The Tucson Unified School District (TUSD) nixed a faith-based advisory committee following pushback from parents.
The initiative originated from TUSD’s Equity, Diversity & Inclusiveness (EDI) department early last month, in an attempt to promote cultural diversity through inclusiveness of different religious faiths.
Kinasha Brown, the assistant superintendent for EDI, advised the TUSD community in an email that the faith-based advisory committee would partner with the district to weigh in on TUSD initiatives, programs, policies, and projects; coordinate K-2 literacy activities; support TUSD enrollment and registration drives; develop service-based learning opportunities; and offer an annual faith-based symposium.
“Our community prepares all students to become responsible, ethical and engaged global citizens by creating relevant, dynamic and joyful educational experiences that embrace cultural diversity,” read the email.
Following parental outcry over the committee, TUSD Superintendent Gabriel Trujillo issued a statement via email that the committee gave the impression that TUSD wasn’t secular and religiously neutral. Trujillo further clarified that the committee wouldn’t have decision-making power.
“This advisory committee is not going to have any decision-making power in any area of curriculum, instruction, programming, policy-making in schools, but we would like to at least reach out to the faith-based community in terms of where they can contribute with the overall needs of TUSD kids,” Trujillo said.
Trujillo’s email followed parents’ statements of opposition to the proposed committee during last week’s special governing board meeting.
One mother, Kate Goldman, said she was “really upset” by the proposed committee. Goldman questioned how TUSD would “equitably” ensure that all religious and non-religious groups would be represented.
“My child we intentionally put in a public school where I felt there would be a safe difference, a distinction, between church and state,” said Goldman. “I just don’t see the need, for a secular institution that I thought prided itself on critical thinking to be advised in any way by any faith whereas the evidence advisory committee that’s stupid, that’s school I thought. You are the evidence advisory, I thought. Why are we having a faith-based one?”
Goldman expressed worry that a faith-based group would squash all other equity efforts.
Goldman also testified that she attempted, unsuccessfully, to sign up to join the group, claiming that the signup links and emails wouldn’t go through.
Arnie Bermudez, a father, challenged the legality of the committee.
“Why are we trying to shoehorn religion into our school district since there are already private schools all over Tucson that can fill this gap?” asked Bermudez.
Watch the TUSD governing board meeting remarks against the faith-based advisory committee here:
Corinne Murdock is a reporter for AZ Free News. Follow her latest on Twitter, or email tips to corinne@azfreenews.com.
Channel 12 continued its clumsy crusade against school choice this week with a breathless report about fraudsters abusing Empowerment Scholarship Accounts to buy diamond rings and necklaces, flights and hotel stays, and even lingerie.
It paints a picture of a program rife with abuse. But is it?
The Arizona Department of Education gave Channel 12 the records for more than 1.2 million ESA requests. Yet when askedrepeatedly what percentage of those requests were fraudulent, Channel 12’s reporter refused to comment.
Why? Because the truth undermines the anti-ESA narrative.
The salacious report is intended to persuade policymakers who support ESAs to impose regulations that would undermine the ESA program. It goes without saying that anyone engaged in fraud should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law, and the Arizona Department of Education is appropriately cracking down on fraudsters. But before policymakers rush to amend the ESA program, they should know the context that Channel 12 left out.
ESA Misspending Is a Tiny Fraction of Total ESA Spending
The ESA program currently serves about 90,000 students at a projected cost of $882 million this year and $939 million next year, or about 6.7% of the $14 billion spent on Arizona’s district schools. Families can use ESAs to purchase a wide variety of educational expenses to customize their child’s education.
The typical ESA student receives about $7,500 per year, compared with more than $15,300 per pupil at Arizona’s district schools. Students with special needs—who account for more than 19% of ESA students, compared with 14% of district school students—can receive more funding, although the accounts are still worth 90% of what the state spends on similarly situated students at public schools. According to the Common Sense Institute, “a disproportionate share of middle-income households use an ESA.”
