In August of 2025, the Maricopa County Superior Court released their 114-page decision in Glendale Elementary School District et al v. State of Az et al, the newest case in a long series of cases about the terrible school funding in Arizona. This case has gone on for years with massive work by attorneys and thousands of pages of documents, exhibits, and arguments. A two-week trial was held in May 2024. This lawsuit challenges the constitutionality of Arizona’s system for funding the capital needs of Arizona’s K-12 public schools – again.
The AZ Constitution says that education is a right and the responsibility of the state. (Ariz. Const.art. XI, § 1(A).) The legislature makes the policy decisions on how best to allocate the state’s resources to meet the public schools’ capital and other needs. The court can only decide if the system set up by the legislature meets the constitutional mandate. The Court in this case ruled that the current public-school capital finance system does not meet the constitutional minimum standards established by the Arizona Supreme Court.
