by Corinne Murdock | Sep 7, 2022 | Education, News
By Corinne Murdock |
While gathering signatures for a ballot initiative overturning Arizona’s universal school choice, Save Our Schools Arizona (SOSAZ) activists informed passersby erroneously that the state doesn’t review school choice expenditures until participants leave the program. These claims were exposed by one of those passersby, Stewardship Pro founder Grant Botma, who later posted an audio recording of the activists’ remarks online.
The signature gatherers also claimed that the Empowerment Scholarship Account (ESA) Program gives participants a “debit card” with $20,000. Under the universal expansion, children likely receive about $6,500 each: less than a third of the amount SOSAZ was claiming.
“They give you a debit card with $20,000 for you to use. They do have you do, like, an expense report, but they don’t really review it until you leave the program,” stated the SOSAZ woman.
The Arizona Department of Education (ADE) requires program members to submit expense reports on a quarterly basis in order to maintain eligibility. If ADE wasn’t reviewing these expenditure reports until the program member leaves, that would be due to Superintendent Kathy Hoffman’s oversight.
Hoffman is a vocal opponent of the ESA Program and supporter of the SOSAZ ballot initiative. Hoffman, who is up for reelection this November, echoed SOSAZ’s claim in a July tweet that the ESA Program she oversees has “zero accountability.”
Although Hoffman and SOSAZ call Arizona’s school choice funds “vouchers,” they are actually education scholarship accounts. Vouchers are education funds for use at private schools only. The ESA Program universal funds may be applied to a variety of education-related things on top of private schooling, such as: tutoring, supplemental curriculum, online learning programs or courses, standardized testing fees, and community college.
In other clips, SOSAZ signature gatherers expanded on their claim that the state exerted no oversight of the school choice funds. They also issued the outdated claim that the ESA Program issues Bank of America prepaid debit cards. The ESA Program transitioned to ClassWallet in 2019.
“No transparency,” said a woman. “They give you a card from Bank of America[.]”
One of the signature gatherers then asserted that the main reason to defund the universal school choice program was to ensure that private schools don’t benefit from funds formerly slated for public education.
“Basically it will keep a billion dollars in public education and away from the private schools,” stated one of the women.
The $1 billion estimate wasn’t an official estimate discussed by the state legislature. Rather, it came from SOSAZ.
In advancing the narrative that the ESA Program recipients lack oversight, the activists claimed that they could run a Prenda home microschool out of their house with multiple dangers present, like an unfenced pool and a child molester. Prenda is a tuition-free K-8 microschool program, comparable to outsourced homeschooling or the old one-room schoolhouses.
“Not hypothetical. True. Prenda home microschools: they do not do any investigations on the facilities, the people involved,” said a woman. “It’s in my living room. I’ve got a pool that isn’t fenced, and I’ve got a creepy uncle that’s a child molester.”
The women also claimed that private school families who applied for ESA Program funds didn’t actually need the funds. Approximately 75 percent of the first 6,500 universal ESA Program applicants had no prior enrollment in public schools.
“It’s just putting the money into their pockets when they don’t super need it,” said one of the women.
School choice proponents criticized the SOSAZ claims as lies, and asked for an official investigation into the legality of their speech. One Scottsdale father, Kevin Gemeroy, tweeted his concerns.
“When you lie about money to induce payments, that’s fraud. When you lie about money in exchange for signatures, what crime is that, exactly?” wrote Gemeroy.
Corinne Murdock is a reporter for AZ Free News. Follow her latest on Twitter, or email tips to corinne@azfreenews.com.
by Corinne Murdock | Sep 6, 2022 | Education, News
By Corinne Murdock |
Arizona families have filed nearly 6,500 applications to join the state’s universal school choice program since enrollment launched two weeks ago. The Arizona Department of Education (ADE) estimated that about 75 percent of the Empowerment Scholarship Account (ESA) Program applicants, about 4,870, had no prior record of public school enrollment.
Universal ESAs award students up to $7,000 in funding. ADE disclosed that the figure usually falls around $6,500 for grades 1-12 and $4,000 for kindergarteners.
ESA Program universalization takes effect on September 24.
In an effort to reverse the ESA Program universalization, public school activists with Save Our Schools Arizona (SOSAZ) launched a referendum for a 2024 ballot initiative, “Stop Voucher Expansion.”
In response to the 6,500 applications, SOSAZ claimed that the state was handing over $47.4 million in taxpayer dollars to private schools “with no transparency or oversight.” Their calculation included the several hundred students who applied to the original ESA Program for students with special needs, not the universalized version.
SOSAZ said that they would have the 118,823 signatures required to qualify for the November 2024 ballot by September 23.
“Should [universal school choice] go into effect, these numbers will certainly balloon as special interests promote vouchers for for-profit schemes,” wrote SOSAZ.
