by Daniel Stefanski | Dec 17, 2024 | Education, News
By Daniel Stefanski |
Amid an increased flurry of attacks on Arizona’s school choice opportunities, a prominent organization is countering with the facts.
Citizens For Free Enterprise responded to another derogatory statement about Arizona’s historic Empowerment Scholarship Account (ESA) azprogram from the state’s Democrat Governor, Katie Hobbs. Earlier this week, Hobbs posted, “ESAs are rife with waste, fraud and abuse, and this will only make it worse. This empowers bad actors who are spending taxpayer dollars on ski passes, luxury car driving lessons, and grand pianos. We need accountability and transparency for this almost billion dollar program.”
Hobbs was reacting to a recent news story about the Arizona Department of Education’s new policy to automatically approve a vast majority of outstanding reimbursement requests from parents in the program, which was announced by Republican Superintendent of Public Instruction, Tom Horne, at a Board of Education meeting.
The response from Citizens For Free Enterprise stated, “FACT CHECK: Arizona’s universal school choice program is a model of accountability, transparency, and security, according to CSI Institute Arizona. The over 83,000 Arizona families using ESAs just want the best for their children – and Katie Hobbs should stop attacking them.”
Others weighed in on the governor’s attack ahead of the 57th State Legislature, starting in January. State Representative Travis Grantham said, “I wish Democrats cared this much about government waste across the board. Why do they only care about it when it’s privatized and / or it gives the citizenry more choices?”
Fellow legislator Austin Smith added, “Not only was Katie Hobbs education agenda rejected; she lost seats in the house and senate. Bold move Cotton, let’s see if it pays off.”
Not everyone was opposed to Hobbs’ statement. Democrat State Representative Oscar De Los Santos replied, “From forging documents to scam taxpayers to abusing funds for luxury items, the private school voucher program is filled with waste, fraud, and abuse. Every Arizonan should be outraged. The DOGE committees should take a look at this disaster.”
Matthew Ladner, a school choice advocate, weighed in on De Los Santos’ statements, saying, “The waste, fraud and abuse in the ESA program is a small fraction of programs you support. If you’d like to eliminate all the programs with ESA level or higher abuse you will make Ron Paul a very happy man!”
In addition to its statement, Citizens For Free Enterprise shared a document of facts from the Common Sense Institute Arizona (CSI) to counter the myth that “ESA’s are subject to rampant fraud and abuse.” On that document, CSI highlighted that there was more than $2 billion of “Medicaid billing fraud in Arizona revealed by a single investigation into pandemic-era relaxed program standards,” and that “Arizona’s share of estimated pandemic-era fraudulent U.S. Unemployment Insurance payments” was $2.3 billion. On the flip side, according to CSI, “the sum-total of all specific, public allegations of ESA fraud …identified to-date, since universal eligibility expansion” was just around $650,000 – a far cry from the fraud in other state programs and handouts.
CSI concluded that “there are specific statutory requirements governing the use of ESA monies – including guidelines on permissible expenditures and a requirement that ADE conduct random and regular audits to ensure compliance. Within that framework, the program has been able to run well, especially compared to similar programs.”
While officials and organizations may have again successfully pushed back on Demcorats’ renewed, false detractions of the ESA program, Horne’s handling of this significant portion of the department he was entrusted to oversee continues to present major headaches for Republicans and school choice proponents. Since Horne’s first ESA Director, Christine Accurso, left the office last summer, he has been faced with a rising number of reimbursement requests and other issues that he has struggled to address with his team. Horne also capitulated to Democrat Attorney General Kris Mayes earlier this year, when she challenged him about the lack of “curriculum” attached to certain requests, adding additional regulations for parents to comply with the attorney general’s threats. Horne’s backsliding here came after he had repeatedly stood up to Mayes and Hobbs’ saber-rattling against the school choice program.
Additionally, Horne recently blamed a number of external factors, including Arizona state legislators, for the skyrocketing number of unfulfilled reimbursement requests. In a November press conference, Horne noted a fix to the ESA program that allowed parents to bypass ClassWallet to obtain reimbursements, stating, “Somebody went to the Legislature last year and got them to pass a bill saying they could do it by reimbursement… We’ve asked the Legislature, in the future, ‘Please ask us before you pass something so we can tell you what the consequences will be.’”
