Arizona Governor Katie Hobbs and the Radical Left have made it clear that they want to dismantle school choice in our state. Despite getting trounced in November’s election where teachers’ unions and other anti-school choice groups made it a referendum on educational freedom, Hobbs has doubled down on her same tired and out-of-touch efforts since the start of this year.
Once again, it hasn’t worked. Arizona’s Empowerment Scholarship Account (ESA) program continues to grow—with enrollment now over 87,000 students. So, Hobbs and her buddies in the teachers’ unions have resorted to employing one of their favorite tricks: relying on activist reporters in the corporate media to give their anti-school choice messaging an extra boost.
In early March, a coordinated attack was launched against Primavera, an online charter school serving thousands of K-12 students across the state. It began with a story from Craig Harris, a Red4ED activist that calls himself a reporter, who claimed that Primavera received a ‘D’ letter grade from the Arizona Department of Education for the past three years. According to the report, the school failed to meet the minimum academic requirements for a traditional charter school. Harris’ column then went on to complain about the owner of Primavera and how much money he has made while operating the school.
After the story was published, the Arizona Charter School Board convened a hearing to review the allegations against Primavera. In a span of just a few hours, the board imposed the most severe punishment at their disposal, revoking the schools’ charter and setting them up for eventual closure. In effect, Primavera was given the charter school death penalty after one meeting.
On the surface, this might make sense. After all, if a school is failing its students, it deserves proper accountability. But as so often happens with today’s corporate media, an important fact was omitted from this manufactured takedown. It turns out that Primavera was being graded as a traditional school even though it operates as an “alternative” school. And this is an important distinction. In an alternative school, a large portion of the student population is either struggling with performance or trying to catch up on their requirements in order to graduate. Because of this, alternative schools are graded differently.
For years, Primavera was given the designation as an alternative school from the Arizona Department of Education with the school receiving a ‘B’ grade. But in 2021, their alternative school designation lapsed, which resulted in them being graded as a traditional school for three years. When the administrators at Primavera realized the mistake, they reapplied and were once again approved as an alternative school for this current school year.
So yes, this big saga over a “failing” charter school that was given the harshest punishment imaginable by the charter school board is literally due to a paperwork error. It’s one big nothing-burger that was all triggered by an activist reporter who has an endless supply of axes to grind with charter and private schools.
It does look like Primavera failed to file the correct paperwork, and if the charter school board sees fit to punish Primavera for this mistake, fine. Go for it. But to go from offering no warning to the school to giving it the death penalty is obvious overkill—especially since the Arizona Department of Education granted Primavera’s application to be redesignated as an alternative school.
The reality is that none of this would have happened if Primavera was a district school. Just look at Isaac Elementary School District, which has been mismanaging funds for years and currently faces a budget shortfall of over $12 million! Or Mesa Public Schools, which failed to explain where $32.3 million of their federal emergency funds slated for COVID expenses went. None of these district schools have ever faced the sort of consequences imposed on Primavera. And they also seem to conveniently avoid the attention of these same activist reporters.
It’s time for the charter school board to make the situation right. They should rescind their action against Primavera and come up with a more appropriate remedy that doesn’t displace thousands of students because of a paperwork error.
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