Latest news with #EmpowermentScholarshipAccount
Axios
3 days ago
- Politics
- Axios
Yee challenges Horne in GOP primary for state superintendent
State Treasurer Kimberly Yee is taking on state Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Horne in the Republican primary, challenging him from the right over Arizona's school choice system. State of play: Yee, who is termed out, will attempt to wrest the GOP nomination from Horne as he seeks reelection. She announced her candidacy from the state Capitol Wednesday, touting her career-long dedication to education issues and pledging to "build a stronger and higher-achieving school system." Yee criticized Horne for what she called "government overreach" in his administration of the voucher-style Empowerment Scholarship Account (ESA) program and argued that he's exceeded his legal authority in imposing restrictions on it. She also dismissed the types of excesses by some ESA parents that critics focus on as a minute fraction of a percentage of the total program. Background: Yee chaired the Senate Education Committee and focused on education issues during her 2010-2018 legislative career, as a legislative staffer and as an aide to former California Govs. Arnold Schwarzenegger and Pete Wilson. The intrigue: State Sen. Jake Hoffman (R-Queen Creek), who leads the far-right Arizona Freedom Caucus, told reporters last month he wanted to find a GOP primary challenger for Horne, whom he called "the single greatest threat" to the ESA program. Hoffman is backing a slate of candidates for statewide offices and introduced Yee at Wednesday's press conference. Yee said parents in the school choice community had been asking her to run for superintendent well before Hoffman's recruitment efforts. Between the lines: The superintendent proposes changes to the handbook that governs the ESA program. Horne's Arizona Department of Education in March proposed changes to require a curriculum for supplemental materials; impose spending caps for expenses like computers, musical instruments and home economics appliances; and ban expenses like smartwatches, multi-person kayaks, Amazon Prime fees and certain appliances like espresso machines and freeze-dryers. The State Board of Education postponed a vote on the new handbook after about three dozen ESA parents spoke out against the changes. Horne last month asked the board to again push back the vote, saying he wanted to meet with state lawmakers who had voiced concerns to him. The other side: Horne, a longtime school choice advocate who previously served as superintendent from 2008-2011, said in a press statement Wednesday that the state education department is strongly in favor of parental choice and ESAs. But he rejected the notion that the program should be unrestricted, pointing to expenditures he's rejected like a $5,000 Rolex watch, a $24,000 golf simulator and a vasectomy testing kit. If the department approved such expenditures, it would provoke a negative public reaction and threaten the program's survivability, he said. Horne added he has a duty to responsibly manage taxpayer funds, which includes limiting ESA expenses to reasonable educational purposes.
Yahoo
09-05-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Lawmakers take a 2-week break. Arizona does a happy dance
So, after four months of arduous work, the Arizona Legislature is taking a break. It seems the beach is calling, and they must answer. The House is taking two weeks off, returning on May 20. The Senate will return on May 27. This is, of course, an outrage. An affront to every hardworking Arizonan — the people who work five, six or even seven days a week just to get by. People who, I'm confident that when told their leaders taking a few weeks off, will rise up with one voice and ask: What will it take to get them to stay away? It's not like this Legislature has accomplished much, other than beating up on Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs virtually every day and patting themselves on the back for passing bills that will go nowhere. And, oh yeah, scheming to cut care for disabled children and trampling the constitutional rights of Scottsdale voters. Protecting the state's water supply? Nope. Passing a plan to boost the supply of houses people can afford to buy without selling all their internal organs? Uh-uh. Demanding better oversight of the state's runaway Empowerment Scholarship Account program? Be serious. Proposing a workable plan to ask voters for an extension of the Proposition 123 education funding that runs dry on June 30? They've hinted about holding hostage that $300 million in public school funding unless voters agree to a constitutional guarantee for ESAs. Yeah, no. After all that statesmanship, it seems our leaders are just too exhausted to stick around and do the one thing they actually are required to do. To pass a balanced budget, that is. Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs proposed her 2025-2026 budget on Jan. 17. Republican legislators? Nope. Opinion: What does Hobbs have against transparency? Once upon a time, the Legislature proposed a budget then held detailed hearings, allowing the public a voice in how our money is spent. Sure, was a time suck, but it was also good governance. These days, a few legislative leaders knock out a plan in private, then present it to the governor. By the time it gets to rank-and-file legislators, it's basically take it or leave it, and you have three minutes to decide. The public, meanwhile, has no role. So, now our exhausted leaders are headed off to vacay and other than the Governor's Office, which called the late-session vacation 'shameful,' I'm wondering … Will anybody even notice that they're gone? Reach Roberts at Follow her on X (formerly Twitter) at @LaurieRobertsaz, on Threads at @LaurieRobertsaz and on BlueSky at @ Like this column? Get more opinions in your email inbox by signing up for our free opinions newsletter, which publishes Monday through Friday. This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Arizona Legislature goes on vacation? That's ... fantastic! | Opinion
Yahoo
09-04-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Five Years Later: How COVID Triggered a School Choice Renaissance
In August 2022, visitors to the Arizona Department of Education webpage were greeted by an unusual message: Due to a 'high volume' of users, the note read, they might have trouble applying to participate in the state's Empowerment Scholarship Account program. It was the second such IT mishap of the year, following an episode in which a crush of parents temporarily overwhelmed the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction's site that winter. Libertarian activist Corey DeAngelis, then rising to fame as an arch critic of teachers' unions and Democratic politicians, said the trend convinced him that the experience of virtual learning had ignited in families a desperate hunger for more educational options. Get stories like this delivered straight to your inbox. Sign up for The 74 Newsletter 'I'd been chugging away at this before COVID, but it really took off when we were getting into debates about reopening schools,' he recalled. Five years after the onset of the pandemic, DeAngelis is one of the leading voices in an education world turned upside down by its effects. After a generation at the center of both federal and state policy, bipartisan reforms like charter schools and test-based accountability have receded from the spotlight; at the same time, billions of dollars were devoted to private initiatives that previously won few headlines and scant financial support. Since 2020, over 20 states have either enacted or expanded some form of private school choice, and 13 extend eligibility to all families within their borders. Over 1 million children now access those offerings, according to the advocacy group EdChoice, and over 20 million are eligible to do so. And just since the beginning of 2025, nearly 100 bills have been filed that would push the needle further, potentially allowing even more resources and greater flexibility for families in states like Texas, Florida, and Ohio. Related Patrick Wolf, a political scientist at the University of Arkansas who has studied voucher-like systems for decades, contrasted their fast spread over the last few years with the halting progress seen in the 2000s and 2010s. In particular, he said, education savings accounts (ESAs) stand out as having 'found their moment.' 'It's been amazing to see from a movement that had kind of plateaued and seemed stagnant just prior to COVID,' remarked Wolf, who has energetically argued for the benefits of choice. 'Now it's dynamic like crazy, with all kinds of variations and evolutions that we didn't anticipate even six or seven years ago.' When we leaned too heavily on lefty messaging on school choice, it didn't do much to convince Democrats to come along. But it might have alienated some of the more conservative or even moderate Republicans. Corey DeAngelis, private school choice activist The leap forward was made possible by a pronounced shift in perceptions of schools, especially among Republicans. The structure of the ESA, a lightly regulated grant placed directly in the hands of parents, proved both politically attractive and legally viable in ways that earlier voucher schemes were not. Spurred by competitive pressures among red-state lawmakers — and accelerated by a political strategy relying on Republican legislative majorities, rather than the assent of voters — the new benefits took hold quickly. No less pivotal was the adoption of school choice as what DeAngelis called a 'litmus test issue' for conservatives, who proved comfortable jettisoning Republican legislators standing in their way. Household names on the right, including Donald Trump and Betsy DeVos, have personally intervened in state-level fights, while figures like Christopher Rufo national profiles by directly confronting social controversies in the classroom. The resulting fights have often taken a vituperative tone uncommon to discussions of K–12 schools. Jon Valant, director of the Brown Center on Education Policy at the left-leaning Brookings Institution, said he believed school choice proponents had broken through by yoking their vision of an open education marketplace to the ascent of culture warriors like Rufo and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis. 