On Tuesday, the Arizona Department of Education revealed that their internal audit had turned up $622,000 in ESA funds that are “possible fraud or misuse.”
That’s less than one-tenth of 1% of total ESA spending.
Ignoring Mountains, Covering Molehills
Meanwhile, there are 30 school districts that the Arizona Auditor General currently deems to be non-compliant with state reporting requirements or that have internal control deficiencies. The total spending in those districts is more than $1.4 billion, more than the total spending of the ESA program. Yet aside from its coverage of the disastrous overspending in the Isaac Elementary School District, Channel 12 has barely covered it at all.
For that matter, Channel 12 has ignored the $7.8 billion that Arizona school districts are holding in cash reserves. That’s about $7,000 per pupil. The reserves have grown $2 billion in two years, yet Channel 12 doesn’t evince even the slightest curiosity about why.
Nor is anyone at Channel 12 interested in the $12 billion worth of unused and underutilized buildings that districts are sitting on, often just to prevent private or charter schools from buying them.
Channel 12 found space in the aforementioned ESA exposé to mention that a judge recently ruled that the state supposedly “isn’t properly funding capital needs for its public schools,” but the station had no space to mention that school districts are sitting on $20 billion in cash reserves and underutilized buildings.
Indeed, Channel 12 has barely covered any of these facts even as they pump out multiple anti-ESA stories each week, despite the fact that the ESA program is dwarfed by the spending at non-compliant districts, district school cash reserves, and underutilized buildings.
School-choice opponents and their media allies are hyper-focused on ESA misspending because they want to pressure lawmakers to undermine the program via regulation.
The Arizona Department of Education adopted its risk-based auditing strategy—automatically approving ESA spending requests below $2,000, then auditing accounts on the back end—because Superintendent Tom Horne’s previous “review every penny” approach was causing massive backlogs and delays in approving expense requests and reimbursements.
There were nearly 11,000 transactions in quarter 3 of this year alone. It’s impossible for the department’s staff to review each transaction in a timely manner, but parents trying to teach their kids can’t wait months just to buy a textbook or pay their child’s tutor or school.
To Horne’s credit, he listened to parents and made some incremental improvements that make it easier for parents to use the program. Now a tiny percentage of ESA holders are taking advantage of the looser rules, but they will be forced to pay the money back and could face prosecution.
The Arizona Department of Education has suspended 400 accounts due to improper spending —just 0.4% of the total accounts—and has referred some to the Attorney General for further investigation and prosecution.
Punishing fraudsters is necessary. Every government program is subject to some amount of fraud and abuse, and it’s incumbent upon public officials to implement rules that keep fraud as close to zero as possible. But it is not in the public interest to undermine a program’s effectiveness, especially when that program is helping kids get access to a better education and a brighter future.
School-choice opponents are using misspending as a pretext. If that was their real concern, they’d be raising alarms about all the waste, fraud, and abuse in the district school system. They’re not really concerned with stopping the 0.4% of ESA holders committing fraud, they just don’t want the program to work for 99+% of families just trying to do right by their kids.
Supporters of education freedom and opportunity should ignore the manufactured outrage and work to ensure that the ESA program works well for the families it serves.
Jason Bedrick is a Research Fellow at The Heritage Foundation’s Center for Education Policy.
Democrat-Socialist endorsed politicians are not only present on Arizona ballots but appear to be thriving in the Tucson Democratic Primary. Miranda Schubert, running in the Aug. 5 primary for the Tucson Ward 6 council seat, and Sadie Shaw, running against incumbent City Councilmember Kevin Dahl in Ward 3, who also sits on the Tucson Unified School District governing board, were both endorsed by the Democratic Socialists of America’s Tucson chapter.
In a statement, the Tucson Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) celebrated the early results, saying, “Tonight, Tucson rejected the status quo and supported champions for Public Power and the working class. At a time when big corporations like Amazon are threatening Tucson’s water and a liveable climate, @mirandaforward6tucson’s decisive victory and @sadieforward3 running neck and neck with a well-funded incumbent proves that Tucsonans want elected leaders who will fight for policies like free-transit, affordable housing and public power that will address the crises we are facing and directly benefit the working class people of Tucson. We look forward to working with these two socialists and the most progressive city council in recent history to improve the lives of all people in Tucson.”
