate.

Still, LeFevre said, the onus to bring in students lies with districts and schools. Strong principals running strong schools with good programs attract families, he said.

"I don't think those are the ones you're going to hear worrying about losing kids," LeFevre said. High school 'explosions'

Mountain Pointe High School always had a handful of Maricopa students, Principal Bruce Kipper said, but about five years ago, "it kind of exploded. It went from a dozen or two to a couple hundred."

This year, Tempe Union has 299 students who live within Maricopa's boundaries, and most of them attend Mountain Pointe in Ahwatukee, records show.

Mountain Pointe started busing in students about four years ago, Kipper said. Before that, parents had contracted with a transportation company to have their kids sent to school in large vans.

"I went to the district and said we need to look at this," Kipper said. "Once we started offering buses, it kind of exploded again."

Mountain Pointe has five feeder schools and a large open-enrollment population, Kipper said. Of the school's roughly 2,660 students, he said, nearly 900 live outside its boundaries.

"We do have boundaries like every other school has, but we tend to look at our community as much broader and much wider than just what our boundaries are," Kipper said. "We've really just embraced that. We welcome everybody."

The school also promotes its strengths to attract new students, he said.

"In Arizona you're competing against everybody. We can't just sit back and wait for kids to come to us," Kipper said. "We need to go out and tell people what we're doing and market ourselves."

Conley conceded that the competition also is helping elevate Maricopa, saying it has made the district "even more driven for academic success."

She added that many families don't understand that in some ways Maricopa rivals Kyrene and Tempe Union.

"It's absolutely changing perception, and I think we're doing a really nice job of that," Conley said.

Those perceptions are rooted in how the district used to be, she said. The community grew quickly and "we really have had to put the infrastructure in place while we were growing and building at the same time," she said.

Maricopa Unified now has about 5,800 students in six elementary schools, two middle schools and one high school. It also runs an online high-school program.

The district has "the exact same district standing as Tempe and Kyrene," Conley said, referring to the letter grades the state assigned to each school in October. All three districts received a B, though Kyrene and Tempe Union both missed an A by one point.

Maricopa is growing, Conley said, and that will make it easier for parents to keep their children in schools there.

"It's really only a matter of time before we have all the conveniences that suburban Phoenix has," she said.

In the end, parents do make the choice for their students, Conley said, and "I am just trying to make sure that our parents can make an educated decision when they do that."