To the Editor:
As an ESA parent of a special education student, I’m absolutely outraged by Superintendent Tom Horne’s recent article. His claims are not only misleading, they’re flat out insulting to the families like mine who rely on ESA to provide our children with the education they were denied in public schools.
Let me be clear: his response sounds like a desperate, whining attempt to save face. He no longer has the support of ESA parents like he did when he was elected. I was one of those parents who believed he would advocate for us. I was wrong, and Arizona State Senator Jake Hoffman is right: there is no way Tom Horne wins reelection.
His push for random spending caps is not about accountability, it’s about control. The new limits make absolutely no sense. They’re allowing up to $4,000 for instruments but capping computers at $2,000. Home economics students are capped at $500, and vocational students only get $1,500 for tools they need to pursue careers. How is that reasonable? It’s not. These numbers are arbitrary and harmful, especially to SPED students with unique needs.
And the most ridiculous part? Horne admits that the so called “inappropriate” purchases he keeps referencing were never approved. So the system is clearly working. Nothing in these new caps would have stopped those items, because they were already denied! But instead of focusing on improving real support and efficiency, he’s pushing policies that make it harder for families to access the resources their children genuinely need.
These new documentation requirements are also absurd. They are expensive, time-consuming, and in many cases impossible to get. Medical providers aren’t going to write letters for specific school supplies, and Horne knows that. This isn’t about protecting taxpayer dollars, it’s about making the process so difficult that families give up.
We aren’t asking for luxuries. We’re asking for the freedom to give our children the education they deserve. ESA gave us hope. Now, Tom Horne is trying to take that away with bad policies wrapped in political spin.
Angela Faber
ESA SPED Parent
I am a mom of 8 children, 5 of which are currently schooled at home. I find this handbook to be a slippery slope that will ultimately kill school choice in the state of Arizona. Our state has already destroyed public schools by taking away the voices of Teachers and Parents – replacing them with the bloat of bureaucracy, but now the State of AZ would also like to add that same bloat to the ESA program. Teachers and Parents should be the only two groups that have any say in how our children are educated if we want to truly improve education in our state, yet our state continues to bypass the subject matter experts, and instead opt for itself. It has opted for bloated, admin heavy, government controlled processes that are cumbersome and expensive. They have destroyed public school and now they want to do the same to ESA.
I have been an Adult Educator and have led education teams, nationally and internationally, for over 20 years. I am disturbed by this states approach to education. Our current education “leaders” used a .0002% error rate to thrust more restrictions, and ultimately more administration requirements onto parents and onto SBE staff. This is not going to be effective, or cheap. It will end up taking more money away from education and putting more into administration – just like they did when they destroyed Public School.
The administrative bloat this Handbook pushes forth will handcuff parents, just like they have handcuffed teachers in our public schools. It’s almost as if they want children to be under-educated in our state. Many of them put their special interests, ties to dishonorable organizations like SOS, and political ambitions before our children. ESA finally returned the power back to the parents, but they can’t have that. Now, they are implementing unnecessary caps, THAT SOLVE NOTHING. Tom Horne’s team found 40 errors out of 180 MILLION orders. That is a .0002% error rate. WHAT are we trying to solve by limiting education and children opportunities with these caps? Horne’s team FOUND the errors. The program is working just as intended. His team should have received a party for doing a fabulous job, but instead they get more administration tasks to do, which are again… unnecessary.
Here is one example of many that I will share with you. My daughter had a traumatic beginning and I adopted her from Foster Care. She was born meth and alcohol addicted. In public school she struggled to read and to do basic math. ESA has been a life changer for her. She now has a 3.85% GPA in her core subjects, but her biggest gift is her natural inclination towards musicality. She now plays 2 instruments at age 13 and wants to add more. If these caps go into effect, they will take those opportunities from her. The ONLY children who will not be hurt by these caps are the wealthy who can go out and buy instruments without ESA. What about the underprivileged children though? Why is it OK to leave them out? Why can’t they be bakers, welders, builders, or musicians? Why does that bother any of them?