'Those two groups came together in a marriage of convenience, and you saw the push for ESAs ride the wave of frustration that was building,' Valant said. 'That frustration became political fuel in a lot of red states.' Accounts differ on the extent of public anger arising from the long era of school closures, quarantines, and mask mandates. But for many, COVID led to a serious reappraisal of the state of public education. It's been amazing to see from a movement that had kind of plateaued and seemed stagnant just prior to COVID. Now it's dynamic like crazy. Patrick Wolf, University of Arkansas According to the polling organization Gallup, 70 percent of parents said they were either completely or somewhat satisfied with the education their kids received in 2024 — down 10 points over the past two years, but still well above the figure for Americans as a whole. Among that larger group, the proportion dissatisfied with the quality of American education crested at 63 percent in 2023 and remained at 55 percent last year, compared with just 43 percent of survey respondents who said they were satisfied. Beneath the overall numbers is a gaping ideological divide. Virtually identical numbers of Democrats and Republicans said they had 'a great deal' or 'quite a bit' of confidence in U.S. schools in 2019 (30 percent of Democrats vs. 28 percent of Republicans), but a pandemic-era divergence exploded the very next year. By 2023, 43 percent of Democrats said they were mostly confident in schools; an extraordinary 9 percent of Republicans agreed. What's more, even while families approved of the performance of their local schools, the impact of the pandemic led thousands to pull their children out of them. Related A 2021 study by Stanford economist Thomas Dee found that traditional public institutions lost 1.1 million students in the fall of 2020, largely driven by a substantial departure of kindergarteners and elementary schoolers. The decline was 40 percent higher in districts that provided only remote instruction at the beginning of that academic year. A separate analysis from the conservative American Enterprise Institute found larger, more sustained enrollment drops between 2020 and 2022 in districts that kept schools closed longer and enforced mask mandates when students returned to campus. Martin Lueken, a researcher at EdChoice, said that prolonged closures both revealed and amplified the existing demand for private school alternatives. Although the process of building momentum for private choice initiatives was 'slow' in the years before the pandemic, he added, the massive disruptions to school routines acted as a powerful accelerant. 'There has always been a recognition that in order for these programs to be implemented, you need to build a broad constituency for them,' Lueken said. 'You never want to let a crisis go to waste, and COVID really shrunk the timeline for this to happen.' As parents became increasingly willing to leave their traditional school systems, politicians were converging on a vehicle to facilitate their exit: the education savings account. ESAs were first introduced in Arizona in 2011 as a resource for parents of students with disabilities. The scope of the proposal was limited, with only 17,000 children eligible to participate in the first year. Compared with other K–12 reforms being pursued in the Obama era, from teacher accountability to rapid charter school expansion, ESAs received little national attention; but school choice advocates hailed their passage, immediately recognizing them as 'the way of the future.' Their early excitement was a reaction to an unprecedented political opportunity— and grounded in two factors that made the policy more likely to gain traction than other forms of private school choice. The first was legal. An earlier school voucher law had been passed by the Arizona legislature in 2006, only to be swept aside a few years later by state courts arguing that the program violated state law by sending state funds to private or parochial schools. Thirty-seven states have written such prohibitions, known as 'Blaine amendments,' into their constitutions since the 19th century. By contrast, ESAs indirectly facilitate choice by providing families with money and allowing them to use it as they see fit. Supporters in Phoenix quickly grasped the significance of that distinction, moving to expand the accounts to children attending failing schools just a year after they were first enacted. The second advantage of ESAs was political. Surveys have often shown high levels of support for private school choice, but voucher programs failed at the election booth for decades. Between 1978 and 2007, six states conducted nine different referendum campaigns to determine whether to establish either voucher programs or tax credits for private school tuition. Voters rejected each ballot measure, often by overwhelming margins. Valant called the branding of voucher programs 'toxic,' especially relative to the simple appeal of sending money directly to parents. 