Arizona's school voucher program has a new director. Here’s what he has planned

Arizona's school voucher program, which has grown in the past year to more than 65,000 students, making it bigger than any public school district in the state, has a new administrator after the unexpected resignation of its former director.

John Ward, previously an internal auditor brought to the Arizona Department of Education from the Arizona Auditor General's Office, will now oversee the program.

He replaces Christine Accurso, who 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.

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.

The first year following the voucher program’s universal expansion, which allows all families in the state to apply for public funding for private school tuition and other educational expenses, was marked by massive growth alongside payment delays, concerned special education parents and a data breach.

This year, Ward will have to help steward the program through the implementation of a new contract with third-party financial services operator ClassWallet, a company that has faced criticism from some voucher program parents, and a political battle over the ballooning cost of the program, which Gov. Katie Hobbs estimated could lead to a shortfall of nearly $320 million in the state budget.

Here’s what families can expect from the program under its new director.

Using artificial intelligence to review some purchases

As the number of students in the school voucher program rapidly grew this past school year, the Arizona Department of Education struggled to review parents' orders — payment requests for educational services or supplies — as quickly as they were coming in. That’s led to a monthslong backlog for approvals in some cases.

The new program director said he will use artificial intelligence to automate student enrollment and the review of some purchase orders.

“The reality is we're not gonna be able to hire enough people to keep up with the number of purchases coming in,” he said. “To me, this is the primary focus of ESA right now ... being able to have the systems logistically to scale up to the growth.”

Voucher recipients who pay for services directly and then request reimbursement through ClassWallet will still have their requests reviewed manually. But Ward hopes the new technology will speed up some aspects of the purchase order processes.

“ClassWallet feels like we can move forward" in developing systems that can review most expense requests "in very short order,” he said.

Education: As Arizona’s school voucher program grows, public dollars flow to private schools

Ensuring proper access to student data

Earlier this year, an Arizona Department of Education administrator gave the family of a child in the school voucher program access to expense approval requests submitted on behalf of other children in the program.

Shortly after that incident in July, Accurso resigned. The program's operations director, Linda Rizzo, also resigned the same day.

Ward said his experience as a school district auditor, which had him assess how large school systems were protecting information, will help him develop a strong system to control the massive voucher program's sensitive data.

“I just conceptually kind of know how this works,” Ward said. “Those were some of the early conversations I had with ClassWallet as well: revisiting these permissions and access levels and tightening those up and making them reflect employees' specific roles and duties.”

Voucher program handbook likely to see more changes

In the spring, following months of contentious debate, the State Board of Education approved significant revisions to the handbook that guides how parents and vendors, like tutors, use the program. It was the first time the handbook was revised since school vouchers became available to all students last year.

Even though state law limits how often changes can be made to the handbook, Ward said it's likely his office will have to request changes through the state board again.

“As we get some of these new procedures in place, we'll have to revisit the handbook to make sure it reflects conditions on the ground now,” he said.

More transparent data sharing may be on the way

Arizona’s school voucher program is among the least transparent in the nation, in large part because the legislation that governs the program only requires the Arizona Department of Education to collect specific, limited information from applicants.

“We have addresses, and so that gives us the ZIP code data, but there’s not a lot beyond that,” Ward said.

While the program won’t necessarily be collecting more data, Ward said, the education department will try to create an online interface to answer some of the more commonly asked questions about the use of vouchers. Initially, that will be for internal use, but the department aims to ultimately make it public.

“I want to be able to have a whole bunch of metrics with the push of a button,” Ward said. That could include a dashboard that shares real-time information on student ZIP codes or the school districts to which they are zoned. “We are working toward some of those things.”

Families still expected to assess whether a school is working

A new school voucher program leader will not shift some of the basic elements of how the program functions.

In particular, Ward said, the main form of accountability for student performance in the program will be whether parents stay, or leave, a particular private school. The same goes for the Empowerment Scholarship Account program in general, he said.

“The best metric about whether this program is working well or serving Arizona students is its growth,” Ward said. The education department, he said, won't be collecting concerns about private schools' performance. "We’re leaving that up to market forces."

Yana Kunichoff is a reporter on The Arizona Republic's K-12 education team. You can join The Republic's Facebook page and reach Yana at ykunichoff@arizonarepublic.com.

This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Arizona's school voucher program has a new leader. What that means