Hypocrisy: “The practice of claiming to have moral standards or beliefs to which one’s own behavior does not conform.”

While Arizona officials demand ESA families clear burdensome hurdles to justify purchasing curriculum and biographical history books, some school districts are whooping it up on the tax-payer dime.

Our friends at Goldwater Institute uncovered the shameless behavior, finding Creighton Elementary School District Governing Board and others traveled to Napa Valley to sip wine and discussed how to infuse diversity, equity, inclusion (DEI) propaganda into public school curriculum.

The July trip cost taxpayers $4,000 per person to hear from California education professionals about getting schools “Black to Basics.” But the DEI education took only a fraction of the time spent in wine country; much of the time was spent on such things as a “Chairman’s Soiree” at one of the wineries.

Creighton is not a one-off, Goldwater found that Tolleson Union School District in Avondale spent taxpayer money on a multi-day vacation at four-star resorts, not once, but twice, both in 2023 and 2024. They took the spendy trip at a time when they are asking taxpayers to send them more money by approving a bond override and a District Additional Assistance Override.

Word is getting out. Phoenix Elementary School District’s Governing Board scrapped an out-of-state conference for left-wing identity politics after Goldwater exposed the politically focused trip set to teach social justice ideologies within 53 different topics, of which only three were specifically about education.

So, don’t let anyone tell you that DEI and other political ideologies are not being taught in the classroom. They are, and you’re footing the bill.

Meantime, Arizona’s universal Empowerment Scholarship Accounts (ESAs) continue to prove popular, and they serve families on all income levels. Critics complained students who were already going to private schools would take advantage of the program, not so much public-school students. But a new assessment by the Cato Institute shows a significant increase in public school students transferring to an ESA.

Cato also points out that most ESA users are below the median household income for an Arizona family of four. The assessment concludes,

“Keeping in mind the fundamental principle of choice—public funding follows all children to the education their families select—and the expectation that early users will be especially skewed toward current private schoolers, the ESA distribution is neither shocking nor outrageous. Sizeable numbers from all income strata are in the program, and the skew is likely moving less wealthy.”

For more information on educational freedom and the ESA program visit CAP’s Policy Pages here.

ICYMI:

• Read or listen here about a disturbing move toward infanticide and lack of care for babies born prematurely.
• Read here how a watchdog panel found foreign governments are using misinformation to suppress the rights of religious minorities.
• Read here about another California policy aimed at loosening parents’ grip on their children.