PHOENIX – Controversy surrounding Arizona’s Empowerment Scholarship Account program prompted the Joint Legislative Audit Committee to request that the Auditor General’s Office conduct a special audit. The results, including the fact that the Arizona Department of Public Education needs to “improve its customer service,” surprised few parents who have been victims of the Department’s failures.
The audit, released on Good Friday, paints a dismal picture of an underfunded and woefully under-staffed Empowerment Scholarship Account (ESA) voucher program. What the audit fails to address is the well-known cultural resistance to the program on the part of Arizona Department of Education (ADE) staff, especially under the leadership of Superintendent of Public Instruction Kathy Hoffman.
In fairness, the same financial and resulting manpower issues that plague the program under Hoffman, existed under former Superintendent of Public Instruction Diane Douglas.
The calls over the years, by both Douglas and Hoffman, for increased funding for the ESA program were ignored by the Legislature due in part to pressure from both supporters and opponents of the program. Some supporters of the program resisted increased funding, arguing that a private organization could run it more efficiently, while opponents of the program resisted increased funding in an effort to starve the program to death.
At the request of frustrated and in some cases, abused families, concerned legislators took action. Part of that action included turning to the Joint Legislative Audit Committee (JLBC). In turn, the JLBC asked auditors to “review the Department’s Program caseload and conduct a workload analysis; review fiscal year 2018 through 2020 Program revenues and administrative expenditure details; assess the timeliness and quality of Program phone customer service; determine how Program deadlines were established and if they are being met; and follow up on the Department’s implementation status of the recommendations from our 2016 performance audit of the Program.”
Audit General findings:
● The Department could timely complete its projected fiscal year 2021 Program workload for its 3 key Program tasks with 21 full-time equivalent (FTE) staff and have time to complete other Program-related tasks.
● In fiscal years 2018 through 2020, the Department spent or reported it will spend its Program administration monies and other Department monies to pay for Program-related costs. Specifically, the Department spent Program monies primarily on Program staffing and information technology. The Treasurer’s Office similarly reported spending its Program administration monies to pay for Program-related costs, primarily for employee salaries and related benefits.
● In calendar year 2019, although Program staff were professional and courteous, they took an average of nearly 24 minutes to answer customer service phone calls, an average of nearly 5 workdays to respond to voicemail/email inquiries, and provided some customers with poor-quality information.
● The Department exceeded the 45-day statutory Program application decision deadline for 55 percent of the applications it received between July 2017 and October 2019, or the Program application decision dates were unknown.
● The Department has made progress addressing the 2016 audit recommendations, but several issues persist, including it releasing parent’s/guardian’s and children’s personal information when fulfilling some public records requests.
Auditor General key recommendations:
● Allocate 21 FTE positions to the Program in fiscal year 2021, monitor Program changes to determine if additional staff are needed in the future, and request legislative appropriations, accordingly.
● Ensure Program staff provide timely, high-quality customer service by developing and implementing customer service performance management policies, procedures, and metrics.
● Ensure Program staff notify parents/guardians of its application decisions within the 45-day statutory time frame.
● Ensure it protects personally identifiable and sensitive information.
The final recommendation is based primarily on a recent breach of security when the Department inadvertently released the personal information of participating families to the media and opponents of the program. According to an internet search, it appears as if the data, which is strictly protected by privacy laws, was released and then disseminated to associates of the virulently anti-voucher group, Save Our Schools.
The breach of privacy put both parents and children at risk of doxing and other sorts of harassment. An email to Hoffman from a participating parent reads in part:
Dear Superintendent Hoffman:
I am an ESA parent and my personal information was doxed back in January of 2020. I filled out a FOIA request for the original FOIA requests sent to your office. The data was sent to Ryan Richardson at ryannormandesigns@gmail.com.
I was able to ascertain that Ryan Norman was a friend of Dawn Penich Thacker communications director of Save Our Schools and tenured professor at ASU. Dawn stated in an interview with the AZ Capitol Times that “She said they receive a lot of “unsolicited” information from a “wide network of volunteers.”
But that was a bald-faced lie. I have found a link with Dawn and her “unsolicited” informant.
Superintendent Hoffman I know that you do not like the ESA program. I know you campaigned against the program. I am hoping that you were not complicit and or aiding and abetting them in stealing our data. However, I am appealing to your background as a special education teacher. I implore you to do right by ESA families most of whom have special needs children. I ask that you publicly admonish them and remove them from the ESA taskforce…
… Additionally, because you are supposed to be protecting our program as you are in charge of it. You should insist that the ESA staff that answer the phone be trained to answer questions about the program truthfully. I have been calling and recording their calls to ensure they answer questions correctly. There have been many many times when they answer incorrectly and could lend credence to some of SOS’s rhetoric.
I realize you are in office because SOS supported you. I know it is too much to ask that you come out against their initiative and be honest about how a 1% cap would hurt the other 93% of special needs students that could not qualify for the program. But you could at minimum do more to protect the children that this data breach has injured. You could remove SOS from the taskforce. You could come out for ESA parents.
You could INSIST that the people that answer the phone for ESA give truthful information. Can you please do the right thing for the people you and your department wronged?
The Auditor General’s Office notes in its letter of transmittal to the JLBC, that “the Arizona Department of Education agrees with all the findings and plans to implement all the recommendations.”
Thousands of parents and children across the state hope the Department does implement the recommendations, but they know enough to not hold their collective breath.
“The reason why ESA’s have had such a bumpy ride since their inception is that they entail parental choice in education. Parental choice is anathema to the public-school establishment, whose main purpose in life is to maintain and enhance the public school’s monopoly on education. They have been very successful at it for two reasons. They have some legislators concurrently drawing hefty salaries from the public-school system that will do their bidding, and Arizona does not have a working conflict of interest policy regarding education or anything else,” said Jose Borrajero, director of the Arizona People’s Lobbyist.
“Fortunately, during the 2020 Legislative Session, the dark cloud of anti-choice developed a small silver lining in the form of some minor successes. They involved two bills introduced by Senator Sylvia Allen of Legislative District 6,” said Borrajero. “Both bills cleared both chambers and were signed into law by our governor.”
One such bill was SB1036. This bill was very simple and straight forward. It merely removed the requirement that the ADE contract with a third-party administrator,” explained Borrajero. “It does not prohibit the use of a third party; it merely removes the requirement that they must. It had bipartisan support with a vote of 30-0-0 in the Senate and 58-0-2 in the House.”
“The other bill was SB1224. This bill had lots of provisions in it, two of which were vehemently opposed by the public education establishment. They were the appropriation of $1,100,000 and 14 Full time Employees (FTE’s) to aide in the administration of ESA’s. Even though these provisions were relatively minor, the bill passed without one single Democrat vote,” said Borrajero. “Fortunately, every Republican in the Legislature supported school choice, except of course Heather Carter, who routinely works with the Democrats to scuttle Republican bills. So in the Senate it passed 16-14 with all 13 Democrats voting “no” along with Carter. In the House the vote was totally along party lines, and it passed 31-29.”
“Hopefully, more progress will be made during future legislative sessions regarding this very important issue.” Borrajero concluded, “Progress will entail more parents taking an interest in their children’s education and working diligently to help elect officials that support their cause.”
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