PHOENIX — Some parents whose children benefit from empowerment scholarships say the program is suffering under new Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Horne.
They believe the rush to sign up new recipients is coming at the expense of longtime users of the program. As of Monday, more than 48,000 Arizona students are ESA recipients.
"I just can't fathom why this is happening," says Jay Griffin, who was one of the dozens of ESA parents attending the Arizona State Board of Education meeting Monday.
Griffin's son has special needs. Ensuring his son receives the instruction he needs and making sure it's paid for is suddenly becoming an issue.
"What I'm seeing is a lot of burden being placed on parents and children that basically hinder their ability to use the resources that they should lawfully be allowed to get," Griffin said.
Many ESA parents use debit cards supplied by the state to pay for tutoring, educational therapies, and school supplies. But payment delays from a third-party vendor, who parents say is not keeping track of the receipts they submit, are also creating problems.
Some parents have raised the issue with the Director of the ESA program Christine Accurso.
"We have not seen anything resolved and the irregularities continue. And she is reducing access to the card for parents," Kathryn Boltz, an ESA parent, said.
Horne defended Accurso and his agency. Horne said that when he took over from former Superintendent of Public Instruction Kathy Hoffman in January, 171,000 approved requests for pay were not processed.
Horne says Accurso is working to catch up, and that 111,000 of the requests were debit card payments.
"We found they're hard to process," Horne said. "We have not taken away the debit card but we're trying to eliminate some of the abuse that makes it hard to process them."
Horne says his office is looking into complaints about the third-party vendor responsible for making payments to schools, tutors, and businesses that supply supplies. The superintendent says he will open up the bidding process in the coming weeks to allow other companies to compete for the job.
