Arizona School District Spending—Fiscal Year 2023—Analysis and data file

In FY 2023, State-wide school district spending increased by nearly $1 billion with per student increases in all operational spending areas compared to FY 2022, including instruction. Much of this increase was likely due to the continued availability 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 to 53.4 percent, the lowest recorded percentage since we began monitoring in FY 2001. The State average teacher salary increased to $62,934 in FY 2023—a 30.1 percent increase over the FY 2017 average—and districts continued to use COVID-19 federal relief monies to help fund the increase. Additionally, new reporting in FY 2023 about teacher base salaries and years of experience provides more information about how districts pay teachers. 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 increasing teacher salaries, lowering class sizes, and other district priorities. Districts reported spending a majority of COVID-19 federal relief monies on salaries and benefits, and food service program operations continued to be impacted as federal waivers that allowed schools to provide free meals to all students expired and State-wide meals served decreased.

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” below. Additionally, we continue to issue a supplemental 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” below.