By Kurt Rohrs and Amber McAffee |
As education has evolved over the last several years, Career and Technical Education (CTE) Programs have developed into critical pathways for a student’s future employment success. The learning of essential technical skills can directly impact a student’s ability to get placed in high-paying career jobs.
A CTE Program is defined as a pathway sequence of courses in a technical field that leads to a certificate, license, or degree. This is usually two or three year-long courses at the high school level. The expenses of a CTE program pathway sequence are supplemented by the Arizona Department of Education and administered by local Career and Technical Education Districts (CTEDs) set up by Arizona statute for this purpose. East Valley Institute of Technology (EVIT) has jurisdiction over programs in East Valley High Schools, including Chandler Unified School District (CUSD), which are referred to as “satellite” districts.
But this isn’t what is really happening.
A recent annual report from CUSD, mandated by the state of Arizona, revealed that less than one-third of CUSD students enroll in the next CTE course as required in their program sequence. This measurement is known as “persistence,” meaning that students are persistent in following a defined program sequence to its completion. It appears that CUSD students, with the tacit approval of their academic counselors, are simply using CTE courses as general education electives in their academic curriculum. It is quite likely that the other member satellite districts in the EVIT CTED are doing this as well.
This is not the intent of the CTE initiative and appears to be a systemic misuse of state funding designated for this purpose. Arizona state statute is very clear in that CTE funds are to be used to “supplement rather than supplant” funding on general education, already provided by base educational funding, to cover additional expenses incurred by spending on CTE program sequences.
This was one of the serious issues pointed out by an AZ State Auditor General report in 2024. CUSD initially refused any responsibility for the conclusions and corrective recommendations in that report but has since begun to acknowledge that they, as EVIT satellite districts, are under the same scrutiny as their parent CTED organization.
In addition, it appears that CUSD has systematically accumulated excess CTE expense reimbursements over several years to build a slush fund of $10,463,714 in their special purpose CTE fund account (Fund 596). This appears to be in direct conflict with state statutes as the district is only allowed reimbursements for specific CTE program sequence expenses. Actual CUSD reported CTE expenses last year were $8,789,583 against adjusted reimbursements (revenue) of $8,283,094. (CUSD Annual Financial Report, Fiscal Year 2024-25).
EVIT has re-written their Inter-Governmental Agreements (IGAs) to address these systematic abuses and to comply with recommendations from the Auditor General of the State of Arizona. Instead of unreviewed pass-through funding, EVIT put in place effective monitoring and an incentive structure to pass-through funding to direct attention toward meaningful improvement in persistence rates in CTE programs. In this way, they become what they were intended to be: career pathways for students to advance their post-secondary career plans. The proposed goal was set at a meager 30% minimum persistence rate in the new IGA. By comparison, persistence rates at the EVIT main campus, where that administration is far more focused on getting students to complete program sequences and placed in career jobs, is over 80%.
The response from CUSD has been disappointing. They seem to be focusing their efforts on a heavy public relations campaign to portray themselves as victims and characterize EVIT as the villain for holding them accountable for their failures in demonstrating effective program sequences. The CUSD rhetoric implies that, just by offering CTE classes as general electives, it is somehow equivalent to completing a program sequence. This is clearly insufficient and simply not what they were getting funded for.
None of the unfavorable persistence data was ever presented to the CUSD Governing Board, until specifically requested recently, who were kept in the dark about the CUSD CTE program insufficiencies. The district administration let the board down and concealed their lack of performance on persistence measures central to CTE program success.
Instead, the administration orchestrated a PR stunt at a recent CUSD Board meeting using about 20 students and staff to make false insinuations that programs would be shut down and teachers would be laid off. This seemed to be a sordid attempt to generate public sympathy for their cause. The truth is that no such proposal has ever been considered that would cut programs or staff. The district has millions of dollars in reserve to cover any unexpected shortfalls. It is appalling to realize that vulnerable students were groomed with misinformation and then used in this unethical stunt.
It is far past time for CUSD to drop the gamesmanship and lawfare, accept the oversight given to the EVIT CTED by statute, and to comply with all statutory requirements, performance expectations, and financial controls they are responsible for.
Kurt Rohrs is a Governing Board Member for the Chandler Unified School District. Amber McAffee is the President of the EVIT Governing Board. The views expressed here are the authors’ personal opinions and do not represent the views of their respective Governing Boards.