While the program has continued to grow over the past two years, Arizona Education Department officials have failed to satisfactorily explain why the processes put in place by Accurso before her departure were unable to suffice for smooth management and processing of reimbursements and other factors of ESA program oversight and delivery going forward. Accurso was able to save the program from massive and glaring issues created by Horne’s Democrat predecessor, adding staff to her team and reducing the backlogs to almost nothing, while accounting for an exponential increase in students and families realizing the benefits of ESAs.
Daniel Stefanski is a reporter for AZ Free News. You can send him news tips using this link.
by Daniel Stefanski | Jul 29, 2024 | Education, News
By Daniel Stefanski |
A powerful Arizona organization is attempting to coax the state’s once-invincible champion for school choice into fighting back against one of its most fierce opponents.
Last week, John Thorpe, a Staff Attorney with the Goldwater Institute, sent a letter to Arizona Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Horne, over his office’s continued capitulation to Attorney General Kris Mayes over the interpretation of certain laws pertaining to the Empowerment Scholarship Account (ESA) program.
The letter from the Goldwater Institute sought “to bring some clarity to the issues of (1) whether the use of ESA funds for ‘supplementary expenses’ requires an explicitly documented ‘nexus’ to a curriculum approved by the Department of Education, and (2) whether ESA funds are subject to the AG’s authority under [state statutes].”
This communication addressed an earlier email from Arizona Department of Education ESA Executive Director, John Ward, to parents within the program, informing them about a letter he had received from Mayes’ Solicitor General. According to Ward, that letter “stated that some ESA program practices are inconsistent with State law and result in payment of ESA funds without authorization of law, [and that] the Solicitor General’s Office has directed the ESA program to address the issues it identified.”
The Attorney General’s Office cited two Arizona statutes to bolster its argument that “the Arizona Department of Education has approved certain supplemental items and textbooks without requiring curricula, which may result in ‘illegal payment of public monies.’” Ward told parents that “ADE has no choice but to comply with the Solicitor General’s determination,” forcing families to “submit a curriculum with all supplemental materials requested or purchased” – something that he even noted was a practice “in place since before the current ADE administration.”
Horne’s acceptance of Mayes’ interpretation of the law was surprising to many members of the public, being that his office has been at odds with the Attorney General’s Office on almost every issue related to this program. Previously, Horne issued several statements expressing his unabashed opposition to the Democrat Attorney General’s persistent attacks on the ESA program and vowing to match her office step for step in defense of parents.
In Thorpe’s letter, he argues that “the law does not condition families’ rights to buy supplemental materials on an explicitly documented ‘curriculum nexus,’” and that “Arizona families’ ESA dollars are not ‘public monies.’”
Thorpe concluded his letter to the state’s schools chief, writing, “The AG’s power to investigate misuse of public monies does not give her the authority to prevent your office from allowing Arizona families to use their ESA funds for statutorily permitted uses. Nor does the law require you, or those families, to justify every textbook or ‘supplementary expenditure’ with a Department-approved curriculum nexus or documentation from a private school.”
On the same day of the Goldwater letter, Ward sent another email to ESA families in response to questions of his department “to provide additional guidance on what is required to use Empowerment Scholarships to purchase supplemental materials” – perhaps signaling that Horne and the Arizona Department of Education would not be backing down from its surrender to Mayes. Ward stated that “ADE would like to provide you with an updated template of Parent-Prepared Curriculum that you can use to submit with your requests for supplemental materials.”
One of the state’s most ardent and effective advocates of the ESA program, Christine Accurso, linked to the Goldwater letter on her social media platform, adding her own commentary about how parents should react to the decision from the Arizona Department of Education on these supplemental materials for their ESA accounts. She said, “ESA parents should have absolutely no fear with submitting orders (for direct purchase or for reimbursement) that includes items that are obvious supplemental educational materials. If an order gets rejected, then email asking them to approve it. If you get an email or communication about your order that says it is the ‘department’s final administrative decision’ then you can go to the State Board of Education and file an appeal. However, you must have proof that the department has given its ‘final administrative decision’ before submitting an appeal to the SBE.”