According to the DSA, “The Democratic Socialists of America is the largest socialist organization in the United States because we’re a member-driven mass organization.”
The unofficial election results showed that Schubert is trending to capture the Ward 6 council seat “by a wide margin.” As of Friday evening, the tally stood at 6,343 votes, against Democrats Leighton Rockafellow Jr., with 2,927 votes, and James Sinex won 365 votes. She is expected to face Republican Jay Tolkoff, who ran unopposed in his primary. Per AZCentral, Rockafellow has conceded the race.
Schubert declared victory and thanked her supporters Wednesday night, telling them, “I love local politics because it’s so simple. It comes down to having conversations, having conversations with your neighbors and with your fellow community members, and so I hope that this can be the start of more conversations and more work to come together to make Tucson a better place for future generations.”
The Ward 6 seat was vacated by former Councilman Steve Kozachik, who handily defeated Schubert by nearly 18 points in the 2021 Democratic Primary. Kozachik later stepped down to take over the Pima Animal Care Center in 2024. He was succeeded temporarily by Karin Uhlich, who later ran in her own right to finish out his term. However, in July, Uhlich announced she would not seek reelection, leaving Schubert as the frontrunner.
In the Ward 3 race, DSA-endorsee Sadie Shaw is trailing Democrat incumbent Councilman Kevin Dahl by just 19 votes as of this report. The councilman claimed victory, but Shaw has announced that she will await the final results once they have been canvassed and certified per Arizona law. The winner will face Republican Janet “JL” Wittenbraker, who ran unopposed in her primary.
The @TucsonSentinel's failure to interview Republican candidates on key issues such as fare-free transit, Project Blue, and TPD funding is emblematic of their bias. Very disappointing.
Wittenbraker recently made waves in the city election by calling out the Tucson Sentinel for “failure to interview Republican candidates on key issues such as fare-free transit, Project Blue, and TPD funding,” adding this is “emblematic of their bias,” and “very disappointing.”
In a statement following the results, she told the outlet, “Tucson is ready for change, especially in Ward 3, where poverty, homelessness, and high crime rates resulted in a competitive race between Shaw and Dahl.”
Every year, a horde of school district officials and their lobbyists come before the state legislature, rattling their tin cups, begging for more money for their supposedly underfunded schools. They tell sob stories about crumbling buildings and underpaid teachers who had to pay for school supplies from their own pockets. Their schools, they say, are financially starved.
Hogwash.
School bureaucrats don’t want you to know it, but school spending is at an all-time high, and Arizona’s school districts are sitting on more than $20 billion in cash reserves and buildings they don’t need while student achievement craters. A new report from the Common Sense Institute (CSI) reveals the shocking scope of waste plaguing our traditional public school system, and it’s time taxpayers demanded answers.
The numbers are staggering. As has been documented, Arizona’s school districts are already hoarding $7.8 billion in cash reserves, up $1 billion since the prior fiscal year. Now we learn they’re also sitting on $12.2 billion worth of excess real estate—78 million square feet of unused and underutilized space that could house 630,000 additional students. Combined, that’s over $20 billion in resources that could be put to better use serving Arizona’s children.
Since 2019, district school enrollment has declined 5% statewide, yet these same districts increased their building space by 3% and boosted capital spending by a jaw-dropping 67% to $8.9 billion. As CSI has documented, districts have added 499 new buildings while losing 47,500 students. This isn’t just inefficient, it’s fiscally reckless.
The massive spending on new buildings might be justifiable if schools were overcrowded or expecting a huge influx of new students, but they’re not. In fact, Arizona’s district schools are already significantly overbuilt, operating at just 67% capacity while charter schools run at 95% capacity and private schools at 75%. CSI estimates that the excess space in district schools could accommodate 630,000 additional students—nearly half the current statewide district school enrollment.
