Public money is funding the ESA program, so I hope AG Mayes will assure financial accountability so we at least know what the money is funding. For example, is a fundamentalist sect buying antisemitic texts to "teach" children to hate Jews? Or, for that matter, is a Hasidic school, funded by ESA, not teaching math? (A recent problem in NYC: https://apnews.com/article/yeshiva-new-york-hasidic-investigation-224546cc4a2c654d0309acb959727ff6) Taxpayers deserve to know.
Between the ESA boondoggle and Ducey's flat tax giveaway to the wealthy, this state will be bankrupt by 2026--just in time for the GOP to scream "Look what happens with a Democratic governor!"
Hi Jim, We didn't hear back from anyone with the ESA program or state, and Superintendent Williams wasn't able to speak with authority about these types of situations. From the looks of the "allowable expense" list, it looks these types of scenarios could potentially happen, but we weren't able to get a definitive answer from anyone. https://www.azed.gov/sites/default/files/2023/03/Published-Allowable-List-2023-03-17.pdf
This will not be our only story about ESA, so we will be sure to follow up on this topic.
Thanks, Caitlin. I suspect it will take the AG's office to pry forth this sort of info. Horne & the AZ GOP legislators will be like Schultz on Hogan's Heroes: "I know nothing. I see nothing."
Well, I am sure glad that some people are finally waking up to the MESS that is the ESA. Complaints have been made in the past years and ignored. And the GOP legislature said everything was fine when it wasn't.
Thanks again for taking us into the realm of what we didn't know we didn't know or were avoiding because sometimes it's too exhausting to do one's own dive into a threatening topic. Please keep the ESA and the mining issues afloat and visible even as the monster wave of national news threatens to drown the "smaller" issues.
The ESA program was designed to have no evaluation, so it's not surprising no one knows what's going on. Why is Toma hiring a private person to look at ESA? The Legislature has the Auditor General's office and a tax credit review committee that is *supposed to meet* annually to review all tax giveaways in a scheduled manner, but it met only once in my six years. I was on the tax credit review committee when it met in 2019 along with Mesnard, Toma, Cano, Bolick and others. we were all shocked to find out that parents were applying for and receiving more than one scholarship per student and that the state had no idea how many children were being served by the specific ESA as we were looking at that day. They only knew how many scholarships had been rewarded. We were given a list of schools but were not allowed to talk about them on camera. I agree with the others who have commented. Please keep following this.
I remember Alan Maguire. He's the economist that headed the Prop 203 ELL Task force that gave AZ the failed ELL immersion program. Now why would an economist lead a committee on English Language Instruction? And why is he back looking at voucher demographics?
Public money is funding the ESA program, so I hope AG Mayes will assure financial accountability so we at least know what the money is funding. For example, is a fundamentalist sect buying antisemitic texts to "teach" children to hate Jews? Or, for that matter, is a Hasidic school, funded by ESA, not teaching math? (A recent problem in NYC: https://apnews.com/article/yeshiva-new-york-hasidic-investigation-224546cc4a2c654d0309acb959727ff6) Taxpayers deserve to know.
Between the ESA boondoggle and Ducey's flat tax giveaway to the wealthy, this state will be bankrupt by 2026--just in time for the GOP to scream "Look what happens with a Democratic governor!"
Hi Jim, We didn't hear back from anyone with the ESA program or state, and Superintendent Williams wasn't able to speak with authority about these types of situations. From the looks of the "allowable expense" list, it looks these types of scenarios could potentially happen, but we weren't able to get a definitive answer from anyone. https://www.azed.gov/sites/default/files/2023/03/Published-Allowable-List-2023-03-17.pdf
This will not be our only story about ESA, so we will be sure to follow up on this topic.
Thanks, Caitlin. I suspect it will take the AG's office to pry forth this sort of info. Horne & the AZ GOP legislators will be like Schultz on Hogan's Heroes: "I know nothing. I see nothing."
Well, I am sure glad that some people are finally waking up to the MESS that is the ESA. Complaints have been made in the past years and ignored. And the GOP legislature said everything was fine when it wasn't.
Thanks again for taking us into the realm of what we didn't know we didn't know or were avoiding because sometimes it's too exhausting to do one's own dive into a threatening topic. Please keep the ESA and the mining issues afloat and visible even as the monster wave of national news threatens to drown the "smaller" issues.
How many Legislators are personally benefitting from ESAs?
The ESA program was designed to have no evaluation, so it's not surprising no one knows what's going on. Why is Toma hiring a private person to look at ESA? The Legislature has the Auditor General's office and a tax credit review committee that is *supposed to meet* annually to review all tax giveaways in a scheduled manner, but it met only once in my six years. I was on the tax credit review committee when it met in 2019 along with Mesnard, Toma, Cano, Bolick and others. we were all shocked to find out that parents were applying for and receiving more than one scholarship per student and that the state had no idea how many children were being served by the specific ESA as we were looking at that day. They only knew how many scholarships had been rewarded. We were given a list of schools but were not allowed to talk about them on camera. I agree with the others who have commented. Please keep following this.
I remember Alan Maguire. He's the economist that headed the Prop 203 ELL Task force that gave AZ the failed ELL immersion program. Now why would an economist lead a committee on English Language Instruction? And why is he back looking at voucher demographics?