PHOENIX — The hotline for parents to sound the alarm on public school concerns marked one-year last month, however after months of waiting for the records of emails and phone calls, ABC15 just obtained the first week of emails sent to the Empower Hotline.
ABC15 sat down with Superintendent Tom Horne in March to get an update on the Empower Hotline he launched in March of 2023. According to his office, the hotline was contacted about 35,000 times through email or phone calls since the launch and about 200 of those needed more information or follow.
Horne said a majority of the emails and calls they received were from prank or “crank” calls.
“In fact, people used bots, robots from out-of-state to flood us, thinking it would cause us to stop the hotline. They didn’t want parents to be able to communicate with us. Strange,” he said in March.
ABC15 asked for copies of emails and calls into the hotline a month after it started. Only the first week of emails were released, a year after the request.
After reviewing the thousands of emails released, a majority of the emails criticized Horne.
I am completely against the new Empower Hotline, one email read.
Quit f***** with education, Horne. You’ve been f****** with education, another said.
Many of the thousands of emails expressed disappointment and anger over the hotline and how it would target schools and teachers more than they already are.
I am absolutely appalled by the existence of this hotline. I want my child’s teachers to be able to focus on providing high-quality education. I do not want them to have to worry about being reported by a parent or some anonymous outsider, one email read.
Horne hoped the hotline would allow complaints to be sent in over what he believes are inappropriate lessons being taught in the classroom, such as critical race theory.
Some of the emails tell Horne that CRT is not taught in Arizona schools. K-12 educators and education advocates have long denied teaching CRT in schools. Horne himself has not given examples of it happening.
There were also a number of the same people who sent spam messages. Some emails were identical and sent hundreds of times from people out-of-state or from political organizations.
A few emails were also clear pranks and tried to prove a point to Horne.
I have grave concerns about any teachers who speak about the tooth fairy as she is a Democratic lesbian and is a danger to our children… I will expect you to act immediately. See how dumb this sounds? Get a life, part of an email said.
Regardless, Horne stands by the Empower Hotline, still seeing value in it.
“The public knows you can communicate with us. We're about transparency. They're not being shut out and not treated rudely,” he said.
The actual, legitimate complaints were far and few between.
One person emailed the hotline saying gender fluidity came up at school and distressed their daughter who was a student. Another email said an 8th-grade science teacher assigned an essay on sexual human organs and claimed the teacher used inappropriate language. Names of schools, students and/or teachers were redacted from the emails.
There were also few emails that praised Horne. Those emails came from people who said they lived in another state, hoping that their own would start up the same hotline.
I want to applaud your efforts to stamp out inappropriate lessons before they occur. We need to prevent the radical left from grooming our children, an email read.
A vast majority of the emails, again, praised public schools, and their teachers and admonished Horne for creating the hotline.
One email said they voted for him. But looks like I made a mistake, the person wrote, asking him to stop wasting precious time and money.
Horne told ABC15 that only one person in the department is looking into any of the calls and emails. That investigator has other roles within the department as well, Horne said.
“It doesn't take much time or resources,” he said.
Of the couple hundred complaints that were deemed legitimate, follow-ups were conducted, his office said. If schools aren’t cooperative, then a formal investigation will be launched. However, as of March, that has yet to happen. The department could not comment on if there are any open investigations.