The Goldwater Institute’s public foray into this controversial action from the Republican Superintendent’s Office follows a letter that was previously sent to Horne from Arizona House Speaker Ben Toma, a fellow Republican. In his letter, Toma wrote, “I understand that you may have no choice but to cooperate with the Attorney General’s politically-motivated investigation. However, ADE is best situated to determine how to implement its policies in a way that fulfills legislative intent but does not burden parents with unnecessary bureaucratic requirements.”
Toma added, “As you implement your Department’s policies, I urge you to scrutinize Attorney General Mayes’ unsolicited legal advice expressed in her July 1, 2024, letter, consider how her interpretation of Arizona statutes would impact parents throughout the state, and reject her interpretation of the law that would lead to absurd results.”
In a blog post for the Goldwater Institute, Matt Beienburg referenced Toma’s letter, stating, “As noted by Arizona Speaker of the House Ben Toma, the unprecedented intrusion and second-guessing by the AG’s office into ADE’s administration of the ESA program is just the office’s latest attempt to advance a novel legal theory in order to hijack the legislative deliberations and decisions of state lawmakers. Indeed, just days before firing off its attack against ADE for its application of state statute, the AG’s office was forced to concede and drop its efforts to override the provisions of the recent bipartisan state budget agreement. The AG’s demands against the ESA program should similarly be rejected by the state department of education, the state board of education, and the judicial system of Arizona.”
A few days removed from the Goldwater Institute letter, the Arizona Department of Education sent another email to ESA parents, informing them of a virtual meeting with Horne, Ward, and others from the department to “provide account holders with an opportunity to have their questions answered regarding the new curricula requirements for supplemental materials.” However, families will not be able to ask their questions live and unfiltered. Instead, as per the electronic notice, “the format for the virtual meeting will be the Department of Education reading and answering questions that have been submitted to it by ESA Holders.”
Daniel Stefanski is a reporter for AZ Free News. You can send him news tips using this link.
by Staff Reporter | Mar 29, 2024 | Education, News
By Staff Reporter |
Arizona Republican lawmakers and concerned parents won a recent victory to protect the state’s universal school choice program from a volley of new regulations.
Over this past weekend, Arizona legislators were involved in a battle over the Draft Parent Handbook for the ESA Program for School Year 2024-2025. Unbeknownst to many ESA families, the handbook was posted to the Arizona State Board of Education’s website – linked to an agenda item – with multiple proposed changes of a significant nature, giving interested parties mere days to leave feedback. The recommendation from the Department was for the State Board of Education to adopt the revised handbook when it convened on Monday, March 25.
A group of parent-stakeholders, led by a long-time watchdog of the ESA program, Christine Accurso, discovered the existence of the handbook and poured through its contents, finding numerous examples of added regulations for students and families. They compiled the list and notified as many other parents as possible.
The parents also reached out to Republican lawmakers, who were shocked to learn about the lack of transparency and the efforts to overregulate the program, which was contrary to the legislative intent. Senators Jake Hoffman and Wendy Rogers, among others, immediately sprang into action to stop the revised handbook from becoming Department policy.
Thanks to the legislators’ and parents’ involvement, the State Board of Education ultimately reversed course on its initial recommendation, voting to maintain the previous year’s handbook with no changes.
Save Our Schools Arizona Director Beth Lewis, who has been a staunch opponent of the ESA program, was extremely disappointed with the outcome from the State Board of Education. After the Board’s vote, she said, “The proposed regulations rejected by Supt. Horne and Republican lawmakers would have provided a thin veneer of oversight for Arizona taxpayers.”
One of the ESA parents, Kelly Kenney, told AZ Free News, “I was shocked about the increased regulations because the new handbook changes will limit the educational opportunities for my child. This would directly impact her access to the type of resources that she absolutely needs. If the ESA program was supposed to be regulated in this way, it would spell it out in the statutes. I’m very glad the State Board saw things our way and sided with the parents in this program.”