'People don't like 'private school vouchers,'' he said. 'But they don't really know what an ESA is until they actually dig into the policy details, so they don't have the immediate baggage that vouchers come with.' EdChoice's own tracking survey, conducted with the nonpartisan research firm Morning Consult, consistently showed that about two-thirds of parents had positive attitudes toward ESAs during the pandemic. Even more importantly, Republicans were eager to pass them through the normal legislative process, without risking lengthy and expensive referendum battles. Related Since 2021, over a dozen states have passed ESA legislation, significantly increasing the number of American families eligible to receive the accounts. Crucially, most have opted to follow Arizona's lead by structuring their programs not as targeted benefits for disadvantaged students, but as universal entitlements that gain rapid acceptance among families from all walks of life. Dan Lips, a senior fellow at the Foundation for American Innovation and veteran education policy analyst, first proposed a regime of ESAs 20 years ago, while working at Arizona's conservative Goldwater Institute. Reflecting on the decades-long path trod by the school choice community, he called the triumph of the policy a 'silver lining' to the damage wreaked by COVID. Inline pullquote: People don't like 'private school vouchers.' But they don't really know what an ESA is. Jon Valant, Brookings Institution 'There's been an advocacy effort, going back 30 years, to mobilize parents, to fund scholarship organizations, to educate policy makers about the benefits of these types of programs,' Lips said. 'I don't think the strategy changed during the pandemic, we just found a lot more motivated lawmakers who'd had enough with public school systems.' Republicans were motivated by more than the urgency of the pandemic, however. During the Biden era, backing for the expansion of school choice became something of a crusade on the right. For more than half a century, conservatives have favored the evolution of new school models and options outside the public sector. But during the era of bipartisan education reform stretching across the Bush and Obama presidencies, most of that energy was redirected toward the spread of charter schools, a compromise position that also enjoyed the blessing of Democrats leery of any move toward vouchers. Arguments for direct subsidies of private schools — occasionally drafted into congressional legislation that went nowhere — were usually couched in the language of equity, with a heavy focus on targeting benefits at low-income families and freeing students from underperforming local school districts. DeAngelis said that while those discussions were tailored to win over the left, they tended to backfire. 'When we leaned too heavily on lefty messaging on school choice, it didn't do much to convince Democrats to come along,' he said. 'But it might have alienated some of the more conservative or even moderate Republicans, because they didn't feel like it was a Republican issue.' With the arrival of COVID and the presidency of Donald Trump, messaging around the issue changed. Conservative activists and politicians increasingly voiced disapproval of what they perceived as political indoctrination in schools, militating instead for parents to be provided the autonomy to select among institutions more in line with their values. The moment presented an opportunity, proponents argued, to take advantage of the culture war. Related One of the most dedicated 'anti-woke' combatants of the Biden era was Gov. Ron DeSantis, who pushed Florida's Republican legislature to adopt strict new rules constraining how teachers can speak about sexuality or other controversial subjects in the classroom. At the same time, he transformed the state into America's biggest marketplace for school choice, pointedly linking the expansion of ESAs with parents' desire to escape 'woke' instruction. A similar dynamic is playing out in Texas, now at the precipice of adopting the policy. Republican Gov. Greg Abbott spent the past several years stumping for his favored ESA legislation at a host of Christian (and predominantly Protestant) schools, warning of progressive bias in small towns as well as blue-trending cities. He also moved relentlessly against a contingent of mostly rural Republican legislators who opposed him, succeeding in ousting over a dozen through competitive primaries; revealingly, while those campaigns were crucial to Abbott's legislative strategy, their messaging focused much less on schools than on the hot-button issue of border security. Related Republican donors like former Education Secretary Betsy DeVos got in on the action, spending millions to promote legislation and fund primary challenges against rural GOP legislators who resisted the new laws. In Iowa, where a universal ESA bill was being