A motion to adopt a new draft of the Empowerment Scholarship Account handbook went without a second or a vote in a meeting of the State Board of Education Monday after a string of speakers and written comments opposed the implementation of price caps on certain purchases.

The decision to effectively table adoption of the ESA handbook leaves board members, the Department of Education, a parent handbook committee, and program participants to sift through issues raised by parents and propose another round of revisions.

The State Board of Education must adopt a handbook by May 1. However, the process for drafting a new handbook remains unclear after the recent opposition.

“I fully expected the handbook to be adopted today,” John Ward, executive director of the ESA program said. “So, I don’t know what feedback we will get from the state board about what they want to see changed before the next meeting.”

The ESA handbook functions as a user manual for ESA account holders, detailing everything from the documentation needed to apply to the criteria for program purchases. State Board of Education administrative rules require yearly updates to the handbook.

Tensions over another edition of the ESA handbook started simmering early, especially as the board declined to adopt a handbook for 2024 and continued under the existing manual after parents and Republican lawmakers claimed inadequate input from ESA account holders.

After the draft manual fell through, the Department of Education convened an ESA parent committee to promulgate their own handbook, with subsequent review by the department and eventual presentation to the state board.

The department issued an initial draft of the 2025-26 handbook on March 3 and solicited comments from account holders on March 4. It was met with near immediate critiques – with a key contention being price caps.

If adopted, ESA account holders would have been barred from spending more than $500 annually on home economic equipment, $4,000 on instruments, $2,500 on physical education equipment, $1,500 on tools for vocational education every three years, $2,500 on a playground, more than $2,000 on personal laptops and computers every two years, and $3,000 on a SmartBoard for the entire duration of program participation.

Ward deemed the issue a “lightning rod,” and said written comments submitted to the department “almost exclusively” dealt with the price caps. Monday’s meeting resulted in more than 40 requests to speak and just shy of 170 pages of public comment, with the issue of the price caps dominating again.

The position of Arizona State Superintendent of Schools Tom Horne, as previously expressed in an email to parents and emphasized in his superintendent’s report, is rooted in the department’s authority to ensure the program stays in compliance with state law.

“Somebody has to decide what is and what is not a valid educational expense, and the legislature gave that (authority) to the Department of Education,” Horne said in his report to the board.

Though the department is backing the price caps, the idea to implement limits started with the ESA Parent Handbook committee.

Janelle Wood, chair of the committee, said members wanted to provide more clarity on what a “reasonable” purchase would be under the program and sought to speed up the reimbursement process by eliminating research on market value and the reasonableness of purchases on the department’s end.

But she noted that the department’s final version lowered some price caps and placed time limits on purchases. For instance, the department initially set a $1,500 limit per item on vocational tools, then the department changed it to $1,500 total over three years.

Ward confirmed the department had changed how certain caps operated, but he clarified they did not implement a price cap where none existed before.

Still, account holders took issue, with particular concern on how such caps could stand to impact students with disabilities.

Stacey Brown, a member of the committee, advocating against adopting the handbook she helped develop. She said the committee had initially intended to exempt students with disabilities from price caps entirely, though she claimed the asterisks never made it into the final draft. Monday, Brown called it a “direct attack on special education students.”

However, Ward pointed out that the department added language to exempt students with disabilities, so long as they provided a letter from a specialist justifying the expense. Beyond that, Ward said the maximums would be a “hard and fast rule” for students enrolled under universal eligibility.

Board members asked for more specificity in the text of the handbook on how the price caps would operate and apply to different students.

“I think we need to be really explicit on how this process works,” board member Karla Krivickas said.

When it came to a vote, Superintendent Tom Horne made a motion to adopt the handbook. No board member seconded the motion.

Though the initial motion failed, Horne said he was confident the board would approve a handbook at the next meeting.

The state board meets again on April 28, and in the coming weeks, plans to work with the department on changes to the handbook.

Sean Ross, executive director of the State Board of Education, said in a statement, board members are looking for the department to seek more stakeholder feedback and clarify how newly added restrictions apply to students with disabilities.

Ross confirmed the handbook will come before the board again at next month’s meeting and said the board plans to “communicate its wishes regarding the handbook to the department in the coming days so that they can be considered and potentially implemented.”

Janelle Wood, chair of the ESA Parent Handbook Committee said she was not sure whether the parent committee would reconvene or work with the department as part of the second round of revisions. But she expects changes to primarily revolve around making spending caps clearer.

“We got some great feedback from people that the rest of the book read well,” Wood said.