On Jan. 27, Dillon Rosenblatt of the Arizona Capitol Times broke the news that the Arizona Department of Education released sensitive information concerning over 7,000 students who participate in the state’s Empowerment Scholarship Account program. The information released contained not only names of participants but also contact information, amounts awarded through the program to each student, and, allegedly, the students’ disabilities. Abby Gibson, whose children are enrolled in the ESA program, told me, “I found out about the [improper leak] through the media the night it occurred.”
If this weren’t bad enough, this list was also sent to a group whose sole purpose is to fight against the ESA program.
The recipients of the file were asked to destroy the data once officials learned that it had been insufficiently redacted. (As it turns out, filling the cells of a spreadsheet with the color black doesn’t remove the data in those cells.) However, it’s not clear that the two known recipient organizations, Arizona Capitol Times and Save Our Schools Arizona, actually destroyed the personal information of those 7,000 students. “We can’t trust those who have our private information to do the ethical thing and destroy the information they never should have had. Families are already being targeted by phone and email. It’s outrageous,” said Kayla Svedin, who recently formed Empowered Arizona Families in order to support ESA students and families.
Since the news broke, Dawn Penich-Thacker, communications director for Save Our Schools Arizona, has been citing information from the data file her group received, fueling concerns over privacy violations. Both the Arizona Capitol Times and Save Our Schools Arizona have been citing data that came from the file. Three days after Rosenblatt first made the egregious breach known, he published a story about students with large available balances. The piece quotes Penich-Thacker making accusations of fraud against ESA families, which she described as having amassed large “personal slush funds.”
Arizona’s ESA program is available only to students who meet specific criteria, according to state laws. For instance, to be approved for the program, applicants must be zoned for a district school that received a D or F rating from the state. They may also be eligible if they live on a Native American reservation or have been adopted from foster care.
This all comes at a very inopportune time for Kathy Hoffman, the state’s superintendent of public instruction. Hoffman has been vocally opposed to ESAs since she began her campaign for the role a couple of years ago, and she infamously demanded that a group of Navajo children in Window Rock, Arizona, repay funds disbursed through the ESA program that allowed them to attend a private school instead of the perennially failing local government school. Hoffman’s staff is responsible for overseeing the ESA program — a program that she would much rather see disappear entirely.
I have personally submitted a request to the Arizona Department of Education for correspondence between Save Our Schools Arizona, Arizona Capitol Times, and the department. To date, I have received neither a response nor even an acknowledgment of my request.
Hoffman’s anti-choice stance is a slap in the face of the families who exercise their legal right to seek alternative options for the education of their children — especially since Hoffman herself attended an expensive private school in Oregon. Hers is a particularly problematic position to take when the families whose trust she continues to violate are simply trying to access a private school that meets their needs best.
Matthew Nielsen (@matthewnielsen) is president of the board of the Educational Freedom Institute.
