Arizona School District Spending—Fiscal Year 2022—Analysis and data file

In FY 2022, State-wide school district spending increased by more than $1 billion, which led to per student increases in all spending areas compared to FY 2021, including instruction. Much of this increase was likely due to the continued influx of COVID-19 federal relief monies. However, districts allocated a smaller proportion of the increased operational spending to instruction than in prior years, which led the State-wide instructional spending percentage to decrease since FY 2021 by 0.8 percentage points to 54.5 percent. The State average teacher salary increased to $58,366 in FY 2022—a 20.7 percent increase over the FY 2017 average—after failing to meet the intended 20 percent cumulative increase by FY 2021, and districts used COVID-19 federal relief monies to help fund the increase. We continued to see wide operational spending variations among similar districts in areas such as plant operations, indicating possible opportunities for improved efficiency at some districts, which could free up dollars for teacher salaries or other district priorities. Nearly all districts returned to in-person learning, leading to increases in meals served, riders transported, and miles driven State-wide, which are areas that had seen significant decreases in the prior fiscal year.

Once again, we are providing our State-wide analysis results and individual district results in an interactive, user-friendly, web-based format. Similar to prior years, this format will allow you to easily view detailed results for a single district or the summarized State results in a manner that provides information about why this data is important and how it can be used. The website also defines and explains the measures we present, our objectives and scope, and data sources. Links to the website can be found under “Additional Links” on the right side of this page. Additionally, we continue to issue a Microsoft Excel data file, which contains the numbers and other information presented in the graphics on the individual district and State results pages and can be found under ”Additional Documents” on the right side of this page.