Pima County’s Joint Technical Education District will ask voters to raise property taxes for JTED for the first time ever, citing explosive growth in career and technical education.
JTED — a separate school district born in 2007 and serving about 30,000 students throughout Southern Arizona — has a $250 million bond on the November ballot.
Pima JTED asks Pima County homeowners to pay more in taxes over the next 15 years to mainly expand its central campuses where 3,000 of its 30,000 Southern Arizona high school students are educated in free classes on how to become a birth doula or veterinary technician or a welder and everything in between. JTED also offers free programs at various high schools including automotive, construction and sports medicine.
For Pima County property taxpayers, the bond known as Proposition 427 on your ballot, would increase taxes by $41 a year on a $250,000 home over 15 years.
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JTED is not eligible for state funding for facilities like traditional public school districts. The expansion is focused on constructing buildings for its programs, including welding; construction and engineering; robotics; and automation, administrators say.
The bond package features two new buildings, a human services center and an engineering and construction center at JTED’s main campus, at Interstate 10 and Park Avenue on Tucson’s south side.
The current Bridges Campus has a medical career building and another, which houses Innovation Tech High School, a career and technical education school in the Tucson Unified School District.
“We’re also looking at more cosmetology or a barber program. The state board was excited to hear that we might do a barber program,” said Greg D’Anna, JTED director of public relations, adding early childhood education, cyber security, EMT programs and microchip manufacturing are also a possibility.
But some Southern Arizona school districts oppose the bond, saying most of the funds would go to the central JTED campuses and not to individual schools. About a dozen districts signed a letter last December saying the bond allocation is unfair because most students attend JTED through their high schools.
The conflict between Career Technical Education Districts and other school districts is not new in Arizona. Nine school districts in Phoenix’s East Valley sued the East Valley Institute of Technology in Tempe last summer and won the right to spend career and tech education funds without oversight from the institute.
In Southern Arizona, about 90% of JTED students attend 14 satellite campuses. And 75% of bond money would go to central campuses where expansive programs need more space for training and development. The campuses also have a 600-800 student waitlist, administrators say.
Just over $186 million is planned for central campus expansions and new buildings to address booming enrollment and space shortages.
About $64 million is designated for satellite school district programs across Southern Arizona.
JTED also included $16 million in the bond for a southern regional tech hub along Interstate 19 to capitalize on the mining boom in Santa Cruz County, officials say.
“Mining is taking off with the price of copper rising,” JTED Chief Financial Officer Ken McGovern said, adding local mining operations are investing in that area and those companies also “need strong robotics and automation, engineering and students with those backgrounds. We’re looking at offering courses that would feed into those industries there.”
Surrounding districts were asked to submit proposals for JTED funding by June 1, McGovern said. Four districts — Ajo, Baboquivari, Marana and Vail did that and their proposals will be included in the bond allocation, he said.
Member districts rallied last spring and created a formula-based solution for CTE bond funding, Sunnyside Unified School District CTE Director Mario Castro told Sunnyside’s Governing Board in June. He said the CTE funding formula was denied.
Sunnyside was one of 10 districts that did not submit proposals to JTED last summer.
“We do believe in career and technical education courses. We believe in being good partners with Pima County JTED and we exist because they exist. And there’s a lot of pathways for students and it’s helped create our college and career academies,” Sunnyside Superintendent Jose Gastelum said at the June meeting.
“We also have to be good partners when it comes to making these decisions that affect several communities in 14 districts.”
JTED primarily offers courses in Pima County and also educates students in parts of Pinal and Santa Cruz Counties. Its main campuses include charter, private and homeschool students.
No Pima County school-related proposition has any official arguments against it, the Pima County Schools Superintendent’s Office told Arizona Luminaria.
JTED says it will continue to enhance CTE programs at all its campuses if the bond does not pass, but supporting growth is the goal.
“The bond would allow us to respond more quickly to the growing demand for JTED programs,” D’Anna said. “Without it, we will continue to grow, but we will not be able to expand facilities and programs as quickly as the demand from students and industry is growing.”
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