I retired from my corporate job in July 2022, around the same time that ESAs became universal in Arizona. My wife was a public school teacher for 10 years and I had been wanting to do something to help improve our educational system since 2018 as we continued to see things decline in the classroom. I have been working full time to help the educational choice movement since founding Educational Services Alliance, LLC with three other partners in November 2022.
We created and recently rolled out ESAConnection.com, an online community where parents can easily and confidently connect to educational service providers. Through this website we also help educational entrepreneurs start-up their educational businesses. We connect them to the resources that they need to be successful as they grow. We also host live and online educational events that connect parents and educational service providers. Finally, we will soon be rolling out EdRentConnect.com, a website that connects microschools to affordable rental space for classes.
Once ESAs became universal, my wife and one of our partners Tammy Johnson (ESA vendor since 2015) saw a huge need for a system that would make it easier for parents to find the educational services and teachers that they need. We will also need many more ESA teachers as the program has grown from 12,000 to over 70,000 students in the last 12 months and is expected to reach over 100,000 students before long.
We believe that ESAConnection.com will empower more parents to find and participate in the best educational option for their learners. We are here to serve all five school options, from public, private or charter school parents simply looking for enrichments or tutoring to traditional homeschool and complex ESA spenders looking for teachers, therapists, curriculum, microschools, learning pods and much more.
School choice is such a wonderful and common-sense approach to providing the education that is right for each learner’s individual needs. There are many kids that thrive in public schools but we now have solid, state funded solutions for the kids that need something different.
It’s a true blessing to live in Arizona because our state has been at the forefront of educational choices for over 25 years, starting with our robust system of charter schools and STOs for private schools to our outstanding homeschool communities. I am so excited to help demystify and reduce the complexity of our most recent and flexible option of universal Empowerment Scholarship Accounts (ESAs).
I am looking forward to a day when school systems all over the country work as consultants to parents and learners; where the learner’s individual needs get top consideration and the school system eagerly and actively places that learner in the best program and system for them regardless of whether its public, private, charter, homeschool or ESA. I already see so much innovation happening in education. I can’t wait to see what’s else is coming and watching how fast the quality of our education improves due to the added competition for ideas and students.
There is so much bad information and noise right now about school choice that is coming from those invested in keeping things the way they are – teachers unions and their friends in the media and politics. It’s a shame that getting what’s best for our kids must be political. It’s also a shame that less than 10% of parents in Arizona truly know about and are comfortable with their school choices.
We must work together at the grassroots level to educate parents of the benefits of these choices and give them the vision and confidence to engage in these choices for their learners. We cannot be complacent in 2024. We will have to fight hard and have coordinated messaging to parents about the truth of what school choice means to them and what not having it will mean.
