Head of Arizona's school voucher program, which is bigger than any Arizona school district, resigns
The executive director of Arizona's school voucher program, which has grown in the past year to more than 60,000 students, making it bigger than any public school district in the state, resigned Monday.
Christine Accurso began directing the Empowerment Scholarship Account program within the Arizona Department of Education in January, when Republican Tom Horne took office as the state’s superintendent of public instruction.
"It is time for me to move on and pursue opportunities to engage citizens, especially parents, to fight for school choice and the other issues they believe in, for the future of our state and of our nation," Accurso said in a statement.
She oversaw the voucher program during a time of rapid growth, which began during the final months of the Education Department's administration by Kathy Hoffman, Horne's predecessor. Last year, the Legislature massively expanded the voucher program to make all school-age children eligible for public funding. The most common voucher amount is around $7,000 per student. That money can be used for private school tuition, homeschool supplies, tutoring and other educational resources.
Previously, the program had been restricted to select groups, including students with disabilities and children in foster care.
Before her role in the Horne administration, Accurso was a staunch proponent of universal voucher expansion. She encouraged people not to sign petitions by voucher opponents that would have put the expansion before voters. She also served as the head of an anti-abortion pregnancy center in Phoenix.
According to Department of Education spokesperson Doug Nick, Accurso told the department that she took the school voucher director position to "clean up" the recently expanded program and "having successfully done that she has chosen to move on."
At the end of the 2021-22 school year, there were roughly 12,000 students in the program.
In late December 2022, just before Horne took office, there were about 45,000.
As of Monday, there were roughly 60,500.
"She worked tirelessly managing the ... operation during a period of unprecedented growth and confronted the various challenges that accompany the transition from a limited program to one available to all Arizona parents," Nick said.
The Horne administration has promised that universal school vouchers would bring equity to school choice in Arizona, but as it has ballooned, Democratic lawmakers and public education advocates have raised concerns about how to fund it. The initial rush of school voucher enrollments in September came from students already enrolled in private schools, according to an analysis by the state Education Department.
Early in the Horne administration, Accurso and the voucher program came under fire by parents of students with special education needs who told the State Board of Education that the program was being poorly administered and they were experiencing late payments. Vendors serving the program said they were experiencing late payments and a lack of communication from the Education Department. Accurso attributed payment issues to a backlog that began under Hoffman and problems with the company that processes payments.
Accurso oversaw significant changes to the voucher program's handbook for parents, which was approved in April. The revisions included allowing students with disabilities to be assessed by an independent evaluator or private school in addition to a public school, requiring families to submit a curriculum for items not commonly used for educational purposes, and lessening the credential requirements for a tutor.
The school voucher program will now be under the direction of John Ward, the internal auditor brought to the department from the Arizona Auditor General's Office when Horne took office, Nick said.
Ward has 16 years of experience as an auditor and "extensive knowledge of the many technical aspects of managing the large financial system required" to operate the school voucher program as it grows, he said.
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