Arizona has once again emerged as a battleground over education freedom following a new ruling from Democrat state Attorney General Kris Mayes. Two moms are now at the center of a legal fight over their right to use a key state scholarship program to purchase basic school supplies for their children.
Back in 2011, Arizona launched its Empowerment Scholarship Account (ESA) program, which allowed families with disabled children to use a portion of the state’s per-pupil education dollars to purchase school supplies and curriculum materials. Over time, Arizona lawmakers expanded eligibility before finally opening the program to all students, including those currently enrolled in private schools, in 2022.
Now, all Arizona families who choose to enroll their children in non-public school education options are able to submit a list of expenses to the state for reimbursement. The ESA program has enabled tens of thousands of families to customize their children’s education to meet unique needs.
But earlier this summer, Attorney General Mayes imposed a new rule stating that only items explicitly called for in an approved curriculum would be eligible for reimbursement.
For parents of non-public school students, this change has turned the seemingly simple act of buying pencils, erasers, books, and even a copy of the Constitution into a bureaucratic nightmare.
The implications of this overreach are staggering. The new requirement places an undue burden on families, forcing them to track down curricula that explicitly list basic educational items. Need a set of flashcards? A poster of the periodic table? Be prepared to spend hours justifying why those materials are necessary. This convoluted approach is not only impractical but detrimental to the educational process.
In the face of this open hostility toward private school and home-school families, Velia Aguirre and Rosemary McAtee, two dedicated homeschooling moms and ESA beneficiaries, are now fighting back. The Goldwater Institute, a conservative think tank, is leading a lawsuit on behalf of Aguirre and McAtee seeking an injunction to block Mayes’s new rule.
“The government is changing the rules and putting impossible burdens on me,” Aguirre said. “I’m individualizing my child’s educational needs from minute to minute throughout the day.”
As a former public school special education teacher, Aguirre is intimately familiar with the complexities of educating children with special needs. Her three sons require constant adjustment in their learning approaches, a reality that Mayes’s rigid framework entirely ignores. As the lawsuit argues, the notion that Aguirre or any parent should have to justify every basic purchase to state officials is not only absurd, but also an infringement on her rights as a parent.
McAtee, a mother of seven, shares similar sentiments. Her family has taken advantage of the ESA program to create a nurturing, responsive learning environment for her children, which this ruling jeopardizes.
“I feel like the AG clearly doesn’t have any interest in what an education looks like for a homeschool child,” she said. “All of a sudden, we have a government telling us, ‘Here’s one more thing for the list.’”
It’s worth noting that both public and private school curricula rarely enumerate items like pencils or erasers. According to Aguirre, no other teacher in the state is required to provide curriculum for purchasing classroom items. By imposing this arbitrary requirement, Mayes isn’t just creating unnecessary bureaucracy; she’s undermining the foundational principles of the ESA program itself, which is built on the premise of parental choice and empowerment.
“Arizona law entitles ESA families to use their funds on ‘supplementary materials’ for their children’s education, regardless of whether those materials appear on some curriculum document,” the lawsuit argues. “Even the Department’s own Parent Handbook includes a non-exhaustive list of ‘approved supplemental materials’ that ‘do not require curriculum’ because they are ‘generally known to be educational items.’”
“The law is clear: ESA families have the right to use these educational materials without being forced to justify to the Attorney General or state bureaucrats why they’re buying pencils or picking individual books for their children,” Goldwater Institute Staff Attorney John Thorpe said.
For parents in Arizona and throughout the United States, this brewing legal battle is yet another reminder of Democrat animosity toward parental rights and education freedom. As Republicans move to empower parents to tailor their children’s education to best meet their needs, Democrats are determined to stand in their way.
Allison Schuster is a contributor for AMAC Newsline, the Federalist, American Greatness, and the Conservateur, as well as a proud 2021 graduate of Hillsdale College.
