Arizona Governor Doug Ducey's spending proposal for the coming fiscal year skips his previous practice of sprinkling new K-12 education spending among a series of small initiatives.
Instead, the budget plan released by the Republican governor Friday focused nearly all the new school spending into three big pots of money designed to restore cuts he himself helped to enact.
The plan includes $100 million for a funding stream paying for school capital costs as part of five-year plan to fully restore $371 million in cuts made since the Great Recession. More than $117 million of those capital cuts occurred under Ducey's first spending plan in 2015.
He also wants $35 million in new cash for building overhauls and another $88 million for new school construction.
In all, the $10.1 billion plan for the budget year that begins July 1 boosts spending by more than $300 million over the current budget.
