The Daily Agenda: Legislature should've measured twice

The school voucher system is a mess ... Too many questions still need answers ... The ocelot still roams.

It’s becoming clear that nobody has a clear picture of what is going on with Arizona’s school voucher system. Not the top officials in the state and not the top education official in Pima County.

Gov. Katie Hobbs’ office sent out a memo saying the program’s expected cost of $944 million was “unsustainable” and is on track to create a $320 million budget shortfall.

This was the latest in a series of announcements over the past few months, with the estimated cost of the program jumping by tens or hundreds of millions of dollars each time.

Hobbs called for better accounting of the Empowerment Scholarship Account program, as vouchers are known officially. On the other side of the aisle, Republican state House Speaker Ben Toma hired an economist to look into the program’s finances.

That can’t happen soon enough.

As further evidence of chaos in the Empowerment Scholarship Account program, the head of the program resigned after seven months on the job. And so did one of her top deputies.

None of this sounds good, and we wanted to know more about the local impact, so we asked the person running the show here in Pima County and combed through the best publicly available data we could find.

It turns out, officials are just as much in the dark as the rest of us. The voucher program doesn’t have anywhere near the transparency and accountability of public schools, Pima County Schools Superintendent Dustin Williams said. And while he thinks most private schools are doing a great job, it’s impossible for him or anyone else to prove that quantitatively.

“Are they delivering a world-class education that we can monitor? No, not at all. We don’t have an answer on how kids are doing on publicly funded voucher system,” Williams said. “That gets really, really tough for constituents to understand.”

When the legislation was first approved, Williams’ office was flooded with calls from parents wanting to withdraw their children from public schools, so Williams wasn’t surprised the cost of the universal voucher program ballooned so quickly.

“When the program first got implemented and people talked about this is going to be a billion dollar program in 10 years, my gut instinct was no, it’s going to be a billion-dollar program in two years,” Williams said. “And here we are at basically a billion-dollar program in two years.”

Plenty of experts are concerned about the financial implications of the program, with economists comparing it to the alternative-fuel debacle that nearly bankrupted the state in 2000. But even if the program were repealed before that happens, Williams said he’s concerned about the fallout of telling parents they would have to send children back to schools they chose to leave.

“Once we get people in programs and want to pull them out, now we have parents that are going to be left with questions,” Williams said. “There’s a saying in life: Measure twice and cut once. Unfortunately, the Legislature didn’t measure twice on this one.”

We had a heck of a time trying to figure out how many students in Pima County are using ESAs. The quarterly reports from the Arizona Department of Education leave a lot to be desired. Frankly, the tone of the reports comes off as begrudging, at best. We reached out to the ADE for clarification about statistics in their reports, but they didn’t respond.

But according to ADE’s June 4 quarterly report, which covers January 1 to March 31 and showed about 50,000 students using ESAs, about 24,000 kids, or less than half of them, used to go to public schools (we had to manually add up a few hundred numbers to get because ADE didn’t include a total).

The total number of voucher recipients who formerly attended the Tucson Unified School District was 1,280 as of March 31. It is behind only the Scottsdale Unified School District, where 1,499 former students now use ESAs, and Deer Valley Unified District, with 1,301. Smaller districts in the Tucson area also saw quite a few students leave to start using ESAs, such as 513 in the Ampitheater district, 470 in the Marana district and 291 in the Vail district.

The legislative session is starting again soon. When it does, we’d really appreciate it if legislators would help the public get a clearer picture of what exactly is going on with the voucher program.

Investing in nonprofits: Pima County supervisors approved $3.6 million in Outside Agency grants Tuesday for use in the 2023/24 fiscal year, which began July 1. The Outside Agency program supports nonprofits that collaborate with the county to provide public assistance for social services, health and economic development. It targets economically disadvantaged and other at-risk populations, ensuring that support is provided to meet basic needs and services in rural areas. Funding will go to 49 agencies that administer 77 programs. The largest beneficiary was the Community Food Bank of Southern Arizona, which will receive $456,305 for four programs.

Unfortunately, we’re not gonna get any of that sweet county money. But you help ensure the Tucson Agenda survives by donating to our startup fund today!

Celebrating his independence: Arizona’s only known ocelot, Lil’ Jefe, was captured on camera by a Vail wildlife videographer earlier this month, the Arizona Daily Star’s Henry Brean notes. The ocelot was spotted on July 4, “wandering alone at night among the juniper and pine in the Huachuca Mountains.” Jason Miller used a pair of motion-activated trail cameras to record the rare sighting from two different angles, one in color and the other in black and white. He posted the footage on his YouTube channel as part of a montage of recent sightings that included a mountain lion, ringtail and several bears with cubs.

“It’s a rare catch,” Miller said.

Looking for answers: The city is seeking feedback on transit service changes throughout the region, which include realigning and extending routes, investing in high-frequency service, improving access and quality of service, extending service hours and adding weekend frequency. Residents can provide comments through September 8 by taking a survey, attending one of 17 virtual meetings, pop-up events or town halls during the month of August or visiting the project website. Event details can be found here.

Good boy, Dusty: A Cochise County livestock guardian dog was rescued Monday, after falling into a mineshaft with water, the Arizona Republic’s Laura Daniella Sepulveda reports. The dog, named Dusty, was reported missing after he didn’t show up for breakfast at his farmhouse. Authorities said he likely fell into the mineshaft after he chased away a predator while protecting livestock overnight. Dusty was exhausted from trying to keep his head above water by standing on a ledge beneath the surface, and was also hypothermic and dehydrated.

"This was truly a happy ending," the Sheriff's Office said.

Strive to thrive: The city is receiving $50 million in federal funding that will be used to make improvements to Tucson House, the city’s largest public housing unit, as well as create three new housing developments, the Star’s Nicole Ludden reports. U.S. Rep. Raúl Grijalva announced the grant Tuesday as part of the U.S. Housing and Urban Development Department’s Choice Neighborhoods program, which assists struggling neighborhoods with “distressed public or HUD-assisted housing.” The city will be using the money to supplement the Thrive in the ‘05 initiative, which was launched in 2018 to target the 85705 zip code in an attempt to reduce crime, improve housing and community services and promote economic development.

Taking a hit: The planned Hermosa Mine in Southern Arizona is now worth less than half the value previously thought, after “non-cash impairments” were calculated, according to the Tucson Sentinel’s Daniel Shailer. Stock in the Australian mining company South32 dropped 2.6% after Monday’s announcement, but prices recovered Tuesday. The lower value was determined after an accounting review last month began distinguishing between different deposits within the project. Previously, it was valued as a whole. The proposed value of the planned mine in the Patagonia Mountains is now $1.3 billion lower, with the total carrying value of the project standing at just more than $1 billion.

$500 million: That’s how much the alt-fuel boondoggle cost the state of Arizona in 2000, when legislators adopted a program to reimburse the cost of buying alternative-fueled vehicles. The program was supposed to cost less than $5 million per year.