Charlie Martin

The term “disgraced financier” needs to be retired. People like Jeffrey Epstein and Bernie Madoff should be introduced by journalists as “wealthy child abuser” and “high-profile Ponzi-schemer.” Both were found guilty in court and are only as well known as they are for crimes.

I’d agree that a news segment about the types of private schools that taxpayers now fund is a good idea. It would be better to have taxpayer-funded private schools publicly report the same data as district and charter schools, but media coverage is a start.

Universal ESAs have been the single largest driver of education funding shortfalls for Arizona district and charter schools over the three years that the program has existed. Even this year, the shortfall for ESAs is the largest relative to the size of the program/appropriation.

This is nonsense. In Arizona, parents vote with their feet with the benefit of transparent academic performance and financial data for district and charter schools. Arizona private schools hide information from parents and taxpayers.

It’s fair to argue that private school parents should have the same rights to taxpayer funding (I disagree), but they did not in AZ until 2023 and it was a new $300M+ state cost to give them the right to taxpayer funds.

I worked for Moody’s for about four years. Rated local governments would often say “well you just want us to cut spending” or “well you just want us to raise taxes.” Rating agencies just want to see financial stability with revenues that cover spending, either approach works.

District schools might have been default options 30 years ago, but today district schools enable school choice, through open enrollment, for many times more students than the universal ESA program.

An overwhelming majority of Arizonans believe that private schools that receive state funding should be held to the same standards as public schools.

Arizona is a low tax, low spending state. This makes it very important that taxpayer funds be used efficiently. Handing out over $300M per year to well-off families that were already privately paying for private school is an extremely inefficient use of taxpayer funds.