held up, the chairman of the House education committee was defeated after his opponent was endorsed by the Gov. Kim Reynolds. The bill was passed shortly thereafter. Conservative media figures have been no less confrontational, casting their adversaries as would-be propagandists seeking to control other people's children. DeAngelis, whose recent book received praise from President Trump, has proven adept at the cut-and-thrust of social media trolling, personally attacking top Democrats for sending their own children to private schools while rejecting school choice for others. The popular Twitter account Libs of TikTok takes aim at more targets in the classroom, often circulating videos of teachers its creator, Chaya Raichik deems ideological or manipulative. Joshua Cowen, a professor at Michigan State University who fiercely opposes the wave of new laws, said that while school choice has historically been understood as a reform grounded in markets and accountability, it is now principally a means by which the conservative movement can reward sympathetic constituencies and achieve its cultural aims. 'At the end of the day, the real energy for this is the culture war,' Cowen said. 'It's linked to the same energy that rolled back Roe, and…at the same time we're talking about vouchers expanding across the country, we're also talking about bathrooms and locker rooms and book bans.' No one would have predicted that the last five years would be the most tumultuous in the modern history of school choice. Few would hazard a guess at what the next five might look like. Going forward, it may be challenging even to learn how new ESA systems are affecting student learning. In part, this is because the state statutes passed since 2020 generally have not required private schools to take part in state testing, which could allow lawmakers and researchers to compare the performance of pupils in the private and public sectors against one another. The University of Arkansas's Wolf, who has previously conducted longitudinal studies of voucher programs in Washington, D.C., Milwaukee, and Louisiana, said he believed scholars could still devise strategies to identify the benefits or demerits of new private school programs even in the absence of testing — many already emphasize later-life outcomes such as college enrollment and completion — but added that he expected to face some obstacles. 'There's more of a sense that, 'We want to do this, and we're confident that it's going to be good for families,'' Wolf observed. 'When states have that attitude, they're somewhat less enthusiastic about bringing a scholar in to actually kick the tires and determine if their expectations are correct.' The real energy for this is the culture war. At the same time we're talking about vouchers expanding across the country, we're also talking about bathrooms and locker rooms and book bans. Joshua Cowen, Michigan State University It is also difficult to project the future progress of the ESA wave. A large number of states with Republican governors and legislatures have already taken action, leaving mostly purple and blue states without some form of private school choice. Few Democrats have been willing to touch the idea; Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, a rising star in his party, mused about joining with Republicans to create a voucher offering in 2022, only to back off after a storm of criticism. Resistance within states, even including those that have passed ESA bills, makes their future difficult to project. The South Carolina Supreme Court ruled last fall that the newly adopted Education Scholarship Trust Funds violated the state constitution, leading to a scramble this year to craft a program that might pass legal muster. And in Arizona, home to the first-ever ESA law, Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs has made repeated attempts to pare back the accounts, claiming that their growing popularity poses a danger to the state's finances. Related A national, ESA-type entitlement remains the dream for school choice proponents, including the America First Policy Institute, the think tank most closely tied to the Trump administration and its education secretary, Linda McMahon, who previously served as the Institute's chairwoman. Legislation to that effect has been proposed in Congress, though it would likely have to pass through the budget reconciliation process, which is not ideally suited for the creation of new programs. Valant said that, once the remaining red states decide on whether to embrace the policy, the U.S. could feature a striking regional contrast in education policy. Democratic- and Republican-leaning states increasingly exhibit a high level of difference on policies like charter school growth, school evaluations, and the science of reading, and ESAs may simply make the contrast more stark. 'For the short term and maybe the intermediate term, we're going to be in the unfamiliar place of having very different systems of education governance in red states and blue states. That just isn't what we've done in the past.'
