Arizona schools will be receiving a supply of overdose kits to address the increased impact of drugs on students.
The Arizona Department of Emergency & Military Affairs (DEMA) began delivering over 16,000 Narcan anti-overdose kits to schools on Wednesday. The Arizona Department of Education (AZED) oversaw the initial deliveries across all 15 counties.
In a press release, Superintendent Tom Horne said these kits were a lifesaving preventative to the increased presence of illicit substances in the state.
“Lives will be saved because these kits will be in schools throughout Arizona,” said Horne. “The STOP-IT Task Force has done incredible work to address the Fentanyl crisis among school-aged children and this is a major step to protecting the lives of students and raising awareness of this terrible scourge.”
The Narcan kit deliveries are part of AZED’s Overdose Preparedness & Intelligence Taskforce (STOP-IT), a new task force established this year to address the growing opioid epidemic. The idea for placing kits in schools came out of a meeting back in May.
The Arizona Department of Health Services (AZDHS) provided the Narcan kits at no cost to the state, and the Arizona Health Care Cost Containment System (AHCCCS) will provide training.
The kits come with flyers on training resources, information on county health agency partners, an announcement of an upcoming comprehensive STOP-IT Toolkit release, and a QR code taking the user to real-time training on Naloxone Resources from AHCCCS.
STOP-IT co-chairs are Holly Geyer from the Mayo Clinic and Mike Kurtenbach with AZED, leading over 60 representatives across various government agencies, schools, healthcare entities, law enforcement, and other organizations.
Geyer credited the initiative’s success to the collaborative strengths of Arizona agencies in Thursday’s press release.
“The STOP-IT naloxone distribution initiative could not have materialized without the unprecedented collaboration between the Department of Education, the Department of Health, AHCCCS and the National Guard,” said Geyer. “The representatives appointed through these agencies proved themselves strategic problem solvers who prioritized the mission and produced outcomes that far exceeded the taskforce’s original targets. Because of their resolve, we are proud to offer schools more than just naloxone. We can offer confidence in the safety of our school campuses and parental peace of mind.”
DEMA director Kerry Muehlenbeck said that their team’s logistical support for tackling drug overdose incidents ensured a better approach to their ultimate goal of reducing drug demand.
“Through this multi-agency initiative, we build stronger communities and support wellness in our future generations,” said Muehlenbeck.
Schools signed up for Narcan kits through the AZED’s online form, with the permission of their district or charter approval first. Further information about the kit distribution and application was submitted in a memo sent to schools across the state last month.
Per AZED, these overdose kits will be continually replenished to ensure schools’ continued ability to handle opioid emergencies.
Arizona reported over 1,900 opioid-related deaths and over 4,000 overdoses last year. 26 of those opioid-related deaths were among minors (those under the age of 17).
So far this year, AZDHS has recorded over 3,200 non-fatal opioid overdoses and over 1,000 confirmed opioid deaths. The total deaths among minors for this year amount to less than 10.
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Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes is facing serious criticism after legal threats issued to families using the Empowerment Scholarship Account (ESA) program. The threats slammed the brakes on purchasing “supplementary materials” considered self-evident in need by the State Board of Education.
As reported by the AZ Mirror, a July notice from Democrat Attorney General Kris Mayes’ office told the director of the ESA program that they may be in violation of Arizona law by issuing reimbursements to families for supplementary education materials, (i.e. flash-cards, periodic tables of the elements, early books for new readers) without requiring that parents provide documentation that it is required under a curriculum.
In the six-page letter, Assistant Attorney General Kathryn Boughton wrote, “Approving ESA funds for materials that have no nexus to the student’s actual curricular needs contradicts the intent of the program and constitutes a payment of funds made without authorization of law.” She went on to claim that doing so, “may enable account holders or vendors to engage in fraudulent behavior, such as purchasing items with ESA funds solely for the purpose of resale.”
She advised that director, John Ward stop authorizing the reimbursements immediately.
Faced with a potentially damaging legal battle, Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Horne told parents in a statement that he would have to concede the point for now. “When I received the attorney general’s message, I sent it to the most knowledgeable people in my department,” Horne wrote.
“I asked them to look at it, not as an advocate, because we all disagree with the Attorney General, but in a neutral way, as though they were judges to determine if they could give me a reasonable assurance of success. They analyzed the statutes on which the attorney general relied, and indicated to me that as a neutral judge, they would rule against me if I made a fight out of it and refused to comply. Getting into a fight and losing, would be much more damaging.”
However, the tune from Mayes’ office changed sharply just one day after the Goldwater Institute filed lawsuit challenging the blatantly partisan determination. Attorneys from Goldwater representing two Arizona mothers wrote, “Following …unsuccessful legislative attempts, the office of Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes initiated a new effort in July 2024 to dramatically limit the use of ESA funds, calling for a prohibition on the purchase of basic educational materials, including books, workbooks, and other ‘supplementary materials’ unless parents could provide an explicit ‘curricular’ document justifying the use of each specific book title or material for their child.”