It’s best to just leave ESA alone, leave it how it is, with one minor adjustment. There is no reason for any parent to write curriculum for an item that is already on the approved list. If it is approved, it should be auto approved in the system so that resources and manpower can be used to audit the supplemental. This is how you find the errors. You focus on where they can be. You do not fix anything by asking a parent or teacher to write curriculum for pencils and paper. As someone who has written countless curriculum over the decades, I can tell you that writing curriculum of pencils and paper is not the correct use of curriculum anyway. How is the education department even running when the people running it do not even understand these basic concepts of curriculum and education?
I am also disturbed that the one person, with a huge ESA FB page and following, was kicked off the committee for simply being transparent with the people of Arizona. Isn’t a representative of this committee supposed to actually be transparent? And she didn’t even say anything wrong.
There is an attack on school choice in this state, by both parties. It’s a slippery slope. Although these changes may not seem too scary, the implication of them takes choices away from parents and gives it back to the Government. If I want my daughter to learn instruments and spend her money on that, I should be able to. It does not cost any more to do so. If I need to replace a stolen or broken laptop for my son, then I should be able to do that. It does not cost any more to do so. This Handbook solves nothing. It only adds bloat and political cover for those who desire it.
Please email this to Tom.Horne@azed.gov
As a homeschool educator of 3 Esa students that have been in ESA before universal, due to military enrollment, I can say Horne’s focus on vilifying ESA parents and focusing on placing restrictions on an already accountable program that had very little fraud, is harmful to the education of our students. This is not only harmful to sped students- which it really harms, as those parents already have their hands full with the extra care their students need to have- but also the homeschool parents who educate and think outside the norm of traditional schooling to best educate their students. We as homeschool parents try to find the avenues that our children best thrive in for one of my children he is thriving in learning everything that goes along with computer programming, graphic design, and digital arts- these arbitrary caps on computers will limit his ability to focus on those as the computers that can handle the graphics capabilities, harddrive space, and processing speed are way more costly than the $2000 cap. This same idea correlates with many of the arbitrary caps placed on vocational, home economics, those gifted with musical abilities, ect. Esa was designed to empower parents to educate their students in a way that they best thrive. The program is already capped at what the students are allotted to spend and the fact that they must spend part of those said funds on the 6 core subjects- if parents are wise with their students ESA funding they can save for higher cost items that will best benefit their student in the areas that the students either have interest in or need extra support in. They shouldn’t be told they cannot get a higher quality items that will last their student longer or run better because it is over a certain dollar amount. As long as the items being purchased or requested are shown to be of educational value to that student and they have the funding in their accounts to provide for it it should be allowable. There is also an already successful way to catch and take care of the little fraud their is. Horne needs to focus on supporting the parents of ESA students rather than focusing on the 35 not even approved item requests in the literally hundreds of thousands of item purchases. There will always be those select few that will try to take advantage of the system, that is in any area of life, there are already things in place to find and take them out of the ability to do so. Focus on streamlining the program and making it easier for parents to educate their children instead of adding more stress , work, stipulations, red tape for them to bump through, and cutting their ability to use the funds in a way that best meets their students needs.
Please email this to tom.horne@azed.gov
The thing that angers me the most is that all these examples of so called misuse of funds were never even approved! The systems already in place prevented those ridiculous requests from being approved. Let me repeat-no Rolex watches or luxury ski vacations were paid for with ESA funds.
I fought for years to get my sped daughter the support she needed in public school before giving up and taking on the enormous task of educating her myself, while also working part time and parenting our other children. Being able to hand pick tutors and programs that fit her individual needs has allowed her to regain trust in adults and confidence in her abilities.
Over the last year Horne seems to be testing his limits-how far can he push parents? Make them create or provide curriculum for every purchase that’s not curriculum, allowed technology or tutoring (meaning scissors, paper, calculators, READING BOOKS, puzzles… all things found in every public school in the nation). And then the curriculum has to have the student’s name and ID# on it. When is the last time a public school system purchased a curriculum that listed students’ names and ID#s? Now random spending caps on certain categories that make no sense. ESA is all about empowering students, and empowering parents to educate their children in an individual way that public schools just can’t. This is taking away that power, for no reason other than trying to make himself look good. Shameful.
Vote the clown out!
Way to go Angie. I guessed you were the author as I was reading through your letter.
Elections have consequences. There was a woman running against Horne that was very good. I forgot her name. But the weasel electorate wanted the mushy Horne. Here you go; you got what you voted for.
