Arizona has grown rapidly over the years and our education system has grown in step with the population. But increasing the total budget for education doesn't mean that we have directed more resources to each student. The numbers show that Arizona has one of the lowest per-pupil funding rates in the country. Parties of one faction or another argue endlessly about which numbers to use in comparing Arizona to other states, or even whether such comparisons are possible. What is indisputable is that Arizona ranks in the bottom tier of states in both education spending and in student achievement and that we have made substantial cuts in our funding of both K-12 and higher education since the beginning of the Great Recession.

Many Arizona street-level police officers and sheriff’s deputies report that they are skeptical of the ability of Arizona’s “pro-arrest” policy to reduce domestic violence, frustrated by a perceived lack of follow-up from prosecutors, and often at odds with victims whose predicaments they may not fully understand.

Domestic violence is a major social problem throughout Arizona, and a major daily challenge for law enforcement officers. Every day in Arizona, domestic violence injures victims, damages property, destroys families, breeds further crime and anti-social behavior, and perpetuates itself in younger generations. Like most states, Arizona has "criminalized" domestic violence (DV) by adopting laws and policies that bolster law enforcement officers’ arrest powers and require them to arrest suspects under certain circumstances.

COVID-19 has disrupted almost every facet of American life, but the pandemic’s economic impact has been especially challenging for some of Arizona’s renters. Prior to COVID-19, approximately one in seven Arizonans lived in poverty, which is defined as earning less than $13,000 a year for a single adult and less than $22,000 a year for a three-person family. More Arizonans are one crisis away from severe financial hardship and potential eviction than just Arizonans living in poverty. Preventing an eviction “avalanche” after Arizona’s eviction moratorium ends is critical to the state’s finances because the costs, shouldered in part by taxpayers, associated with eviction and homelessness can be staggering. While financial support from unemployment insurance programs, the federal CARES Act, and Arizona’s eviction prevention fund are helping some Arizonans navigate the initial economic fallout from COVID-19, there are still thousands of Arizonans on the brink who have applied for rental assistance and not received support.

As downtown Phoenix experiences a wave of new residential and commercial construction, Phoenix Elementary School District #1 (Phoenix #1) is at the center of the largest local demographic change in decades. Phoenix #1 educates more than 6,000 students at 14 schools, from preschool through eighth grade, with many families living in older, historic and modest homes around the downtown Phoenix area. Times are changing, with thousands of new high-rise apartments coming to the market in downtown Phoenix in the heart of the school district. Phoenix #1 must consider how these new residents – well educated and often with upper incomes but no children – will fit into a system that draws most its students from less-affluent residential areas surrounding downtown. This report examines the changes that have taken place in downtown Phoenix in recent years and explores what they may mean to the district in the future.

Mexico is Arizona’s No. 1 trading partner with over $15 billion in trade annually. The bulk of Arizona’s international commerce is with Sonora, the immediate neighbor to the south, but there are other potential economic opportunities worth exploring across Mexico. Here the focus is on Guanajuato, one of Mexico’s most economically advanced states with robust international trading ties. Watts College of Public Service and Community Solutions and Morrison Institute for Public Policy at Arizona State University researched the potential for enhanced economic ties between Arizona and Guanajuato, a state and capital city by the same name located in Central Mexico, 227 miles northwest of Mexico City and about 1,100 miles southeast of Phoenix. Watts College and Morrison Institute partnered with the L. William Seidman Research Institute at ASU’s W.P. Carey School of Business to produce a detailed economic profile of Guanajuato in order to guide ongoing and future exploration of expanded trade with Arizona.

This is the fourth in a series of briefs in which Morrison Institute for Public Policy will report on selected aspects of Arizona’s child welfare system. Morrison Institute’s first white paper discussed the less visible but more common side of child maltreatment: neglect. The second white paper examined family conditions that can influence a family’s subtle “drift” towards unsafe situations that often correlate with neglect, as well as how different types of prevention might help interrupt the “drift into failure.” The third paper analyzed Arizona Department of Child Safety data to identify the prevalence of various types of neglect in Arizona reports. This paper highlights some key conclusions from the neglect analysis and identifies future areas for study and analysis as part of the Spotlight on Arizona’s Kids project. Future papers will research, analyze and discuss prevention services in Arizona and elsewhere, with an emphasis on best practices. These collective efforts are intended to help state leaders, child advocates and others discuss and identify the most-effective child abuse and neglect prevention strategies. Spotlight on Arizona’s Kids is funded by the Arizona Community Foundation