ADE Superintendent Kathy Hoffman signed onto the SOSAZ ballot initiative. Hoffman, who is up for reelection this November, echoed SOSAZ’s claim that the ESA Program she oversees has “zero accountability.”
Although the ballot initiative and Hoffman describe the ESA Program funds as “vouchers,” they are actually education scholarship accounts. Vouchers are education funds for use at private schools only. The ESA Program universal funds may be applied to a variety of education-related things on top of private schooling, such as: tutoring, supplemental curriculum, online learning programs or courses, standardized testing fees, and community college.
Pro-school choice activists have launched a counter-initiative to the AZSOS campaign, “AZ Decline to Sign.”
Arizona Governor Doug Ducey expressed total support for universalization of the ESA Program.
In an email to school choice advocate Corey DeAngelis, ADE shared that it would post the total number of universal ESA Program applications every week on social media.
Corinne Murdock is a reporter for AZ Free News. Follow her latest on Twitter, or email tips to corinne@azfreenews.com.
by Corinne Murdock | Sep 6, 2022 | News
By Corinne Murdock |
A new law prohibiting restrictions to parental access of children’s records will take effect at the end of this month, on September 23. Even so, health care facilities are maintaining policies upholding their minor patients’ confidentiality. HB2161 will upend decades of common practice for Arizona health care providers.
The history of confidentiality in health care for minors leads back to the inception of the Title X family planning program in 1970 and the ensuing controversy over confidential reproductive health care services for minors. Beginning with the Clinton administration in 2000, the federal government issued privacy protections for medical records that extended to minors.
Since then, federal precedent has informed and shaped Arizona’s health care system. One of the most recent examples of this occurred in late June, when HonorHealth implemented a policy allowing its 12 to 17-year-old patients to shield their medical records from parental view. According to the Arizona Daily Independent, parents don’t have full access to their child’s online medical records.
Meanwhile, Banner Health precludes parental access to all of their 12- to 17-year old child’s records without the child’s consent. One Arizona mother, Jacquie Wedding, felt the effects of this policy recently. In a viral Tiktok video, Wedding shared the following email sent to her by Banner Health shortly after her children’s 12th birthday:
“Please be informed that access to your child’s account has been revoked. The reason for this is because the child is now between the ages of 12 and 17. Based on state law, a minor child may consent to certain treatments without parental consent. Records of those treatments are protected and may not be released to a parent without the minor patient’s consent. As Banner Health is not able to separate those records, we do not provide proxy access to MyBanner for minor patients between the ages of 12 and 17.”
Banner Health and HonorHealth are both part of the Health System Alliance of Arizona (HSAA), an advocacy organization that also includes Dignity Health and Tenet Healthcare Corporation.
These HSAA members align with Arizona Medical Association (AMA) standards on confidentiality for adolescent treatment. AMA advised health care providers to limit parental access to their child’s records.
“Providing confidential care to teenagers for certain personal issues is essential to providing appropriate health care and helping them develop autonomy by encouraging them to be responsible for their own health care,” stated the guide. “In addition, by providing confidential care, the clinician can develop a trusting relationship with the teen.”
One of the AMA guide authors was Veenod Chulani: the doctor who founded and currently leads the Phoenix Children’s Hospital (PCH) Gender Support Program, one of the only comprehensive gender transition programs for minors in the state.
PCH allows minors aged 12 to 17 to grant or prohibit parental access to their records.
Corinne Murdock is a reporter for AZ Free News. Follow her latest on Twitter, or email tips to corinne@azfreenews.com.
by Corinne Murdock | Sep 4, 2022 | News
By Corinne Murdock |
The most recent advertisements in Phoenix highways and newspapers employ satire as commentary on leftist policies. They’re commissioned by a nonprofit group called Citizens For Sanity (CFS), which has flooded similar messaging throughout the Valley and the nation.
“Waiting in the [emergency room] for 10 hours is a small price to pay for the gift of open borders,” reads their latest billboard.
Additionally, the latest CFS newspaper ad appeared in Ahwatukee Foothills News this week, claiming that Senator Mark Kelly (D-AZ) supports drug cartels.
“Drug cartels are trying to run an honest business,” read the ad. “Help them stay profitable by supporting Mark Kelly and keeping our borders wide open.”
Another ad, also targeting Kelly, appeared in the Arizona Daily Sun.
“Thank you Mark Kelly, for voting to protect pregnant men, to keep our borders open, and to safeguard violent criminals,” wrote CFS. “Woke values are Arizona values.”
According to the CFS website, their mission is to replace “wokeism” and other mindsets it describes as “anti-critical thinking” with common sense, logic, and reason. Their satirical language resembles that of classic 18th-century satirist Jonathan Swift (“Gulliver’s Travels,” “A Modest Proposal”). A more modern comparison may be drawn to The Babylon Bee, a satire news website.
