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By Tuesday morning, more than 3,000 Tucson teachers will receive a letter from the Tucson Education Association, the union that represents them.

The four-page letter — titled "What happened to the money?" — alleges that more than $5 million earmarked in this year's state budget for teacher raises in the Tucson Unified School District instead has been spent on a district initiative to reduce class size.

The district disputes the allegation, and Superintendent Roger Pfeuffer has drafted a response to the union's allegation that is expected to be mailed around the same time.

The experience, says one TUSD teacher, is flustering.

"The sentiment, more than anger and frustration, is confusion," said Jason Freed, a math teacher at Alice Vail Middle School and secretary for the union.

Even the amount of money is in dispute.

Albert Siqueiros, TUSD's director of employee relations, said the district received $5.4 million from the $100 million set aside statewide for teacher bonuses. However, the district was allocated $5.57 million, said Arizona Department of Education spokeswoman Amy Rezzonico, a difference of more than $100,000. TUSD received the second largest cut of the $100 million bonus. Mesa Public Schools received the most, with $6.67 million, while the Peoria Unified School District came in behind Tucson at $3.47 million.

This isn't the first conflict about the money. The funds, which came from a state surplus, were to be given to school districts throughout the state to increase wages and benefits. The money was specifically set aside for nonadministrative personnel but could be distributed as the district saw fit, which state officials say has led to some confusion among the larger school districts.

The Sunnyside Unified School District decided to divide its $2.5 million among three initiatives: beefing up all-day kindergarten, decreasing class sizes by hiring additional teachers and giving increases to the more than 1,000 teachers employed in the district.

No official decision has been made how the money will be split among the three items, spokeswoman Monique Soria said, but it's expected that half of it will be used to supplement all-day kindergarten funding because the district could not get Title I funds for kindergarten after it accepted the governor's grant to pay for it.

As for using the money to hire more teachers, Soria said reducing class size "helps both the students and the teachers."

Other districts have given their share of the money directly to personnel.

For example, the Marana Unified School District's $1.2 million was paid to the 808 teachers there, spokeswoman Tamara Crawley said. That means the teachers can expect a bonus of $1,485 apiece.

And Amphitheater Public Schools distributed its $1.5 million to the teachers and classified employees of the district, spokesman Todd Jaeger said, resulting in a per-employee bonus of $688.

Officials with the TUSD union began asking about their district's cut of the money more than a month ago, while they were negotiating a contract for white collar/food service employees, union President Rosalva Meza said Friday.

"As soon as that was over, that's when we gave them a memorandum of agreement that proposed giving the money to teachers as a stipend," Meza said. But the response from the district, she said, was silence.

The union missive to members alleges that instead of raises, TUSD used the funds to hire new teachers and prep school sites for smaller classrooms.

Siqueiros and TUSD spokeswoman Chyrl Hill Lander say that's not true.

The $5.4 million, Siqueiros said, was part of a total of $12.1 million in state surplus funds used to pay for salary and benefits for all nonadministrative employees, including janitors, office staff, and cafeteria staff. In all, $11.6 million will be spent this year on benefits, salaries and retirement funds for nonadministrative staff, he said.

But what remains unclear is if the bonus money from the state was used to help TUSD pay for the final year of a three-year teachers' contract.

"Teachers have not received any additional money," Meza said. "The teachers have got what was previously negotiated and what was already expected to come from the state."

Siqueiros says had it not been for the bonus money, it would have been "difficult" for TUSD to make good on all employee contracts.

"We wouldn't have been short. We would've met the demands of the contract, but we would have had to look at our budget to see how we would meet the needs of our other employees as well," he said.

When asked if there would have been a budget shortfall without the $5.4 million, he said he didn't have the information he needed to fully explain his answer.

"We feel we met the intention and obligation of the state Legislature and the governor," Siqueiros said.

It's not the first dispute over the money and its use.

On Sept. 6, Arizona Attorney General Terry Goddard settled a legal argument that claimed awarding teachers the money after labor contracts were signed was unconstitutional.

Goddard wrote that contract agreements made before the announcement of additional funds may be amended to add compensation increases as a result of the bonus money.

"The raises arise from a special appropriation enacted for the explicit purpose of funding salary and benefit increases for district nonadministrative personnel. Here, the legislation expressly requires a district to use the monies it relieves for this precise purpose, and no other."

Mike Haener, Gov. Janet Napolitano's deputy chief of staff, said the office has heard there are problems throughout the state regarding the money.

"The whole point of this was to ensure whatever level you were at, you get a raise and moved up in teacher pay," he said. "For example, the intent was that if you were supposed to make $30,000 this coming year, whatever the district got of that $100 million, that $30,000 pay got bumped up."

Meanwhile, teachers are in the dark, said Freed, the Alice Vail teacher. They support smaller classroom sizes but are unsure of the money set aside for them, he said.

"People are seeing the pay raise already agreed upon from a three-year contract. So where's the new money? People don't get it," he said.

On StarNet: For more information on school-related issues, visit azstarnet.com/education