When Arizona receives $5 billion annually in state and federal funds for schools it takes an IT department at the state superintendent's office to administer those dollars. 

But, education spokesman Stefan Swiat asked how that will happen after learning what the governor's budget has allocated this year for the superintendent's IT department. 

"Nothing! Zero dollars, big fat bagel allotted for IT right now," he said, then went on to explain, "The IT budget include maintenance costs (and) potentially more significant, the salaries of the people who operate the computers that figure out how much each school is due."

Dawn Wallace, the chief education adviser to Gov. Doug Ducey, acknowledged the proposal allocated zero dollars instead of the requested $17.6 million requested by State Superintendent Diane Douglas. 

"IT projects are very jargony (sic) and technical," Wallace said in review, "We need to understand what was priority, what was critical."

Wallace said she was talking with the Department of Education last week and assured something will be worked out before there are any interruptions in payments to the schools.

"The numbers are different," she conceded, "but that doesn't mean that eventually we don't want to get to funding more in education."

In a letter to her staff, Superintendent Douglas warned the department needs at least $17.6 million to run the IT division or risk losing its high tech trained employees permanently to other more stable employers.