Yahoo
26-03-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Speaker Dustin Burrows assures school choice legislation will pass Texas House
AUSTIN (Nexstar) — For the first time in almost six years, the 'Big 3' of Texas — Gov. Greg Abbott, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, House Speaker Dustin Burrows — held a news conference together to show their shared support in passing school choice legislation in the Lone Star State. 'If we are going to achieve our goal of being ranked the best state in America for educating our students, it starts this session by passing school choice,' Abbott said to a packed room of media. Burrows assured the Texas House would do something it has failed to do multiple times: pass an education savings account program (ESA). 'We can fully fund public education and do school choice at the same time,' Burrows said. He added that he expects the House proposal of the ESA and public school financing bill, HB 2 and HB 3, will pass committee next week and be debated on the House floor soon. Not only would the bill pass the House floor, Burrows said, but it would be approved with more than the 76 votes needed. The bill currently has 76 coauthors. It would provide state dollars to parents to help them pay for home-schooling or private school tuition. The governor enlisted the help of former Arizona Governor Doug Ducey to help promote the positives of school choice legislation. Ducey helped pass universal school choice in his state in 2022. It was the first state in the country to do so. 'These kids are trapped in failing public schools and it's time to set these families free,' Ducey explained. Arizona's school choice program, known as the Empowerment Scholarship Account, has no cap, meaning anyone who applies can be a part of the program. According to the Arizona Joint Legislative Budget Committee, the Arizona Department of Education estimates the program will cost $864.4 million and will enroll 99,135 students by the end of the fiscal year. While the state's leaders built up school choice, opponents of school choice programs took the opportunity to critique Arizona's program. 'I'm very worried that if this voucher scam passes into law it's going to bankrupt our public education system, just like it did in Arizona,' State Representative James Talarico, D – Austin, said outside the Capitol steps Tuesday morning. Arizona is going through budgetary problems and one expert said it is being compounded by the cost of the school choice program. The state legislature was able to erase the $1.4 billion deficit over the summer, but had to cut from some important programs. Dave Wells, the research director for the Grand Canyon Institute (GCI), a nonpartisan think-tank, said the school choice program in Arizona contributed to the budget deficit, saying it added a whole new cost to the state. 'We're taking a whole bunch of children who were never going to be in a public district or charter school and now we're subsidizing them,' Wells explained. A report released by GCI over the summer last year looked at the net cost of Arizona's school choice program. The report aimed to find the costs or savings the state was taking on because of the program. In Arizona, the state partially funds district schools and fully funds charter schools and the ESA program. The ESA program pays out 90% of what a student would make if they attended a charter school. Proponents of the program say it saves the state 10% if a child leaves a charter school to go to a private school. But Wells and his team found that 80% of the students in the universal program were never a part of a district or charter school to begin with. They estimated that last fiscal year it cost the state a net $332 million and estimated that will grow this fiscal year to $429 million, although Wells said it may not get that high. Wells added the program also does not appear to be helping the children that needed the most resources when it comes to education. 'What these programs do is they primarily seem to elevate the needs of higher income parents over the needs of lower income parents,' Wells said. Ducey was asked by reporters about the budget deficit during the news conference at the Capitol. Ducey said the deficit happened after he left office and blamed irresponsible spending by the current legislature. Wells said the biggest contributing factor to the deficit in Arizona was due to a flat tax that lowered the tax revenue in the state. A policy passed during Ducey's tenure. It is hard to compare what happened in Arizona and what could happen in Texas. For one, the program in Arizona is different than the proposals in the Texas legislature currently. Arizona does not put a cap on how many students can be in the program, while both Texas proposals cap the spending on the program to $1 billion. The Legislative Budget Board (LBB) released its fiscal note on the Senate's ESA proposal and said it would cost the state nearly $4 billion by 2030. It's one of the biggest talking points from opponents of the bill who say the cost of the program will balloon over the years. Abbott was asked about that fiscal note during Tuesday's news conference and said the LBB's estimates were based on nothing but fiction. The governor said the program will have to be appropriated every session by state lawmakers. He said the program will not automatically grow every biennium, but instead can only grow as large as the legislature will allow it. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Yahoo
