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PHOENIX — Arizona voters won't have to decide this year whether schools should be forced to spend at least 65 cents of every education tax dollar on direct classroom expenses.

Randy Pullen, organizer of the initiative drive, said Thursday that he has not been able to raise the money necessary. Pullen said he would need $400,000 to hire paid circulators to gather the more than 122,000 signatures necessary to put the measure on the November ballot.

The failure of the effort comes the same day a new report shows that Arizona schools continue to spend less of their education dollars in the classroom than most other states. And the figures — averaging out at less than 59 cents of every dollar — are not getting any better.

Pullen said the report underlines his contention that schools are wasting taxpayer dollars. He said another effort will be made to put the issue on the 2008 ballot.

But state School Superintendent Tom Horne said the statistics, while still below the national average, are not surprising. He said there are factors in Arizona — ranging from large school districts that run up gasoline costs on school buses to high air conditioning costs — that make comparisons with other states invalid.

Horne said, though, the report does highlight one potential area of savings: school district administration. He said consolidating smaller school districts could save taxpayer dollars.

That's also the conclusion of state Sen. Linda Gray, R-Phoenix, who helped create a special commission to study consolidation. That panel is scheduled to provide a report to the Legislature by the end of next year.

The report released Thursday by the state Office of Auditor General found that last year the average classroom spending was 58.4 percent. That actually is a slight decline from the prior year.

State auditors also concluded this puts Arizona about three points below the national average. And Arizona also trails in the share of dollars going into the classroom when compared with other states of similar school spending.

But Auditor General Debbie Davenport said that disparity is not because Arizona is spending less in actual dollars on direct education. Nor, she said, is it because the state's administrative costs are high in comparison with other states.

Instead, she said, Arizona schools are spending more than the national average on the cost of operating the food service, support services like counselors and audiologists, and the amount spent actually keeping the school operating, ranging from security and lawn maintenance to heating and cooling.

"It gets hot here," said Horne. "We spend on transportation because we've got long roads for rural districts with no paved roads."

Davenport said the study did show some patterns.

Most notably, larger school districts were able to spend proportionately more of their cash in the classroom than smaller ones.

"Larger populations provide districts with more money, allowing them to meet their necessary fixed costs and leaving more money to devote to the classroom,"' the report says. "Conversely, higher plant operation and maintenance, administration, student support services and transportation costs were the most significant factors associated with lower classroom dollar percentages.''

Davenport reported that school districts with the highest per-pupil spending in actual dollars are not necessarily the ones that spend the highest percentage of available money in the classroom.

"Although these districts have more resources available to spend per pupil, on average, they put a smaller proportion of each dollar in the classroom," the report says.