For two years, a group of local activists have been pushing for consolidation of the Cottonwood-Oak Creek, Mingus Union High and Clarkdale-Jerome school districts. Next month, the decision to merge COCSD and MUHSD will be finally put to the voters, with a consolidation question set for the general election on Tuesday, Nov. 3.
Three Questions
The ballot measure is being asked three times — once for voters in the Cottonwood-Oak Creek School District, once for voters in the Clarkdale- Jerome School District and once for voters in the Mingus Union High School District, which currently encompasses both of the other districts.
Most voters will have the question appear twice on their ballot.
In order to pass, “Yes” must receive majority support in all three cases.
If consolidation passes, both COCSD and MUHSD will cease to exist, to be replaced with a new district with the geographical boundary of COCSD.
CJSD will not be included in this new district and will instead pay tuition to the new unified district to send students to high school there, though whether Clarkdale continues to send just as many students to Mingus as it currently does is a decision that the CJSD Governing Board will be able to make in the future. The decision to exclude Clarkdale-Jerome was due to the district receiving extra equalization dollars as a small district that would be removed if it was part of a larger district.
The Cottonwood Journal Extra has contacted some of the strongest advocates for and against consolidation.
Yavapai County School Superintendent Tim Carter’s office has developed a 55-page voter information packet on consolidation that is being sent out to voters.
Administrative Costs
Phil Terbell, president of the Committee For Better Upper Verde Valley Schools and a former MUHSD board member, said he believe the main reason to vote in favor of consolidation is based on his belief that turning two districts into one would cut down on administrative costs from running the districts.
Both COCSD and MUHSD are small districts, with the latter consisting of only a single school. Terbell argues that by combining, the districts would be able to cut down on costs and personnel in the administrative offices and thereby put that money straight back into the classrooms.
“Mingus Union spends about $1 million dollars in administration costs, and Cottonwood-Oak Creek spends about $2 million in administration costs,” Terbell said. “If we could streamline that, and we could spend 10% less, that money could better be spent other ways.”
“The savings that comes from administration should go into teacher pockets,” said Jason Finger, a former COCSD board member.
However, consolidation opponents argue that MUHSD already has a relatively limited administrative staff, and there would not be nearly as much to cut as consolidation advocates claim.
“They’re trying to save money on positions that just don’t exist,” former MUHSD board member Jim Ledbetter said.
Ledbetter noted that consolidation advocates have spoken of a desire to have just one food services director, transportation director or facilities manager for the district, but pointed out that at Mingus, most of those jobs are already done by either the superintendent or business manager.
Ledbetter argued that in the case of consolidation, the combined district would still need to have nearly as much staff as the two districts currently have.
“If in fact you consolidated, I will bet any amount of money that there will be an assistant superintendent in charge of primary education. You will not have one superintendent doing it all,” Ledbetter said. “Would you be able to do a combined payroll with one payroll person? The answer is no…. That premise that one person can do the job of two is a flawed premise.”
Taxes
Consolidation opponents argue that creating smaller boundaries for the new unified district would actu- ally lead to less money for the unified district, due to the lower tax base within the smaller boundary of the new district, which, for instance, would no longer include the Salt River Materials Group cement plant, one of the largest single taxpayers in the district.
Furthermore, the new unified district, with a smaller tax base than either of the previous districts, would be responsible for the combined debts of the current MUHSD and COCSD districts, meaning a greater debt with a tax base that has not increased and, in the case of Mingus, has shrunk.
CJSD would pay for its portion of the former Mingus debt as part of the tuition for students sent to high school in the new district, but consolidation opponents argue that the smaller tax base would make paying off the debt financially onerous. A smaller tax base will mean more state equalization funding coming to the district, since districts with smaller tax bases receive more from the state than those with larger ones.
According to Carter, the equalization dollars mean that whatever is lost by the combined school district in tax dollars is made up for with state dollars.
Carter’s office estimates that the tax burdens of residents in both CJSD and the new combined district would reduce slightly, $49 for the average homeowner in the Clarkdale-Jerome School District boundaries and $17 for the average homeowner in the Cottonwood-Oak Creek School District boundaries.
