It's that time of year again as kids head back to school in just a couple weeks.
After all the school supply shopping is done, what can they expect in their classrooms?
One expert said some bad news.
And, he said, it isn't getting any better.
"This is by far the most difficult year, financially, that schools have ever faced, in my experience," said interim Arizona School Boards Association Executive Director Chuck Essigs.
Essigs' experience spans nearly three decades, but he said this year is downright depressing.
"The cuts are so deep. They've never been this deep and they never lasted as long as they're lasting now," Essigs said.
With hundreds of millions of dollars axed yearly from public schools' budgets and as bad as we've seen the crunch so far, we wanted to know what to expect this year.
Essigs says the same we've been seeing, just multiplied.
"They're putting more kids in each classroom, eliminating special programs," he explained.
He said there's good and bad news.
"I think we've hit the bottom, but we're going to be at the bottom and not bounce back for a couple years," Essigs said.
He points to the one cent sales tax increase approved last year, saying it goes away next year.
"That's a billion dollars of lost revenue," Essigs said.
Plus he said districts are already using what's called rollover money. It's basically a credit card that the state pays off with next year's budget.
"So they've already spent a billion dollars out of next year's budget to make the payments to school districts this year," he explained.
That all adds up to a big fat negative. Essigs said the schools will bounce back, eventually, but what about the youngster who goes through grade school in these tough times?
"The question will be is that student in fourth, fifth, sixth grade during that period of time, will they be able to recover," he wondered.
Essigs said the sting is easier to take for schools because they know cuts are coming from just about everywhere.
They're just learning how to do more with much less.
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