A man with a beam in his own eye should certainly address that before seeking out motes in others’ eyes. School-choice critics obsessed with the motes in Arizona’s popular Empowerment Scholarship Accounts program would do well to heed that advice, especially when there is a gigantic beam in the public school system.

Arizona’s school district lobbyists and their media/political allies have been criticizing Arizona’s ESA program for having $440 million in funds that families have yet to utilize—equivalent to about $5,000 per each of the nearly 85,000 students in the program. Meanwhile, Arizona school districts continue to carry growing financial balances of unspent funds—north of $7.8 billion, or $7,000 per student—which dwarf those in the ESA program.

There is no ESA scandal here. Balances accumulate for a variety of reasons, including delays in state processing of payments, but also because families economize during the K–8 years to better afford more expensive high-school education costs. That’s exactly how the ESA program is supposed to work.

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ESA families receive less funding per pupil (90% of the state funding and none of the local or federal K–12 funds) but more flexibility, allowing families to use ESA funds for private school tuition, college course work, tutoring, special education therapies, and more. Because of the lack of local funding in the ESA program, the state can fund almost two ESA students for the cost of the average district student. They’re called “education savings accounts” for a reason, as parents should carefully consider the value of each purchase they make.

Lawmakers designed the ESA from the outset to allow parents to carry forward funds from one year to the next, which encourages them to use the funds wisely. Private school tuition, for instance, is significantly higher for high-school students than for students in elementary and middle school. The rollover feature allows parents of younger students to financially prepare for such expenses.

From the outset, the ESA program has also allowed parents to use unspent funds on post-secondary tuition and books for a prescribed period after high-school graduation. After the period elapses, account balances revert to the state treasury, and the Treasurer’s office generates interest income, which in the meantime goes to the state general fund.

Account balances have grown in large part because the Arizona Department of Education has tens of thousands of reimbursement requests pending in addition to other cumbersome payment problems. Attorney General Kris Mayes, an opponent of the ESA program, ordered ESA families to attach a curriculum to a substantial number of purchases. By design, this requirement slowed the expense approval and reimbursement.

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Parents have sued to put a stop to the absurd bureaucratic requirement, and the irony of choice opponents both causing and complaining about account balances deserves notice. In other words, if the Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes ends her unnecessary burdening of ESA families, then account balances will shrink.

Meanwhile, Arizona school districts had unused funds of $7,853,198,187 at the end of the end of the 2024 fiscal year. This was over a billion dollars more than the previous year and has grown further since. This level of unspent funds is approximately 5.5 times the size of Arizona’s rainy-day fund, and many times larger than unused ESA balances.

One could do a great deal with $7.8 billion. If districts had distributed $7.8 billion to the state’s 48,000 district teachers in the form of a one-time bonus, they would receive an average of $162,500. Alternatively, the districts could pay out the funds over 10 years and raise the average teacher pay from $64,420 to more than $80,000 and still have funds leftover.

Despite record levels of per-pupil spending, Arizona school districts displayed the lowest levels of academic achievement in their history in the 2024 Nation’s Report Card. The district treasure hoard of cash may be benefiting someone, but the list does not appear to include students.

Arizona districts both spent and hoarded enormous funds, had allied policymakers slow ESA reimbursements, and then complained that ESA families failed to spend their funds fast enough. Unlike ESA balances, this doesn’t add up.