17-02-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Forecast: Enrollment slide will continue at Mesa Public Schools
Feb. 17—Bad news for Mesa Public Schools: student enrollment, which drives the budget, is likely to drop for another 10 years or more, according to a consultant. A low-birth rate and school choice continue to play into the ongoing student decline despite Arizona almost doubling its population between 1990 and 2020 to 7.3 million. "We're going to have 10 million people in 2050," said demographer Rick Brammer of Applied Economics at the Feb. 11 Governing Board study session. "But the way it is right now, we're dealing in a world where even though you see growth ... The number of students out there to serve in the state of Arizona is not growing at all. It's fixed." Brammer blamed it on birth rates. "Back at about 2006, 2007, the Great Recession, immigration legislation, all kinds of things and the birth rate basically crashed by 18%," he said, adding it was at that time the lowest birth rate in Arizona history. He said the birth rate then stabilized for three years and he and other demographers anticipated it would go back up again but the exact opposite happened. "People were so traumatized by what they saw happen in the Great Recession," Brammer said. "They acquired so much debt, they saw their parents suffer to such a degree that essentially what they all decided to do was either not have kids at all or put off the decision for later in life. "So, we saw the average age of first birth increased by five years in a space of 10 years. One of the things we know about that is that the longer you wait to have your first child, the fewer children you will have." According to Brammer, 102,000 babies were born in Arizona in 2006 versus 78,000 births in 2023 even with the overall population growing. And while the households of adults in their child-bearing years, those 25-44, has increased from 2010-20 in the district's boundary, they are mainly renters who live in multifamily units not intended for families, according to Applied Economics. Unlike total population, those under the age of 18 declined in most parts of the district, it said. The other compounding factor is school choice. "Since 2009, charter school enrollment has increased by 118,000 students, while other public school enrollment has decreased by 91,000 students," Brammer said. "Except for a little bit of growth between 2009 and about 2014 total publicly funded enrollment in the state of Arizona has not changed at all. "And so as we've introduced choice, it's taken the same size pie and cutting into more pieces. Our pain is inflicted by demographics piled on the timing of choice. That's where the real pain is." The state's Empowerment Scholarship Account program, or ESA, in 2022 was expanded to include all K-12 students eligible for vouchers. Since then the number of new students receiving vouchers to attend private schools went from 11,200 two years prior to 79,000 this year statewide, Brammer said. "Most of the people who took them early were already in a private school," he said. According to Applied Economics, the share of students previously attending a public school before receiving an ESA increased from 21% in Fiscal Year 2023 to 57% in Fiscal Year 2025. That translated to about 29,000 students leaving public schools since the program expansion. Although the program continued to grow last school year, it was not as fast as the last two years, Brammer pointed out. He assured the board that MPS, which has been losing students over the past 14 years, was not alone as most districts in established areas also have been impacted by lower birth rates and increasing enrollment choices. He added that the district like Chandler Unified, Tempe Union K-12 and Scottsdale Unified haven't fully recovered their enrollment prior to the pandemic. "These districts, I would say, are in middle- to upper-income areas for the most part," he said. "You see this drop in 2020. You got a little back but very little compared to what was lost. But so did every one of these other districts, they didn't come back. "If you look at lower socioeconomic status areas in the Valley, you'll see that a lot of kids came back. And what we know about choice is that it's not free to anybody. You have to know about it. "You have to have the money to do it and you have to have the time to do it. So this impact of choice isn't even across the Valley either." Mesa is also losing students to other public school districts. Gilbert Public Schools took the biggest chunk at 2,122 students, followed by Chandler Unified with 728 and Tempe Elementary School District, 710. But in those districts, Brammer has pointed out to their governing boards, high single-family home costs have "locked out" young families that are the most likely to have school-age children. According to Applied Economics, a total of 117 charter schools and public school districts are serving over 18,200 students living within MPS' boundary — or about 23% of its school-age population. Charter schools enrolled 13,000 Mesa kids at 100 different facilities while 17 school districts enrolled about 5,200. Brammer and Associate Superintendent Matt Strom noted that household proximity to a school plays a big part in where parents enroll their children. "There's misconceptions on who your competitors are and proximity matters," Strom said. For instance, Mesa High School's main competitor is not Mountain View but Gilbert High for students and Dobson High's main competition is not Westwood but Chandler High, Strom said. And like other districts, MPS' K-2 class size has