Another major issue with this new handbook is the requirement that SPED students–if they want to get items that are above the price limits–now will have to get a letter from a QUALIFIED practitioner (meaning doctor or psychiatrist as they don’t include OT and PT in their QUALIFIED list for this handbook, contrary to our current handbook) and that is completely outside the scope of a medical professional’s job. Medical professionals do not need to write letters for educational items, and many parents have already been told NO their doctor will NOT write those letters. Why is ESA putting their PAPERWORK tasks on other people? They can’t manage this many accounts without more staff, and must not be getting more staff, because they are trying to shirk their responsibilities off on parents and doctors and tutors! That is why they have proposed all the limits, to relieve their workload. ESA needs more staff! Legislators, please step in! Say NO to this handbook.
ESA students should have access to the same opportunities that public school students have, and the monetary limit to their education should be the amount in their ESA account. The department enacted audit procedures for a reason–to stop the very same fraudulent purchases they have already denied with the same system. Why are you punishing 85,000 students over 40 clearly disallowed and REJECTED purchases that have no correlation to the proposed items with limits?
Unless or until the legislators change the ESA laws and statutes regarding financial limits, restrictions legally crossing contract years, and lifetime limits, the handbook cannot legally go above the law. I am siding with the parents and students of the ESA program by urging the department to reject this handbook. If the department does not take parents’ grievances about this handbook into consideration, the department risks losing our trust in them and the ESA program as a whole, and many may be willing to go to court to fight for our children’s rights and our rights as parents to educate our children the way we see fit.
The children of Arizona deserve better! AZ State Board of Education, please reject the 2025-2026 handbook.
These crazy caps have pulled the rug out from under our family, specifically planning for my SPED son’s future. College was never an option or goal for him. A stretch goal was to for him to train in a vocation and to hopefully someday be able to support himself. The only way to make this possible is with years of vocation education AND at home support and practice. This is a viable educational transition plan for a homeschooled SPED student, and it feels like it’s been ripped away from my son with these caps. $1500 in Voc Ed supplies/tools in 3 YEARS!?! Did Horne even look to see what Voc Ed programs charge for necessary supplies before picking this crazy low number out of the air?!
We’ve been planning and budgeting for years with his ESA funds knowing that high school and vocation ed was going to be cost heavy. After years of careful planning and budgeting, it’s now being ripped away from son. He’s been in ESA since early elementary and is now in high school and doing fantastic (well-beyond expectations) with all of the support and customization we’ve been able to do for him at home. We made the sacrifice to be a single-income family in order to use ESA funds and educate at home. We do not have the disposable income to come up with the thousands necessary to now fund my son’s vocational education. He will need the actual tools at home, so we can learn them at his pace and practice many times to have any hope of on-the-job success. Why is Horne/Ward taking education options away from those students who are not college bound?? This feels like discrimination against blue-collar workers, male students who heavily seek vocational education, and SPED students who cannot attend college. My son’s educational plans have been dashed by Horne’s arbitrary spending caps!!
The legislators want to make this program so inaccessible with overreach and bureaucracy that we give up on our children. Wrong mentality. The kids are the only ones who suffer. I wish these same bureaucrats would stop focusing on public scare tactics about ESA spending and report the facts. There is VERY little fraud and ESAs actually benefit schools and students.
I completely agree with the points raised here. Superintendent Tom Horne’s proposed caps and new documentation requirements are not only arbitrary but detrimental, especially to families of students with special needs. By placing ill-conceived limits on funding—like allowing $4,000 for instruments but only $2,000 for computers—Horne demonstrates that this isn’t about accountability but control. Moreover, his admission that past “inappropriate” purchases were never approved in the first place underscores the fact that the existing system already prevents misuse. These policies make the ESA process more burdensome for parents and students who deserve every support possible. I have a son with blindness. $2,000 cap for his special needs computer isn’t even close to meeting his needs. The point of ESA is empowering the parents to do what is right for our students and their needs. These new proposals aren’t legal and are unethical.
Horne has managed to do the impossible. He has made the staunchly anti-ESA predecessor Hoffman look like a champion for ESA. She was reasonable, listened to feedback and made changes based upon that feedback. All things Horne has refused to do.
With his leadership, Democrats have a chance of regaining control. He’s that bad.
No need for any caps. It’s their money, they should do as they please. Anything is better than having that money in the hands of the public school districts.