Highlights
- The ESA program has grown from roughly 12,000 students at $190 million annually to over 100,000 students at more than $1 billion this fiscal year.
- Phoenix mom Dr. Kathy Boltz and Tempe mom Amy Pedotto, both ESA users, are backing the Protect Education Act ballot initiative.
- The Arizona Auditor General flagged fraud, waste, and deficient auditing; the Legislature has not passed reforms.
- The initiative would cap income eligibility for universal ESA students but preserve full access for students with disabilities regardless of household income.
Two Arizona mothers who used the state's Empowerment Scholarship Account program to fund their children's education are now campaigning to reform it, backing a ballot initiative they say is the only path to protecting special-education services from a program that has grown beyond any legislative guardrails.
Dr. Kathy Boltz of Phoenix and Amy Pedotto of Tempe published an op-ed Tuesday in the Arizona Capitol Times calling for passage of the Protect Education Act, a citizen initiative they are helping to place on the November ballot. The ESA program expanded to all Arizona K-12 students in 2022 regardless of income or public school history. Since then, enrollment has climbed from about 12,000 students at a cost of nearly $190 million per year to over 100,000 students, with spending topping $1 billion in the current fiscal year.
The Arizona Auditor General has reported fraud, waste, and abuse within the program, and raised concerns about deficiencies in how ESA purchases are audited and whether timely action is being taken to recover misspent public funds. The authors note that the Arizona Department of Education's $2,000 auto-approval policy allows purchases under that threshold to clear without review, and that no background checks are required of ESA vendors.
Boltz and Pedotto argue the financial damage falls hardest on special education, which serves nearly 90% of Arizona K-12 students with disabilities, and on rural schools in particular. They also flag that some account holders have accumulated up to a quarter million dollars in ESA funds intended for K-12 education, with the ability to redirect those savings toward higher education.
The Protect Education Act, as they describe it, would ban purchases of items the authors characterize as lifestyle or enrichment spending, impose income caps on the universal ESA expansion (while leaving access for students with disabilities intact regardless of income), allow a full year of rollover funding for students with disabilities, and create vendor safety standards including background checks.
The signature-collection campaign was more than halfway to the required count as of late April, according to AZPM. A November ballot vote is the next milestone to watch.
Sources
Every factual claim in this article traces to one of the sources below. See how we work for the editorial process.
- azcapitoltimes.com retrieved 09/06/2026 22:06
Authored by The Scottsdale Signal. Drafted by AI from primary-source material under our beat-specific editorial guides; reviewed by humans before publish under our five-gate process. Sources retrieved at 09/06/2026 22:06. Every claim traces to a source.