Their other billboards in Phoenix poked fun at criminal justice reform.
“Don’t let the radical right put our neighborhood street gangs behind bars,” read one sign. “Support Joe Biden and progressive candidates.”
“Real progressives support violent criminals in their hour of need,” read another.
One of the key figures behind CFS is Ian Prior, who apprised Fox News of his role with CFS as a strategic consultant. Prior played a central role in the parent mobilization that led to the historic election of a Republican governor in deep-blue Virginia, Glenn Youngkin. He’s also the executive director of Fight For Schools and a senior advisor at America First Legal.
“We cannot stand by as radical woke biology-deniers use young children as guinea pigs for their ideological experiments. Using experimental drugs to stop puberty, injecting opposite-sex hormones, and surgically removing breasts and genitals of young children is insane,” stated Prior.
Prior also shared that CFS targets its messaging toward those most likely to be receptive, such as exposing gender ideology-related messages to the Latino communities rather than to “sheltered rich white coastal leftist elites.” That’s why some of their ads are in Spanish.
“Progressives support pregnant Latinx men,” reads one of their translated newspaper ads.
In addition to billboards, the group puts out video and radio advertisements. Those aren’t satirical: rather, they’re structured as campaign advertisements.
The group’s efforts nationwide caught the attention of mainstream media shortly after launching their first video about midway last month. Politico reported that the nonprofit relied on “prominent” and “veteran” Republican strategists.
Corinne Murdock is a reporter for AZ Free News. Follow her latest on Twitter, or email tips to corinne@azfreenews.com.
by Corinne Murdock | Sep 4, 2022 | News
By Corinne Murdock |
On Tuesday, Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich filed a civil rights lawsuit against Tucson over its COVID-19 vaccine mandate for employees.
In a press release, Brnovich argued that the mandate was a violation of personal liberty and an exemplar of government overreach.
“Tucson dictated a widespread vaccine mandate without regard to its impact on the liberties and civil rights of its employees,” said Brnovich. “Many of those affected are first responders, and it’s our turn to be there for them. The city’s misguided vaccine mandate is an ugly example of government overreach that we must vigorously oppose.”
Brnovich accused Tucson of punishing unvaccinated employees with unpaid suspension regardless of whether their exemption or accommodation requests were pending or approved. A majority of the city employees affected by the slim deadline were first responders.
According to the lawsuit, at least 377 city employees requested a medical exemption, and 352 employees requested a religious exemption.
READ THE CIVIL RIGHTS LAWSUIT HERE
The lawsuit further criticized the city’s blanket policy approach for requiring the vaccine, noting that some unvaccinated employees were or could work remotely. It alleged that the city made employment “more onerous” for unvaccinated employees.
Among those alleged more onerous requirements: the city gave vaccinated employees additional leave to recover from COVID-19 infection or to quarantine if a family member became infected with COVID-19 but denied that benefit to unvaccinated employees. Additionally, the city gave only vaccinated employees an 8-hour “floating holiday,” as well as the ability to travel outside of Pima County for job-related career enhancement opportunities. Furthermore, certain unvaccinated employees were required to undergo regular COVID-19 testing at their own expense.
In doing so, Tucson claimed its denial of equal treatment to unvaccinated employees was a means to incentivize vaccination.
“[The city of Tucson’s] purported ‘incentives’ were, severally and collectively, coercive actions that punished employees who could not comply with Defendant’s vaccine directives because of a sincerely-held religious belief and/or disability,” stated the lawsuit.
The city did put their vaccine mandate on hold last September, after Brnovich warned the city that its original five-day unpaid suspension of unvaccinated employees was unlawful. At the time, Brnovich said he would direct Arizona Treasurer Kimberly Yee to withhold the city’s state shared revenues, totaling over $175 million.
However, the city kept up its vaccine mandate. The next month, a divided city council voted to terminate the unvaccinated by December 1. Tucson’s action prompted Governor Doug Ducey to intervene. Ducey informed the city that their mandate conflicted with Arizona law.
However, the next month the Arizona Supreme Court overturned Arizona’s new law banning any level of government from requiring COVID-19 vaccine mandates.
Mayor Regina Romero and other city leaders have insisted in public messaging that their workforce was mostly compliant with their vaccine mandate, which Romero called a “vaccine policy.”
Several weeks after Tucson’s deadline passed, Ducey issued an executive order banning local or state governments from issuing COVID-19 vaccine mandates. In a response statement, Tucson Mayor Regina Romero alluded to Brnovich’s legal opinion that employers could institute their own vaccine mandates as a defense of Tucson’s mandate.
“Arizona Attorney General Brnovich already told the governor what he doesn’t want to hear. He has no authority to preempt local actions through executive orders,” stated Romero.
Corinne Murdock is a reporter for AZ Free News. Follow her latest on Twitter, or email tips to corinne@azfreenews.com.