The excess capacity comes at an enormous cost. CSI estimates that the market value of excess district space alone—$12.2 billion—could fund a decade of capital expenditures. Alternatively, eliminating maintenance costs for unused space would save taxpayers $1 billion annually. That’s real money that could reduce taxes, improve education, or address Arizona’s other pressing needs.
There are plenty of willing buyers. Indeed, the fastest-growing school systems—charters and private schools chosen by increasing numbers of Arizona families—struggle to find adequate facilities. Yet school districts often go to incredible lengths to avoid selling buildings to them, such as when Tucson Unified School District sold an unused building for 25% less than what a Christian school had offered, just so that a “competitor” wouldn’t have it.
In response to such cases, Gov. Doug Ducey signed a law requiring school districts to sell buildings to the highest bidder, even if it’s a private or charter school. Now, rather than comply, school districts are just letting their underutilized space languish and forcing the taxpayers to pay the bill.
The wastefulness is also a slap in the face to teachers and students alike.
As we noted previously, the districts have enough cash reserves to raise the average teacher pay from $64,420 to more than $80,000 for 10 years and still have funds left over. If they sold off all their underutilized space, they could raise the average teacher pay to $100,000 for a decade and still have billions left over.
There is no evidence that spending on buildings is contributing to student learning. As the buildings have gone up, math scores have gone down, plummeting 25% since 2019. As CSI documents, the lowest-performing schools have the most excess space, operating at just 19% capacity, while high-performing schools run at 70% capacity.
This isn’t about helping kids learn; it’s about protecting a bloated bureaucracy that puts institutional self-interest above student needs.
Fixing the problem will require realigning incentives. CSI recommends more transparency—including a “Facilities Condition Index” that would give policymakers and the public objective information about the quality of existing school facilities—and more state oversight of severely underutilized facilities. In the meantime, any funding requests from the school districts should be greeted by state lawmakers with a healthy dose of skepticism.
Arizona’s children deserve better than a $20 billion monument to government inefficiency. They deserve a system that puts their education first, not one that hoards resources while performance plummets. If local officials can’t or won’t deliver, then state lawmakers will have to step in.
Jason Bedrick is a Research Fellow and Matthew Ladner is a Senior Advisor for education policy implementation at the Heritage Foundation’s Center for Education Policy.
Following President Trump’s directive to scrub divisive Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion programs, practices, and language from public institutions, the U.S. Department of Education sent a letter to the Arizona Department of Education (DOE) to ensure that schools comply with these requirements.
The Arizona DOE notified every school district and charter public school that they must submit a completed certification confirming compliance with the federal civil rights law. A public website was developed to track which districts and schools have completed the certification and which have not. Though the majority of schools are listed as “in compliance,” the question remains: have they all truly purged their websites and learning environments of DEI practices? A quick review and some basic research suggest that not all these schools are fully committed to the removal of this woke material.
Alhambra Elementary School District in Phoenix has a subcommittee titled “Culture, Conditions, & Climate” with a stated need to “increase its Diversity, Equity, Inclusion capacity to ensure it is an inclusive environment.” The district plans to achieve this by subjecting staff to DEI trainings designed to establish that these adults teaching your children become anti-racist activists.
Recently, Scottsdale Unified School District has been the center of controversy surrounding their adoption of new textbooks that teach about George Floyd, Black Lives Matter, and anti-law enforcement rhetoric. Arizona Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Horne has spoken out against this anti-American, DEI-infested curriculum, emphasizing that schools must steer clear of promoting an “unbalanced political agenda.”
In Glendale, the Washington Elementary School District has published a “Statement of Commitment to Educational Equity,” in which it outlines how DEI principles are integrated into its educational framework.
In an application for federal charter school start-up grants for 2024-2028, Desert Sage High School in Tucson declares its commitment to “diversity, equity, inclusion, anti-bias education, and social justice.” Among its goals is increasing the percentage of Hispanic and Native American students—an effort aimed more at virtue signaling just to demonstrate how unbiased they really are.