“Arizona law expressly allows the purchase of such materials with ESA funds, however. In fact, state lawmakers added clarifying language in 2020 with the explicit purpose of ensuring that such purchases would not be denied, following the actions by former State Superintendent Kathy Hoffman that had restricted the purchase of many such items. The State Board of Education has likewise approved rules for the program explicitly permitting the purchase of these materials without additional documentation.”
The AG’s Office then began a campaign of feverishly walking back their determination with a statement responding to the suit. “The Attorney General has simply stated what is required by law,” adding, “The law doesn’t prevent parents from purchasing paper and pencils, but it does require that materials purchased with ESA funds be used for a child’s education.”
But this isn’t what Mayes’ office said in July when they demanded Superintendent Tom Horne’s department “promptly cease approving supplementary material expenses without the requisite documentation of a curriculum nexus,” no matter how self-evidently educational the materials are, as Matt Beienburg,the Director of Education Policy at the Goldwater Institute pointed out in an Arizona Daily Independent op-ed.
As Beienburg notes, Mayes’ office, far from simply targeting extravagant spending, threatened ESA administrators with legal liability unless they applied the same requirements on the list of obviously educational materials approved in the State Board of Education’s ESA Handbook: things like “books,” “workbooks,” “writing utensils,” “atlases/maps/globes,” “calculators,” “flash cards”, etc.
“Thesematerials are what Attorney General Mayes’ intervention is now blocking en masse—unless parents can cite a specific pre-established curriculum calling for the individual book title or resource,” Beienburg explained.
“In other words, the Attorney General’s office still demands that flashcards and other self-evidently educational materials be allowed only if a parent can produce an arbitrary piece of paper calling for their specific use.
The Attorney General’s attempted public deflection away from this fact demonstrates the absurdity of her summer demands. Perhaps she really does believe that families should have to justify their purchases of books like ‘Brown Bear Brown Bear, What do You See?’ and ‘Little People Who Became Great’ to wiser government bureaucrats. But for the rest of us, such restrictions are clearly nonsensical and—under state law, illegal.
The Attorney General is supposed to uphold state law, not torture it to impose her policy preferences. We encourage the Attorney General to withdraw her summer demand letter, or else acknowledge flatly that her position is that families should have to justify why they picked ‘Brown Bear Brown Bear, What Do You See?’ to read to their own children.”
Arizona Republicans continue to fight to protect the integrity of women’s sports.
Last week, Arizona Senate President Warren Petersen, House Speaker Ben Toma, and Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Horne filed a cert petition at the Supreme Court of the United States, asking the nation’s high court to accept a case to decide the fate of the state’s Save Women’s Sports Act, which was signed into law in 2022.
“We cannot remain silent and allow these wrongs against women and girls to continue. We must stand up and fight to protect our daughters, nieces, sisters, and granddaughters from bigger and stronger males who are claiming their identities, their private spaces, their sports, and are putting their safety at risk,” said Petersen. “What’s even more disheartening is that we have a Democratic Governor and Attorney General that claim to support women, but they refuse to keep boys out of girls’ sports. Republicans stand in solidarity to defend women and girls, and I’m confident the U.S. Supreme Court will make it clear- Arizona’s Save Women’s Sports Act should be enforced.”
In their brief to the U.S. Supreme Court, the Republicans argue that “the Ninth Circuit decided an important question of federal law in an opinion that contradicts this Court’s precedent and splits with other circuits on multiple issues, [and that] this case presents an ideal vehicle to address these important questions.”
In July, Judge Jennifer Zipps granted a preliminary injunction against SB 1165, the Save Women’s Sports Act, which blocked the law from going into effect. Arizona’s Republican Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Horne, the defendant in the case, promised to appeal the ruling, saying, “This will ultimately be decided by the United States Supreme Court, and they will rule in our favor. The Plaintiffs in this case claimed that this only involves pre-pubescent boys, but we presented peer-reviewed studies that show pre-pubescent boys have an advantage over girls in sports. The only expert presented by the Plaintiffs was a medical doctor who makes his money doing sex transition treatments on children and who has exactly zero peer-reviewed studies to support his opinion.”
On the other side, one of the representatives of the plaintiffs, Justin R. Rassi from Debevoise & Plimpton LLP, lauded the judge’s ruling, writing, “The Court’s well-reasoned decision exposes the lack of any legitimate justification for this discriminatory law, which inflicts severe and irreparable harm on transgender girls like Megan and Jane. We are very happy that, as a result of this ruling, Jane and Megan will be immediately able to resume playing sports with their friends.”
A panel from the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals previously ruled that the district court’s opinion was in order, agreeing that “before puberty, there are no significant differences in athletic performance between boys and girls;” and that “Arizona’s transgender ban discriminates on its face based on transgender status.” This decision led to the appeal to the nation’s high court by the Republican petitioners.
Republican State Senator Wendy Rogers cheered on the filing at the U.S. Supreme Court, writing, “Arizona Senate Republicans protecting women!”
Arizona Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Horne announced the extension of free services through the Achievement Tutoring Program until the end of the 2024-25 school year. Horne hopes the move will allow a greater number of Arizona students to take advantage of the highly successful program.
