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Parents and students urge Board to act after months-long ESA reimbursement delays
Summary
Dozens of Education Savings Account families told the Arizona State Board of Education that recent administration changes require curricula for basic items and have produced reimbursement delays of weeks to months, leaving some families unable to afford tutoring and therapies.
Dozens of parents and several students used the board’s public-comment periods to press the Arizona State Board of Education to address what they described as cascading problems in the Empowerment Scholarship Account (ESA) program.
In a packed public-comment section, Janette Alana Perry said the ESA’s new requirements effectively force parents to write a curriculum to justify everyday purchases such as pencils, crayons and basic reading books, and that reimbursements are taking “more than two months” in many cases. “Esa was supposed to be a lifeline… but lately that promise has felt more like a burden,” Perry told the board.
Multiple speakers gave similar examples. Parents and students said orders approved after long processing times are frequently canceled because vendors change price or run out of stock; others said staff responses and call-center support are inconsistent or absent. “It takes forever to get reimbursed for something like a workbook,” said a ninth-grade student, Emily Sanchez, during the executive director’s recognition segment and in later public comment examples echoed by other families.
Parents asked the board to place ESA on the next meeting agenda for a dedicated review and to consider immediate operational fixes, including restoring debit-card access for families, expanding staff for the ESA unit, publishing a clear list of automatically approvable items (calculators, reading books) and introducing faster approval tracks for common, low-risk purchases.
Board members acknowledged the urgency of the complaints during later agenda items; staff said they will accept written comments from callers who faced technical barriers, and members requested follow-up materials. No formal change to ESA policy or emergency rulemaking was adopted at the meeting; several parents asked the board to act before students lose access to services.
The board is scheduled to reconvene Oct. 21; several parents asked for ESA to be placed on the next agenda so the department and board can respond directly to the operational and communication failures parents described.
