AZ School Choice Program Makes Homeschoolers Jump Through Absurd Bureaucratic Hoops

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The Federalist | By: Nupur Tustin August 05, 2024

Arizona’s ESA program has decided that notebooks and writing utensils are not essential classroom materials for children taught at home.

This summer, as countless families who teach their kids at home enroll in Arizona’s Empowerment Scholarship Account (ESA) for the upcoming school year, they’re discovering they will need to jump through bureaucratic hoops to receive essential classroom supplies, including notebooks, writing implements, and erasers.

I encountered this obstacle when I was informed via email that my purchase was denied because there was no “formal curriculum with a material list that requires or recommends the requested item(s)” or “proof of enrollment in a course of study and a material list.”

Arizona’s ESA program — the first of its kind in the country — goes back to 2009 when the state Supreme Court struck down a scholarship program helping disabled students and foster kids to attend private schools. The state Supreme Court wasn’t averse to helping these student populations, but any help had to be provided in a way that didn’t “violate the constitution.” The solution: an expansion of the program that allowed every K-12 student in Arizona to apply for the program. Any public school child was eligible.

Notably, the program preserved school choice, allowing parents to enroll their children in a private school or teach them at home. The funds allocated to the public school for a child would now be given to the parent.

With three children and an uncertain income — my husband is in construction, and I’m an author — the program has been a Godsend for us. So you can imagine my confusion and frustration when essential classroom supplies, which required no additional documentation according to the 2023-24 parent handbook, were suddenly being denied.

ESA already distinguished between curriculum (all books including textbooks); essential classroom supplies (writing implements, whiteboards, art supplies, which were tagged as “supplementary materials, no documentation required”); and items (like seeds for a biology lesson or thread and fabric for a sewing class) that aren’t clearly school supplies. Previously, these things were marked as “supplementary materials,” which required documentation. This process involved proving that the materials were for a course of study. But not so for textbooks and general classroom supplies. It made perfect sense.

So ESA Executive Director John Ward’s July 3, 2024, email informing families that Arizona’s attorney general was taking ESA to task for approving “certain supplemental items and textbooks without requiring curricula” was befuddling! This, AG Kris Mayes said, constituted an “illegal payment of public monies.”

Apparently, whatever the ESA program had in mind when it first decided to preserve school choice and help students achieve their potential, funding school supplies wasn’t it. These must now be explicitly required or recommended by the child’s curriculum or private school!

This creates a problem for parents since I’ve yet to see a history or science textbook list out items like pencils, highlighters, and notebooks. It’s understood these items are needed. The AG’s letter to Ward notes, however, that computer technology and hardware are fine. Still, ESA parents on Facebook are complaining that these purchases aren’t being approved either.

Ward’s email to parents suggested that only supplementary materials would be affected, but every classroom, public or private, requires pens, notebooks, whiteboards, and the like. When private schools provide such lists, they become necessary supplies for a student to have. But when homeschooling parents indicate their children need pencils and notebooks, somehow this request isn’t kosher. This decision seems like the first step toward gutting homeschooling in the state.

In his response to the AG, Ward promises not to approve textbook purchases either without supporting documentation. Specifically, ESA is being asked to “verify whether textbooks are required by qualifying schools and post-secondary institutions.” This would mean providing supporting documents even for core subjects like math! Meanwhile, there’s no mention made of parents who teach their own kids at home. 

One can justify the purchase of, let’s say, a “Good and Beautiful Math” textbook if an accredited private school requires it, but parents supposedly do not have the credentials to make that choice. It hasn’t come to that, but I suspect it will. My textbooks were approved without any trouble, but a mom on Facebook complained that hers had not. I reached out to Ward seeking clarification but have received no response.

It’s wonderful that parents may, if they so choose, send their children to private school and ESA will pick up the tab. But they should also be given the support to educate their children themselves, if they so choose.

Ward in his response to the AG has rightly noted that ESA’s automatic approval of textbooks and essential classroom supplies “have been in place since before the current ADE administration.” He also notes that allowing ESA holders to “purchase supplemental materials without curricula” was a “practice begun in the prior ADE administration.” The problem is that the Arizona Revised Statutes on ESA funds is so vaguely worded that had ESA not provided parents with thorough guidelines on pages 17 through 20 of its parent handbook, no parent would’ve been able to comply.

Frank Rutledge from the State of Arizona Ombudsman, Citizens’ Aid Office referred me to the Arizona Revised Statutes chapter on ESA, specifically to A.R.S. 15-2402 B. However, the statute has no reference to homeschooling parents. The paragraph deals almost entirely with tuition, fees, textbooks, and other educational services provided by “qualified schools” or individuals who are licensed or accredited.

ESA holders are expected to teach core subjects like math, science, grammar, and social studies. That’s why ESA automatically approved textbook purchases for core subjects. Essential classroom supplies were also automatically approved. These decisions and the ESA parent handbook — which the State Board of Education had adopted in April 2023 before Ward’s appointment — were in keeping with the sections of the Arizona Revised Statutes that Ward references in his email to parents, but interestingly not in his response to the AG.

Ward explains that according to the statute, “curriculum” refers to “a course of study for content areas or grade levels, including any supplemental materials required or recommended by” it. These “supplemental materials” were understood to mean anything that enhances, complements, or enriches the curriculum, such as materials for a chemistry experiment. None of these items would be denied to public school children. Why deny them to homeschooled kids?

This article has been updated since publication.