Prop. 320 asks voters if the state should dictate how much public schools spend in the classroom

Republicans and powerful conservative organizations who say public schools spend too much on administration and unnecessary programs are urging voters to change state law to override local control and force public schools to spend a bigger percentage of their funding on “direct instruction.” 

Democrats and public school advocacy organizations are aggressively campaigning against Proposition 320, saying that because those same GOP lawmakers have left Arizona public schools chronically underfunded for decades, the only responsible way to boost classroom spending is to increase funding. 

Republicans and proponents argue that putting a larger proportion of school spending toward student instruction will lead to better test scores and outcomes, and provide much-needed pay raises to Arizona teachers — without them having to spend any more money. 

But that ignores the reality that Arizona students need support beyond the classroom to thrive, public school advocates and Democrats say. Decisions to hire those vital support workers, like instructional coaches, counselors and school nurses, should remain in the hands of the local school boards that know their district’s needs, they argue. 

If voters approve it in November, Prop. 320 would require the public schools that teach more than 80% of Arizona students to increase their direct instructional spending by one-half a percentage point annually until they reach at least 60% of their spending. School districts that don’t comply would see their share of the Classroom Site Fund decreased by 25% each year, until it reaches zero. That money goes toward teacher salaries and bonuses, smaller classes and support services for students. 

But exactly what counts as “direct instructional spending” isn’t known: Prop. 320 leaves it up to the Arizona Auditor General to determine the definition and then evaluate how schools are complying with the law. 

For many schools, the 25% reduction in the Classroom Site fund would be a devastating loss. School districts receive millions of dollars from the fund. During fiscal year 2026, more than $27 million has been set aside for Phoenix Unified High School District, while Mesa Unified School District, the state’s largest, is slated to receive over $52 million from the fund.

The spending mandate would apply only to the 71 school districts in populous Maricopa and Pima counties, plus larger rural districts with at least 7,500 students. (There are five of those: Flagstaff Unified District, Florence Unified School District, Maricopa Unified School District, Yuma Elementary District and Yuma Union High School District). Collectively, those 76 districts educate nearly 83% of the state’s 845,000 public school students.

The proposition was sent to the ballot by the state legislature, in the final vote of this year’s legislative session at nearly 4 a.m. on June 13, after lawmakers had worked through the night. On that final day, the Republicans who control both chambers pushed through five ballot referrals, all on party-line votes, a strategy to bypass vetoes from Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs. 

Hobbs has vetoed hundreds of bills that got only Republican support, but ballot referrals don’t require her signatures. 

“This is a measure that will markedly improve teacher pay in this state, and it will finally rebalance a broken system that currently is focused on bloating the administration rather than funding classrooms,” the referral’s sponsor, Sen. Jake Hoffman, said during a Feb. 19 Senate Government Committee hearing.

Hoffman, leader of the far-right Arizona Freedom Caucus, is a proponent of the state’s school voucher program, which provides public funding for any K-12 student to attend private school, or to be homeschooled. 

A February analysis of school spending from the Arizona Auditor General found that the per-pupil share of school spending that is reserved to pay for administrative costs, like superintendent, principal and clerical staff salaries, increased from $1,156 per student in the 2020 fiscal year to $1,309 in fiscal year 2025. That increase is less than inflation: According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor and Statistics, that 2020 spending on administrative costs is the equivalent of $1,424 in 2025.

In the same report, state auditors found that the statewide percentage of funding schools dedicated to instructional spending fell for the third consecutive year in 2025. In fiscal year 2022, the state’s instructional spending percentage was at 54.5%, while in fiscal year 2025, the latest year for which there is data, that decreased to 52%, despite a $300 million dollar increase in total school spending. 

Republicans have seized on that as proof that schools need stricter controls on how they allocate their funding to ensure money is spent first and foremost on classroom expenses and not on other initiatives that support students. 

“I think the reason why we’ve seen this decrease is that schools are maybe trying to do more than what they need to do,” Chris Thomas of the Goldwater Institute said during a Sept. 24 Clean Elections debate on Prop. 320. “They’re not centered enough on teaching and learning that happened in the classroom. And, so, what you’ve had is an expansion of certain categories of spending, such as instructional support, student support, administration.”  

