In what is not a surprise to the education and political world, enrollment in the Arizona Empowerment Scholarship Account Program (ESA) is surpassing the budget projections put forth in the 2023/24 State Budget.
As of today (October 10, 2023,), 68,455 students have received an ESA scholarship, averaging $7300, to the private school or home school program of their choice.
The quality and mission/vision of these school programs are not considered by the Arizona Department of Education when distributing the money.
Even charter schools have to go through a rigorous application process, ensure a quality curriculum, provide a background-approved staff, and submit to annual audits.
Not all school students pay tuition with taxpayer-funded ESA monies.
According to a press release from Save our Schools Arizona, that already places the program roughly $23 million in the negative over its budgeted $624 million and the state has just started its second fiscal quarter.
There are almost three quarters in the fiscal year to go.
This is becoming, as legislative leaders Mitzi Epstein and Andres Cano prophesized when the budget passed last session, “the alt-fuels fiasco” of this political generation.
In a statement released today, Arizona Governor Katie Hobbs, who agreed to allow no caps in voucher expansion in exchange for increased funding in public education and other needed social justice priorities in the current budget, commented:
“The school voucher program is unaccountable and unsustainable. It does not save taxpayers money, and it does not provide a better education for Arizona students. Instead, taxpayer dollars are funding ski resort passes, luxury car driving lessons, and pianos because partisan politicians refuse to place real limits on the program. Now, the runaway spending threatens funding for state troopers fighting drug trafficking, social workers protecting Arizona’s most vulnerable children, and doctors caring for Veterans who sacrificed their health to protect our country. I call on Superintendent Horne, Speaker Toma, and President Petersen to join with bipartisan leaders to pass accountability and transparency measures, and bring an end to this wasteful, runaway spending.”
Last week, Beth Lewis, the Director of Save Our Schools Arizona relayed in the press release that noted the out-of-control ESA enrollment:
“Our state leaders must face reality and rein in the out-of-control ESA voucher program before it bankrupts the state and siphons $1 billion from our already underfunded local public schools. It is irresponsible to continue doling out state money to vouchers with no budget, no oversight, no safety measures and no accountability. Arizona’s ESA voucher program is seen nationally as an utter disgrace, and legislative leadership must act now — before it’s too late.”
Governor Hobbs and Director Lewis are right. The ESA program, in its present form, is unsustainable and unaccountable.
The Republicans in the State Legislature that insisted on this disaster had better come to their senses and, along with Democrats, pass measures that curb the expansion and put accountability measures in to ensure questionable expenses (possible fraud) do not continue.
Where are the Students coming from?
When Kathy Hoffman was the Superintendent of Public Instruction at the Arizona Department of Education, they periodically reported the percentage of students in the ESA Program that were existing private school students.
Unfortunately, there is no such accuracy from current Superintendent Tom Horne and the current ESA overseers at the Department of Education.
When Blog for Arizona reached out to the Department of Education to ask where the ESA students were coming from (traditional public school, charter public school, current private school enrollee, current home school student,) the spokesperson for the Department of Education, Rick Medina, replied:
“ESA does not ask for information on where a student is coming from before taking an ESA and therefore does not have the data that you are requesting.
The only data that we have, based on other data sets in ADE, is the statistic that 48 percent of all ESA students today have been enrolled in public school at some point in their educational history.”
When this writer asked Mr. Medina in a follow-up whether they were currently tracking the ESA students from state enrollment number data that track individual students, there was no response.
Three points about the response from ADE.
- The anecdotal information is dangerously unspecific and, from an accounting standpoint, it seems very insufficient and porous. To not ask where the student came from seems negligent to say the least. If the student was an employee applying for a job, the employer always asks for the work history. Schools that accept students with ESA funds do not want to know what schools these students have attended??? Come on.
- The majority of students in the ESA program have never been in a public school. The likelihood here is the great majority of these students come from families with means who are receiving a disguised tax cut in the form of a private school scholarship courtesy of tax dollars paid for by middle and working-class families that can not afford the full cost of sending their children to a non-public school. Great fiscal responsibility from the party of conservatism. Not!
- To say 48 percent of ESA students were in public school at some point in their educational history is also misleading. Hypothetically, a child could have been in a public school kindergarten and then spent the rest of their education at a K-12 private school like Phoenix Country Day.
ADE has to do better in tracking the taxpayer’s money, who is using it, and perhaps more importantly, approving what requests to spend.
Where is the money going?
In the last week, ABC 15 News has conducted stellar reporting on how ESA recipients are spending $304 million of their scholarship funds.
Their reporting found that about two-thirds of the funding did go toward tuition costs:
“$91 million – Specialty schools that focus on kids with disabilities. The largest share went to schools specializing in autism.
$57 million – Protestant and non-denominational Christian schools
$32 million – Catholic schools
$11 million – Secular private day schools”
Furthermore, another $79 million went to non-school vendors for supplies and curriculum materials. These included:
“$35 million – Amazon
$5 million – Apple
$1.5 million – Barnes & Noble
$1.5 million – Lakeshore Learning, a school supply store.
$1 million – Outschool.com, an online, a-la-carte learning platform.”
The rest of the $304 million went to expenses that, to put it charitably, are questionable.
These include:
- $50,000 for a snack service called Universal Yum.