The Arizona Department of Education’s “X” account issued a short statement following the vote from the State Board, writing, “Superintendent Horne is thankful for Senate President Warren Petersen and Arizona Senate Republicans for helping garner support from the state board of education to allow more time for input from parents on the ESA handbook.”
In the days leading up to the State Board of Education meeting, Republican legislators had several conversations with individuals at the Arizona Department of Education, informing them of their displeasure with this action and holding them accountable to the original intent of the ESA law. To ensure that ADE understood the seriousness of the situation and the resolve of legislative Republicans, Senator Jake Hoffman wrote a letter to the State Board, which was signed by many of his colleagues, including Senate President Warren Petersen and House Speaker Ben Toma.
The letter stated that ADE’s “proposed changes restrict[ed] the program further than the Arizona State Legislature intended.” It also highlighted “the failure to allow for public engagement, comment, or input in the shaping of these new regulations,” calling this “incredibly concerning.” Two requests were made of the State Board of Education in this communication. The first was to reject the draft handbook and greenlight the 2023-2024 handbook for another school year. The second was to “form a stakeholder working group consisting primarily of ESA parents, private school administrators, and home schooling parents” for the 2025-2026 handbook.
In an exclusive comment to AZ Free News, Senator Hoffman explained why he took the lead against the proposed changes in the draft ESA handbook. He said, “Transparency and robust public input from those most impacted by these regulations are critically important. Unfortunately, the system failed the Arizona families who rely on empowerment scholarship accounts for the educational success for their children. Thankfully Superintendent Horne and the State Board of Education took the opportunity to remedy this failure. Their decision to reject the deeply flawed 2024-2025 handbook, and instead adopt the current handbook until ESA families and educational providers have a multi-month opportunity to engage with ADE staff on the next handbook was the right move for the children relying on this incredible program.”
Just before the legislators’ letter was delivered to the State Board of Education on Friday evening, the ESA Executive Director wrote an email of his own to ESA families with the “ESA Program Response to Misinformation.” The director stated that “incorrect information has made it into the public dialog regarding payment of ESA purchases…that ESA account holders will not be paid for their allowable purchases until after they have completed an educational program.” The director also noted that the draft handbook had been posted on the State Board of Education’s website since Friday, March 15. Sources told AZ Free News that the alleged complaint was one that they had not seen lodged against the draft handbook and that none of the other concerns brought by parents about proposed changes in ESA policy or guidance were addressed in the director’s email.
The director’s email to ESA families on Friday, March 22, was believed to be the first since January 24, when the program sent an “important update on new features from ClassWallet.” The director had previously sent three consecutive emails to families in late-December 2023. In one of those emails, the director asked parents to submit their “suggestions for specific changes…to [be] made to the ESA Parent Handbook.” The deadline for submissions was January 2, 2024 – four days after that email hit inboxes.
Another ESA parent, Rosemary McAtee, gave the following comment to AZ Free News: “I was appalled to learn how the education department was trying to slide a new handbook past the parents, to the state board, without any input from the parents. I am glad that members of the board voted to include us in the process by allowing more time for our input. This week was a win for ESA parents! I’ve been in this program for 5 years and every year there has been a public process. We really haven’t heard anything at all from the department in the past 7 months when we were accustomed to weekly email updates.”
Solicitation of public comment on changes for the 2024-2025 Draft ESA Handbook was handled much differently – and with less transparency – than the previous year’s redlines. Last year, ADE issued a press release and transmitted an email to ESA account holders to explain the proposed changes.
The uproar over the draft handbook follows another instance where a Republican legislator was forced to intervene in an issue raised by parents. In February, ESA parents asked Rogers to resolve the backlog of orders in the program, which was believed to be around 85,000 (or over four months old), according to sources. AZ Free News was made aware of at least one Arizona private school that experienced severe funding issues due to the lack of reimbursements for ESA students who attended.
After Rogers contacted ADE with her concerns and request to pick up the pace of reimbursements, the issue almost literally evaporated overnight. AZ Free News was told that thousands of orders may have been approved in mere hours – and many more followed in the following days.