declined the most, which is "not showing us a lot of hope for the future," Brammer said. He warned that while the 9-12 enrollment is now by far the biggest cohort, it's starting to arc down. "We know in the next five or six years, we're going to see a pretty big drop at the high-school level," he said. Brammer said that Arizona is growing but that the 18 and younger population has been unchanged for the last 15 years and "probably will continue to be for at least the next 10." Board member Marcie Hutchinson said it appeared that the state's passage of SB 1070 in 2010 also was a major factor behind the district's enrollment drop and asked how many students were lost because of it. About 8,000, Brammer responded. Much of the provisions of the anti-immigration law was ruled unconstitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court in 2014. Hutchinson also asked how the Trump administration's push to deport people who are in the country illegally will impact enrollment. Strom said that staff uses a model to predict enrollment loss and for next school year the district anticipates losing 1,800 students. "There are several factors in that," Strom said. "One of those is immigration. This is not a political statement, I don't want people to hear it as a political statement. This is an impact on enrollment and enrollment affects our budget." He said that district administration discusses a lot if "that 1,800 number enough and do we need to figure out where are our next budgetary savings will come from if 1,800 rolls in at 2,500 due to immigration." Hutchinson referred to Superintendent Andi Fourlis' status report to the board, which mentioned that the district's "attendance numbers have gotten to now 89%." "I know that some of that is the result of fear and I worry about the impact this is going to have," Hutchinson said. She also asked how many MPS students came from other districts, which Brammer said he is able to track but didn't have the number off the top of his head. He also said that the new federal policy on immigration won't have a big impact on MPS' enrollment. "It's not going to be 8,000 because we just do not have the type of illegal population that we have now," Brammer said. "It's much less families and it's much more single adults. "I don't believe that there is the volume of people with kids to be deported that would have that kind of an impact. Will it have some impact? Yeah. I'm more worried about the fear than I am the actual event. It's keeping people home from work, too, by the way." Board member Sharon Benson wanted to know why students leave district campuses and said if MPS was able to recapture 2,000 of them it would not need to do layoffs. "I'm just going to keep beating this drum until we actually answer the question," Benson said. "What's the district doing to recapture because parents are choosing something else because we are not providing them with the product they want for their children." Brammer said that the choice of education is socially motivated — "borderline segregation — people choosing to want to go to school with people who look like them." Benson asked what evidence he based his statement on. "Well, the fact that the charter schools tend to have a much higher ratio of children of certain ethnicities than others," he responded. After Benson pressed him into agreeing it was more an economic issue behind the choice of schooling, she added that she didn't want it misconstrued that it was a race issue. "Let's not bring race into it because that is totally counterproductive to anything that we want to discuss here," she said. "We need to realize as a district parents are choosing to leave for reasons that we can probably address and that we can mitigate the things that they don't like." She asked if the district conducts an exit survey with families who leave the district. Staff said the district just started such a survey, Board member Rachel Walden admonished Brammer, saying "I don't appreciate that we paid a consulting fee for somebody to come in and tell us that charter school parents are racist." He apologized and said he didn't mean to imply that. "That's the impression I got," Walden said. "It sounded very bad, because we don't have the data on that. It could just be that charter schools are going into specific neighborhoods to build schools, and I think proximity to one's home is also a big factor in where people go." "And now we're seeing a lot of developments where there's a new housing development that goes up and then a charter school goes right up next to that new housing development. And so there's those trends, too." She said she was interested in finding out where students who left the district went to. After schools re-opened following COVID, the kids disappeared, Walden said. "The birth rate didn't change," she pointed out. "In just four years, we lost students and I think that's nationwide. "The big fervor over school boards happened when parents saw some of the stuff that was being taught in the classroom, or some of the stuff that teachers said," Walden continued. "So there is a place where I think parents have left public school. Maybe they didn't even see it in their own school but they saw what was going on in other schools that made them nervous. "So there's definitely a lot of factors that are not just birth rates. The birth rates kind of got us here with our low enrollment K through second grade. Younger kids, they're not coming in and that's going to compound as we go forward. "I think there's a trust that we need to build with the community."
