Last week, Arizona’s Governor Doug Ducey approved a crippling budget cut for Arizona’s public school system and higher education. In all, $99 million dollars was cut from higher education funding by the state and $352.5 million dollars was cut from the public school system.

Ducey stated cuts would be made from “non- classroom spending.” Non-classroom spending includes:

Plant Operations

• school equipment repair
• building maintenance
• custodial services
• grounds keeping
• security
• heating and cooling
• property insurance

Administration

• superintendents
• principals
• business managers
• clerical and other staff who perform accounting
• payroll
• purchasing
• warehousing
• printing
• human resources activities
• administrative technology services

Student support

• counselors
• social workers
• nurses
• audiologists
• speech pathologists
• attendance clerks

Instructional support

• employees who train teaching staff and develop curriculum
• special education directors
• librarians
• instruction-related IT (information technology) staff

Food services

• food supplies
• costs related to preparing and serving meals.

Transportation

• maintaining school buses and transporting students.

“It scares me to think how this budget cut will affect my kids’ education,” said Julia Snow, a mother of three. “I remember last week I was in the airport when Air Force One landed and a woman next to me with her daughter, jokingly asked, ‘Did Michelle come to bring education to Arizona?’ It made me realize a harsh reality. My kids aren’t getting the education they deserve.”

Before cuts were made, Arizona was already one of the lowest ranking states in administrative costs, which were at an incredibly low ten percent.

Arizona also ranked 47th in quality education. This was again before the new budget was put into place. With an 80% reduction in funds, Arizona has most likely only decreased its ranking.

Obviously, the majority of teachers and parents are unhappy with the controversial change.

This budget cut greatly affects our public school system but its effects worsen in higher education. All universities and colleges have been drastically cut from state funding, and Maricopa and Pima Community college have been severed off of all state funding.

“[State funding] won’t be literally zero, but it will be so tiny that it’s not really a part of the budget,” said Ozan Jaquette, a professor of educational policy at the University of Arizona to Huffington Post. “That is sort of the reality that we are often told to prepare ourselves for in the long run. We have to be able to find a way to survive completely independently of state support.”

Ducey claims that this new budget is a short-term solution until the state balances its spending, although it is very likely to have long-term effects, none of which are positive for our future.

“Self-government and universal education are inseparable. The one can be exercised only as the other is enjoyed. The first duty of the legislators of a free state is to make, as far as lies within their power, education as free to all its citizens as the air they breathe.” said Arizona’s first territorial governor, John Goodwin.