In an interview with AZ Free News, Rogers explained why she chose to involve herself over the stockpile of orders from ESA families, saying, “Numerous constituents, including family members had become exceedingly frustrated at the slow turnaround time for reimbursements from the ESA program. People from all over the state wrote me. They know that I fight, and that I’m outspoken. So I began writing terse letters to the Arizona Department of Education and I got results for my people on an individual basis, one by one. Then the word got around among the ESA families and everyone began to write me. So I started inundating the department with these letters, every one of which was carefully and separately written in-depth describing how these reimbursement delays adversely impacted their ability to school their children.”
The rural Arizona state Senator added, “Then all of the sudden, I heard that thousands of ESA reimbursement approvals were done over one night with no scrutiny. This is not a way to run a business. This just feeds the controversy on whether or not expenditure approvals are correct or valid. The ESA program was running well last year. I heard from many families how well run it was. Now it has run amok. There is no excuse for it. It must be repaired. Our children are too important. The legislature put this ESA program in place and now it’s up to administrators to manage it properly.”
The former director of the ESA Program, Christine Accurso, was at the center of both episodes, continuing to be a sounding board for hundreds of parents and an effective liaison to the Republican-led legislature on behalf of stakeholders. After the positive action from the Board on Monday morning, Accurso wrote, “Superintendent Horne committed to having his team work with key stakeholders – mainly parents – in creating the next one. Many Republican lawmakers stepped up to help their constituents, after receiving hundreds of emails this past week, and their advocacy paid off. As an advocate, defender and watchdog of this program for the past 10 years, I am so glad to see this outcome. This is exactly what we wanted and needed to have happen. The parents who attended and spoke at the board meeting did a great job advocating for their children’s education.”
When Accurso inherited the ESA Program in January 2023, there were over 60,000 orders for marketplace, direct pay, and reimbursements. Even with a steady increase of new enrollees adding a significant amount of orders to the existing backlog, Accurso and her team managed to whittle the requests down to essentially ‘zero,’ and drastically minimize the delay in response time to parents.
AZ Free News is your #1 source for Arizona news and politics. You can send us news tips using this link.
by Daniel Stefanski | Feb 6, 2024 | News
By Daniel Stefanski |
Last week, the Arizona Women of Action presented Christine Accurso with the 2024 Fearless and Free Award. The award honored Accurso for her “outstanding courage to stand for American freedoms.”
In a post on “X,” Accurso thanked the state organization for the award.
Arizona Women of Action responded, “Arizona and AZWOA are blessed to have you, Christine Accurso! Your work to protect ESAs and in the pro-life community, including Decline to Sign AZ Abortion, has been monumental.”
The East Valley conservative activist has been one of the state’s leading voices for conservative values for many years, but she has risen above greater challenges in recent months. After Arizona passed its historic universal expansion of Empowerment Scholarship Accounts (ESAs) in 2022, special interest groups attempted to refer the program to the ballot in order to delay or stop the benefits for Arizona families who were seeking enhanced choices and opportunities for their children’s education. Accurso organized hundreds of men and women around the state to educate potential signers of the petition about the consequences of their decisions.
Because of Accurso’s counterefforts, the special interest group failed to acquire the minimum number of signatures needed to refer the initiative to the ballot. Shortly after her success in keeping universal ESAs intact, Accurso wrote a piece for FoxNews.com, detailing how her army of parents had done what many thought was unthinkable. Accurso shared that she often went online to track the group responsible for trying to refer ESAs to the ballot, then deployed herself and other parents to the locations where signature gatherers were posted to offer an opposing viewpoint to Arizona voters. She wrote, “I quickly found that voters would look through the legislation, which was attached to the petitions, after hearing my arguments to find out for themselves what was inside this legislation.”
After these efforts, Accurso found herself drafted into the new Republican administration at the Arizona Department of Education, when Tom Horne won his election contest in November 2022. Horne named Accurso as the Director of the ESA Department and tasked her with bringing the program under compliance with state law and eliminating the significant backlog of requests left by the previous Superintendent of Public Instruction – a Democrat. Thanks to the continued existence of universal ESAs, tens of thousands of students have joined the program since the expanded portion went into effect.
