Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey signed Senate Bill 1073 into law April 22, which would change certain rules of school district consolidation. The Committee for Better Upper Verde Valley Schools have since signaled a desire to bring consolidation between Mingus Union High and Cottonwood- Oak Creek school districts up for a vote in November 2020.
In the contentious school district consolidation fight in 2018, opponents of consolidation took issue with the effect a consolidation would have on the relationship between both school districts and the Valley Academy for Career and Technical Education. Under Arizona law, both districts would sever their connections with VACTE if they became one.
In January, Arizona State Sen. Sylvia Allen [R-District 6] introduced SB 1073, which would change the rules for consolidation to allow unified districts to maintain CTE relation- ships automatically, at the request of Yavapai County Superintendent Tim Carter and consolidation advocates. The bill passed the State Senate on Feb. 21 and, on April 11, it passed the House of Representatives.
“If a school district that was participating in a career technical education district at the time that the school district was unified or consolidated … the successor school district that results from that unification or consolidation shall automatically continue to participate in that career technical education district in the same manner as the former school district that was unified or consolidated,” Section 1 of SB 1073 reads.
“We are very pleased that Gov. Ducey signed SB 1073 yesterday,” Bob DeGeer, a member of the Committee for Better Upper Verde Valley Schools, wrote in a press release. “This is just another step in the process to minimize any adverse impact[s] to any school district that will be involved in our consolidation/unification efforts. This legislation insures [sic] that there will be no adverse impact to VACTE if consolidation/unification occurs between Mingus Union and Cottonwood-Oak Creek School Districts.”
The bill had originally been supported by the MUHSD Governing Board, despite that board’s vote against consolidation in 2018 and repeated actions to oppose the process. The board felt if consolidation were to happen, it would at least be preferable to allow the new school district to remain in its relationship with VACTE.
However, as SB 1073 worked its way through the legislature, it was amended to include a clause extending the repeal date of a consolidation bill passed in 2018, which allowed a public election on school district unification if only one of the relevant district boards had voted for consolidation. The 2018 version of the bill self-repealed on Dec. 31, 2020, but SB 1073 extends that self-repeal to Dec. 31, 2022.
“I don’t like the extension. I don’t think it’s right,” MUHSD board President Lori Drake said. Drake stressed that she could not speak on behalf of the whole MUHSD board. “If there’s going to be a vote on consolidation, all three districts need to be able to weigh in on it.”
“I’m happy with the VACTE fix,” Drake said. “But it still does not take care of the entirety of problems with the CTE district. It doesn’t take care of the funding issues, of all the grandfathered programs at VACTE that Mingus pays for that might be affected.”
The House version of the bill included an emergency clause, which would have made 1073 go into effect as soon as the governor signed it. However, the final version that made it to Ducey’s desk did not include the emergency clause. The bill will therefore go into effect 90 days after the end of the legislative session. The legislative session has not yet ended, meaning that the bill will not go into effect until late July at the earliest.
The delay before the implementation of the bill is one of the reasons that the CBUVVS signaled its intention to wait until 2020 for a vote on consolidation. The committee must get signatures from over 2,000 people in order to put it on the ballot. DeGeer said that the CBUVVS intends to start seeking signatures in 2020 but does not have specific plans for their push yet.
In August, the CBUVVS and the MUHSD board, among other parties, settled a lawsuit challenging the legality of the planned consolidation vote in November of that year. The settlement canceled that election but allowed for an election to be held in 2019 without being challenged in court.
“The committee has instructed our legal counsel to reach out to Mingus counsel requesting an extension to a November 2020 election,” DeGeer wrote in an email. “Hopefully they’ll agree, if not, we’ll go directly to Judge Mackey.”
Allen did not respond to multiple requests for comment for this story.
