PHOENIX — Democratic Governor Katie Hobbs proposed a plan on Tuesday, saying she wants to “increase accountability and transparency” in the Empowerment Scholarship Accounts program.
It was a busy, booming year for the ESA program since it went universal. It started with 11,000 students before it expanded, and now there are nearly 73,000 students as of Tuesday, according to the Arizona Department of Education’s website.
“There certainly should be bipartisan support for the need for some guardrails there,” she said.
Hobbs believes her plan will increase transparency and accountability. Here are some of the details of the proposal:
- Require educators at private schools that receive taxpayer dollars to pass a fingerprint background check to be able to provide instruction for those students.
- Require private schools to provide accommodations and services for students who have Individualized Learning Plans or Section 504 plans.
- Have accountability on spending and require manual approval of purchases over $500 and ensure they’re being used for academic purposes.
- Create audit authority for the Auditor General to monitor and report on how ESA money is being spent and used by private schools.
- Stop price gouging by private schools that receive taxpayer dollars. The hope is to have private schools stop hiking the cost of tuition and fees “at a rate higher than inflation,” Hobbs’ plan said.
- Require private schools receiving taxpayer dollars to have minimum education requirements for educators who provide the instruction.
- Require the Department of Education to disclose student and parental rights that they relinquish when leaving the public school system for the ESA program as well as report graduation and chronic absenteeism rates.
- Require students, who want to go into the ESA program, to attend public school for 100 days at any point of their education before being eligible for ESAs.
“They’re trying to say it’s unaccountable. They’re trying to say there’s no transparency, but the reality of it is there’s more transparency than any other program I’m aware of,” said Ben Toma, the republican Speaker of the House, in an interview with ABC15 news partner KTAR. Toma also sponsored the universal ESA bill.
Superintendent Tom Horne rebutted, saying his office already reviews all expense requests, regardless of the amount.
“In 2023, we rejected several thousand ESA applications for lack of adequate documentation and suspended almost 2,200 accounts totaling $21 million because the student was enrolled in a public school. We’ve also rejected more than 12,000 ESA purchase order requests,” he said in a statement.
This point, possibly comes after ABC15’s investigation into millions of dollars being spent on extra things for families, like ski lessons, pianos, luxury car driving lessons and more.
Education officials say all those purchases were valid.
Since taking office, Hobbs said she’d repeal the universal program, restoring it to the previous program for just students with disabilities. But that never happened.
“That was aspirational. Now, we have more data on how much this program is costing,” she said.
According to a report in October from the Joint Budget Legislative Committee, for Fiscal Year 24, the program went $40 million over budget. The forecast in the same report shows ESA enrollment would grow to 75,000 students with a total of $752 million given out.
The hot-button issue could continue to be a talking point throughout the legislative session, which the session starts on Monday.
“I think we laid out a menu of options that could be implemented as a whole or individually. I would be supportive of those being in a final package,” she said.
