Arizona Attorney General settles lawsuit over school voucher reimbursement rules

July 15

Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes settled a lawsuit that will erase a school voucher oversight requirement. Parents will no longer need to link school supplies to a specific curriculum for reimbursement.

A policy required parents utilizing the program to tie any supplemental materials, including books, pencils and calculators, to a curriculum. Parents needed to upload curriculum documents demonstrating the materials were required to get reimbursed.

Now, instead of having to upload curriculum documents, parents will only need to select a subject area from a dropdown menu, which will include options such as history, math and art. Parents will also need to attest that the purchases will be used for educational purposes.

Jon Riches, Vice President for Litigation and General Counsel at the Goldwater Institute’s Scharf-Norton Center for Constitutional Litigation, joined “Arizona Horizon” to discuss how the settlement was reached with the Goldwater Institute to avoid a lengthy trial.

“It allows parents, including homeschooling parents, to choose the education that works for their kids”, Riches said when talking about the perks of the program. “Traditionally all of those things could get approved without requiring a specific written curriculum”. He explains that as of a few years ago, the attorney general demanded that the department of education make it so that every purchase needs to be submitted to be reimbursed.

The main reason that this was done was because there was a fraud problem going on where parents were stating they needed more money reimbursed than what was spent. Riches refutes this statement.

“Parents are interested in educating their kids, they are not interested in exploiting the system”, he said. “The evidence shows that 99% of all ESA purchases are for educational purposes.”

Riches then explains how the concerns people have about the program are all about small instances, but the vast majority would use this program to their best interest and not abuse the system.