- Funding, averaging $800, for teaching kids how to drive luxury cars like Teslas, Porsches, and Mercedes.
- An average of $900 for 440 tower gardens to grow fresh food to the tune of about $400,000.
- The purchase of pianos at an average of $2000 or more.
- $400,000 for horseback riding in the last school year.
- Over a million dollars last year toward martial arts instruction.
- Monies for personal trainers. One was getting $2000 per transaction. Another was receiving $800.
In an interview with ABC 15 News Melissa Blasius, the current ESA Executive Director at the Department of Education, John Ward, said that staff takes about a month to ensure all these expenses are legitimate as opposed to two days to pay tuition costs or approved funding from the ADE Education Marketplace.
When asked about the snack service, Director Ward said:
“So food is never allowable in ESA. So you’re telling me there’s $50,000 being spent on this. I’m not sure what time period you’re looking at. I know that has certainly not happened under Superintendent Horne.”
On children being able to use taxpayer dollars to practice driving luxury vehicles instead of more affordable driver training programs, Ward replied:
“The ESA program is not going to regulate where parents can seek services for their children including driving schools. While you think this may not be a good use of that families ESA funding, at the end of the day, they get a fixed amount of money and if that is how they’re going to choose to use it, that’s their prerogative.”
It should be noted that before this response, Director Ward had said, in response to a general question, that driving school programs was not an allowable ESA expense.
On the tower gardens, Mr. Ward offered:
“If a parent submitted a curriculum that said tower gardens were part of that curriculum to teach some kind of science concept or something else, these would be allowable.”
On the pianos, he relayed:
“Musical instruments are an allowable expense. You would expect to see a piano and other musical instruments at any public school. These are absolutely allowable. Now, if it was a luxury piano, a type of grand piano, baby grand, we may not approve that as a luxury item. But in terms of the pianos, you have here, I would think they would be approved by our staff.”
On the horseback riding, Director Ward said:
“Therapeutic riding is very expensive. Again, if there is a therapist that said this type of therapy is appropriate for this student, we would absolutely approve it and it is appropriate for the families…Typically, we’re seeing these as associated with students with disabilities. Now, if someone were taking regular horseback riding lessons, those are allowable as well.”
On students using funding for martial arts, Ward replied:
“As I mentioned earlier, every student has to spend a portion of their ESA funds on core academic subjects. So, if they are doing that and there is money left over to take karate lessons, that’s absolutely allowable.”
On the personal trainers, he offered:
“The ESA program is not going to regulate what is an appropriate price to spend on some type of educational or tutoring service. So, if the family who is spending a certain amount for a physical trainer or any other type of physical activity. If that is how they choose to use their ESA monies and it is for an allowable purpose and statute, then they are free to do that.”
There is a word for these allowable expenses. It is called a racket. It would be interesting to see the income level of the families who paid for the driving lessons with the Porsche or the child who paid the trainer $2000 each time he or she needed the service.
When asked what expenses have been rejected, Ward said “five percent” of the requested expenses are rejected. These have included requests for:
- Food expenses at restaurants.
- Hotel and lodgings.
- Entertainment.
- Game consoles.
Five percent rejection rate. Oy!
When asked why public school families should not be upset with these luxuries, ESA children and their families (some of them home school) apply for, Ward shifted the blame to Governor Doug Ducey and the Republicans at the State Legislature, stating:
“Again, our state legislature and governor gave families the option to get 90 percent of the funding their student would get if they went to a public school. So, as long as parents are being good stewards of those educational parameters of the law, they get to use the money in that way. If a family at a public school is upset about paying the field trip fee, ESA is always an option to them as well.”
Public school activists should wish for Mr. Ward to be interviewed at every opportunity between now and election day.
In the segment broadcast on ABC News, Ms. Blasius cited other questionable expenses not covered in the interview including:
- A $3403 purchase at a golf store.
- Approximately $10,000 in one purchase from a sewing machine company.
- About $103,000 towards a company that provides food freeze-drying services.
- Almost 20,000 for 112 passes to Arizona Snowbowl.
- $354,000 for Ninja, trampoline, and climbing training centers and parks.
In what reality should going to a Ninja training center be an allowable education expense?
In what reality are passes to Arizona Snowball an approvable expense of the taxpayer dollar?
In what reality would letting a student use taxpayer money to pretend to be Jackie Chan be permissible?
In what reality would taking driving lessons in luxury cars be an allowable education expense?
In what reality would paying $2000 for a personal trainer be an acceptable allocation of the taxpayer’s money?
In the warped reality of Arizona’s plutocratic and fringe individuals, families, and political leaders who are bilking the system to their heart’s content.
Commenting to ABC 15, Save our Schools Director Lewis said:
“I think we really have a right to know what’s happening here. It shows what a two-tiered system this is for haves and have-nots. The public school kids have no resources and are really struggling and these families can use vouchers to pay for jiu-jitsu while the rest of us pay out of pocket. They (taxpayers) do not want to pay for a piano in everybody’s living room when they can pay for a piano in a local high school that serves 400 kids a year for 20 years.”
Wiser words were never said before.
It is time to change the parameters of enrollment criteria and allowable expenses in the ESA program before this brainchild of plutocratic and fringe conservatism bankrupts the state and the public education system.
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