While school districts dedicate the bulk of their funds to classroom expenses, the amount spent strictly on instruction, which includes teacher pay, hovers at just above 52%. But actual spending on instruction has increased over the years. The per-pupil share of money spent on instruction rose from $6,253 in fiscal year 2023 to $6,541 in fiscal year 2025. 

And there’s a practical reason that the percentage of spending dedicated to spending dipped: Much of the new funding awarded to schools that year was earmarked for capital improvements and new school construction.

Opponents of Prop. 320, including Democratic lawmakers and groups like Children’s Action Alliance and the Arizona School Resource Officers Association say that school boards should have the final say on their own budgets. 

They argue that districts spend their money differently because they have different needs. Some must spend more on transportation, while others need to invest in their buildings and infrastructure and others need more support staff to assist students with disabilities. 

“This measure will force districts to shift resources away from all these vital student services, especially special education services, to meet an arbitrary formula created in the past couple of days with very little stakeholder engagement,” Democratic Sen. Lauren Kuby said during the Feb. 19 hearing. 

Hoffman’s proposal passed the Senate along party lines on March 23, but it never got a committee hearing in the Arizona House of Representatives — standard procedure before a vote in either chamber. It was re-introduced, through a party line vote to suspend the chamber’s rules and House Republicans immediately voted to pass it without any deliberation, just before 4 a.m. on June 13. 

Kevin Volk, D-Tucson, along with other Democrats, criticized Republicans for bringing the proposition for a vote at such an hour. 

“This is the last bill of this session, and yet another example of out of touch, out of the classroom, politician math where you say, ‘You know how we’re going to get more money to teachers? Let’s give less money to districts,’” he said. 

Volk said he found many of the arguments in favor of Prop. 320 to be disingenuous. 

“We can pretend as much as we want that the issue isn’t that our state funding is 49th in the country, that our class sizes aren’t the largest in the country, that our overall culture of support for teachers is one of the worst in the country,” he said. “We can pretend that those aren’t factors. We can pretend that the court didn’t rule that we structurally underfunded education in the state. But, ultimately, those things are true. And so let’s not have these simplistic, misleading proposals and call them a solution, even if the brand is ‘common sense.’”

Prop. 320 has the backing of large conservative organizations like the Goldwater Institute and Heritage Action. 

“Teaching and learning is the reason why schools exist,” Thomas said during the Clean Elections debate. “Everything that a school district does should be there to enhance the teaching and learning that happens between students and teachers. That’s what Prop. 320 is, is trying to get more of those resources of a school district’s budget into supporting the teaching and learning that happens in the classroom.”

Matt Beienburg, director of education policy for Goldwater Institute, said during the Feb. 19 hearing that Arizonans had already been promised too many times that teacher pay would be increased for the districts not to live up to those promises.

Republicans often point to former Gov. Doug Ducey’s “20 by 2020” plan, which sought to increase teacher salaries by 20%, as one of those broken promises. Less than half of all school districts met that goal and teacher pay increased by an average of 16.5%. That was in large part because the legislature didn’t allocate the money based on how much each district needed to increase their teacher pay rates, but rather based on student enrollment figures. Some schools received much less than they needed to increase teacher salaries sufficiently. 

Arguing against Prop. 320 during the debate, Jimmy Arwood of Arizonans for Quality Education pointed out that, even though many rural districts are exempt from the 60% rule, others would have to comply. 

He pointed to Baboquivari Unified School District in Pima County,  which serves the rural Tohono O’odham Nation and spends a disproportionately large amount of money on transportation because it has to transport students such long distances. That district currently spends just 32% of its funds on direct instruction, according to the auditor general. 

“They have to spend five times the state average on transportation to get students to school,” Arwood said. “The longest daily bus route there is 385 miles to make sure a group of students can get there. If that bus isn’t picking them up, those kids aren’t going to school.”

That’s one example of why opponents of Prop. 320 argue that spending decisions should be made by school boards that understand the individual needs of their schools. 

“This bill very much interferes with local decision making, school district decision making. We have to have flexibility for our schools in these changing times,” Kuby said before voting against the referral on March 23.

Contributing reporting by Gloria Rebecca Gomez