In a statement released Wednesday, Horne said, “Studies show tutoring to be the best method for academic growth. A year ago, I announced that we would repurpose about $40 million in COVID relief funds that had been allocated by the previous administration, and were not being used for academic purposes, to create the Achievement Tutoring Program. The results have been excellent as students who get this tutoring have shown significant academic growth. Because we have received an extension that allows remaining funds to continue to be used, this program will continue through at least the end of the current school year.”
The program’s website lays out that it consists of “Six-week tutoring blocks with 60 minute sessions up to four days per week.” The students will also complete pre-and post-tutoring testing to determine their needs and gauge advancement during each tutoring block.
Due to Federal rules in the extension of COVID relief (ESSER) funds, the program is no longer available at public schools but can still be accessed by students in need through private providers and the Arizona Department of Education.
According to the Department, the Achievement Tutoring Program provides tutoring for K-12 students in reading, writing, and mathematics and since its inception, has instructed 30,400 students over a seven session period. Enrollment grew from November 2023 with 4,200 students to over 6,800 students, and the current session is accepting new enrollments through October.
The highly successful Achievement Tutoring Program initiated last year by Superintendent Tom Horne is being extended through the end of the 2024-25 school year, allowing more students to take advantage of this free program. https://t.co/S8n6Zv5oORpic.twitter.com/WtlMSqRxpr
— Arizona Department of Education (@azedschools) October 16, 2024
The release noted that in terms of academic achievement, the students enrolled “experienced at least a half-year’s worth of academic growth in six weeks, which is excellent progress in a short period of time.”
Several parents participating in the program with their children sent testimonials to the Arizona Deparment of Education, and Horne highlighted five:
Colleen, wrote to say, “I am incredibly grateful for the services and support provided by the program. I am confident that all three of my children will have increased confidence and improved report cards in the fall.”
Heather wrote, “As a single mom raising six young men, I could never afford to get tutoring like this to help them get caught up and build the confidence they need to have in life.”
From Jennifer, “The Achievement Tutoring program has helped tremendously to fill in the gaps in (my child’s) learning loss… He has improved immensely!”
Alexandra said, “My son has grown so much in reading… He finally has the confidence in reading that he has lacked for so long! I was so proud I actually cried.”
Catherine wrote, “My daughter had been struggling, but is now much more confident in her math skills… I truly hope the ATP program will continue, as it’s changing lives and helping so many. Especially some of us with limited financial resources.”
Arizona Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Horne issued a statement of support for a lawsuit challenging Attorney General Kris Mayes’ restrictions on the state’s school choice program.
Horne said that he maintains concerns that Mayes will demand the return of Empowerment Scholarship Account (ESA) funds from families based on her interpretation of the laws governing allowable expenses.
In July, Mayes advised the Arizona Department of Education (ADE) that, per her interpretation of the law, parents should no longer be reimbursed for supplementary educational materials not expressly outlined in curriculum.
Though Mayes acknowledged that the statute on which she based her interpretation didn’t offer a definition of “supplemental materials,” she argued in her letter to Associate Superintendent John Ward that the State Board of Education’s definition of the term should apply: “relevant materials directly related to the course of study for which they are being used that introduce content and instructional strategies or that enhance, complement, enrich, extend or support the curriculum.”
Mayes’ application of this definition requires explicit mention of all supplies required within a curriculum: even things like pencils and erasers. The ADE handbook doesn’t require documentation of items “generally known to be educational” in their purpose, such as pencils and erasers.
The attorney general directed Ward to provide documentation of total supplementary material expenditure from 2019 to present, as well as funds spent on curriculum materials without curriculum documentation and approved textbooks lacking proof of requirement by a qualified school or eligible postsecondary institution.
In response to Mayes’ directive, the Goldwater Institute sued on behalf of ESA mothers Velia Aguirre and Rosemary McAtee. The two mothers homeschool their children: Aguirre homeschools all three of her children, while McAtee homeschools seven of her nine children.
In their argument, the Goldwater Institute argued that Mayes’ directive was not only in violation of the law, it was a jeopardy to the existing backlog of tens of thousands of purchase orders — an issue that would inherently impact the education of many children relying on those ESA funds.
The Goldwater Institute also pointed out in a press release that not even public and private school curriculums necessarily list supplementary items such as pencils and erasers.
In a statement, Horne expressed hope that the Goldwater Institute would prevail in its lawsuit.
“The Department of Education concedes the argument of the Goldwater Institute. When this issue first arose in July, my concern was that the Attorney General could force Empowerment Scholarship Account holders to return funds if they did not comply with her office’s interpretation of the law. This lawsuit will settle the issue in court and my sincere hope is that the arguments made by Goldwater will prevail.”
Horne had issued an anticipatory show of support for a hypothetical lawsuit from the Goldwater Institute in a response on the ADE page for ESAs immediately following Mayes’ letter. Horne clarified that a prior court decision bound ADE from having the standing to file lawsuits.
The superintendent said that he doesn’t agree with Mayes’ interpretation that supplementary materials are required to be tied to curriculum. However, Horne said that Mayes’ directive was one his department advised him that he couldn’t challenge and win.
As of Monday, over 78,600 students were enrolled in the ESA Program.
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