Carter, who must remain legally neutral and implement whatever voters decide, expects that neither the tax changes nor the potential administrative cuts will have significant effects on district finances.
“When I look at these numbers I see this as kind of a wash, whether you’re up a few dollars or down a few dollars,” Carter said. “It is rare to see huge savings in a consolidation, unless the unified district would start closing schools. If they went in there and closed a couple schools that’s going to dramatically change these numbers.”
Consolidation opponents argue that even if state equalization dollars would make up for the loss of tax dollars, the smaller tax base would significantly reduce the amount that the district can take in via bonds and overrides, though Terbell argues out that the districts have never yet come close to exceeding those limits.
“The valuation for the consolidated district would shrink slightly,” Terbell said. “That taxable valuation base is still huge and we haven’t come close to exceeding it.”
Education
Consolidation advocates argue that consolidation would improve educational outcomes by allowing for a unified educational approach from the beginning of kindergarten through high school graduation.
“If it doesn’t save a penny, I still think it’s better for the kids to be in a K-12 program,” Finger said. “For the largest part, [the districts] educate the same students. They’re the same kids.”
Finger argues that consolidating would allow for a unified curriculum handled at a district-wide level for a student’s whole education. He believes that the transition from middle school to high school can lead to problems when a student’s education is being handled by two different districts.
“What we were doing at the K-8 level was not handed off smoothly to the high school level. We’ve tried it in the past and it hasn’t worked,” Finger said. He said that as board president of COCSD, he had made efforts to work more closely with Mingus, but he felt he was unable to really do so under the current setup. “They’re just transitioning from eighth to ninth grade, and it shouldn’t be a drastic shift in their learning.”
Consolidation opponents argue that the transition is already handled well, and consolidation would not lead to a significant change in how students make the transition between what is expected to still be two different schools.
“We brought meetings together with the school board presidents, with the superintendents…. Those guys are meeting all the time and it is aligned,” Ledbetter said.
Teacher Pay
MUHSD teachers are on a higher pay scale than COCSD teachers. Consolidation advocates argue that this is bad, and an advantage of consolidation would be to put teachers on the same pay schedule to improve pay for the elementary and middle school teachers.
“I do not believe that a high school teacher deserves more than an elementary teacher,” Finger said. “All teachers deserve a living wage.”
Consolidation opponents argue that the only way to get both sets of teachers on to the same pay level would be to freeze pay increases for Mingus teachers, which they believe would hurt the ability to hire and retain good teachers and hurt educational outcomes.
“It doesn’t do good for a school district to have their staff frozen. And you’re going to attract new teachers? As a small community, what do we have to offer people to move from Phoenix to here?” former teacher David Gray said. “As long as I have been here, Cottonwood- Oak Creek has never raised the salaries to what would be sufficient for them. Now what they want to do is make Mingus wait while they raise the salaries of the elementary school.”
Governing
In the first two years after consolidation, the new district would be governed by a 10-member board created by combining the two district boards before an election in 2022 would create a unified five-member board. However, since three of Mingus’ five current board members live in Clarkdale, they would be unable to continue to serve on the district board.
The Future
Consolidation opponents argue that disrupting the school districts would only have a negative effect on educational outcomes by creating new issues that mess with a district that has been functioning well until now.
But Terbell argues that with student enrollment declining as fewer young parents move to the area, change is not only inevitable but also necessary to ensure the schools’ future in coming years.
“I think that we’re facing changing times in America and Arizona,” Terbell said. “We’re still delivering school education the way that we did when Mingus Union was designed in 1958. I don’t think any companies are doing the same business they were in 1958.”
If consolidation is approved, changes will not happen all at once, Carter said. He made the comparison to recent consolidation votes in Cochise and Mojave counties that caused continued decisions for years after the initial big one.
“This is going to take at least probably three years for all the decisions to be made about how all this is going to work,” Carter said. “Districts evolve — you’re eliminating two complete districts, and you’re creating this new district that is whatever that board and community want it to be. I’m hoping that all the people on either side of this issue stay actively engaged so their voice can be heard.”
