Salgado-Whitman calls for a PVUSD facility audit before the November bond

This morning my campaign filed a public-records request with Paradise Valley Unified for the 2024–25 classroom-utilization data — building by building, room by room, period by period. The request also asks for the November bond's project list, broken out by campus, with the dollar figure attached to each line.

Here's why. The current board is preparing to put a $385 million bond question on the November ballot. The case being made for that bond is overcrowding. But the district has not, in any public meeting I can find, shown parents the room-by-room utilization for the campuses that bond is meant to fix. We are being asked to vote on the answer before we have seen the question.

I am not against funding our schools. I want to be very clear about that. My three kids are in PVUSD classrooms today. What I am against is asking parents to authorize $385 million before we audit the buildings we already own.

There are six campuses up the Tatum corridor that are at or above design capacity. There are six campuses south of Bell Road with empty classrooms. Same district. Same property tax base. Same buses. Before we ask voters for one more dollar, the board owes parents an honest accounting of which rooms are full, which rooms are empty, and which boundary lines could be redrawn so a kid in Tatum Highlands isn't sitting in a class of 32 while a third grade eight miles south has 18.

I am asking the sitting board to do three things before the August deadline to certify ballot language:

2. Hold a public work session walking the audit, line by line, with the bond project list overlaid.

3. Let the public comment on whether each bond line still belongs in the package, given what the audit shows.

If the audit comes back and says we need every dollar of that bond — fine. I'll campaign for it. If the audit comes back and says we have empty rooms we could be using — then we have a different conversation, and we have it before the ballot is finalized, not after.

Parents in this district have done the homework. The board owes them the same.