Accurso resigned her position in July 2023, expressing her grateful heart “to have had the opportunity to get the ESA program back on track and functioning well.” She added, “I achieved much of what I set out to accomplish, but it is time for me to move on and pursue opportunities to engage citizens, especially parents, to fight for school choice and the other issues they believe in, for the future of our state and of our nation.”
While Accurso recently has been focused on mostly educational efforts with the ESA program, most of her activities over her grassroots career of activism and advocacy have centered around pro-life causes, helping to enlarge Arizona’s standing as one of the top states in the country for life and family values. With the threat of a pro-abortion constitutional amendment on the horizon, Accurso is now attempting to motivate conservative moms and dads to oppose this emerging campaign and safeguard the state’s pro-life protections for the future.
Daniel Stefanski is a reporter for AZ Free News. You can send him news tips using this link.
by Daniel Stefanski | Oct 5, 2023 | Education, News
By Daniel Stefanski |
An Arizona school choice leader marked the one-year anniversary of the historic policy going into effect in her state.
On Saturday, Christine Accurso highlighted the one-year anniversary of all Arizona parents having the opportunity to unlock state dollars to assist with the education of their children.
In a trip down memory lane, Accurso wrote, “One year ago today Universal ESA became available for all K-12 students in AZ. It took many different people to get this passed and signed into law, but it wouldn’t have come to life in Arizona if it wasn’t for the parent army that we built over the court of 80 days last summer!”
Accurso added, “We fought the teacher’s union and the union-backed groups, day and night. We countered their lies and misinformation with the truth, so that Arizona voters had a real choice in whether or not to send Universal ESAs to the ballot.”
The East Valley mom gave a shout-out to all of the parents and families who tirelessly worked alongside of her to make ESAs a reality for Arizona, saying, “I am still amazed at the grit and tenacity that so many of my friends have and THAT truly made the difference. To the 1,200 families that joined me and my family, THANK YOU! You have truly made the world a better place!”
The ”X” account for Arizona Women of Action echoed Accurso’s words, stating, “It’s a well known fact that Christine Accurso organized the grassroots effort called DECLINE TO SIGN. Through her tremendous undertaking, parents across the state were successful in thwarting the ballot initiative that would have destroyed #ESA4All. Many thanks goes to Christine and the parents who worked with her for saving the AZ universal ESA program.”
Accurso recently served as the ESA program director under the administration of Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Horne, a Republican. Horne and Accurso were tasked with bringing the expanded program under compliance with the law and eliminating the significant backlog of requests left by the previous administration. She resigned her position in July, expressing her grateful heart “to have had the opportunity to get the ESA program back on track and functioning well.” She said, “I achieved much of what I set out to accomplish, but it is time for me to move on and pursue opportunities to engage citizens, especially parents, to fight for school choice and the other issues they believe in, for the future of our state and of our nation.”
Shortly after her successful efforts in leading the charge to keep universal ESAs intact in Arizona last year, Accurso wrote a piece for FoxNews.com, outlining how she and hundreds of committed parents had done what many thought was unthinkable. Accurso shared that she went online to track the group responsible for attempting to refer ESAs to the ballot, deploying herself and other parents to the locations where signature gatherers were posted to offer an opposing viewpoint to Arizona voters who were stopped. She wrote, “I quickly found that voters would look through the legislation, which was attached to the petitions, after hearing my arguments to find out for themselves what was inside this legislation.”
The influential advocate may have more work to do in the state – especially with groups trying to enshrine a right to abortion in the Arizona Constitution. After that ballot initiative was filed with the Arizona Secretary of State in August, Accurso posted, “Pro-Abortion Supporters in AZ have filed with the Sec. of State to put abortion on the 2024 ballot & make it a constitutional amendment. They need 383,923 valid signatures from AZ registered voters by 7/3/24. If you live in Arizona and want to help oppose this DM me.”
Daniel Stefanski is a reporter for AZ Free News. You can send him news tips using this link.
