DOJ lawsuit seeks to end in-state tuition for undocumented students is reporting published by Arizona Center for Investigative Reporting, Arizona's only nonprofit newsroom dedicated to statewide investigative reporting.

The Department of Justice on Thursday sued Arizona and the state Board of Regents over a law granting in-state tuition to undocumented students who attended and graduated from Arizona high schools. 

The Trump administration alleges Proposition 308, which voters narrowly approved in 2022, “constitutes blatant unequal treatment favoring illegal aliens over U.S. citizens” and is “squarely prohibited and preempted by federal law.” The lawsuit asks a federal judge to declare the law unconstitutional and permanently prohibit its enforcement.

Prop. 308 made students eligible for in-state tuition if they graduated from an Arizona high school after attending for at least two years, regardless of their immigration status. Prior to its passage, national experts estimated that 3,600 undocumented students could qualify for in-state tuition annually.

An AZCIR investigation earlier this year found that schools documented far fewer students receiving the reduced tuition, in part because they lacked a uniform system for implementing and tracking the policy. The federal government now argues that Prop. 308 is unlawful regardless of how many students benefited from it. 

Though Arizona’s law did not make residency an explicit requirement, the DOJ contends that attending an Arizona high school for at least two years is “a near-perfect proxy for residence,” since public schools are required to collect “verifiable documentation of residency” when students enroll.

Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes, who previously defended Arizona’s policy as consistent with federal law, rejected that interpretation. Her spokesperson, Richie Taylor, said the complaint “rests on a faulty premise.”

Megan Gilbertson, a spokesperson for the Arizona Board of Regents, said in a statement that officials are “reviewing the lawsuit and will work closely with Arizona leaders on the appropriate next steps.”

The Trump administration has filed similar suits in 20 other states, including three also filed Thursday against New Mexico, Washington and Oregon. Some, like Florida, have voluntarily rescinded their policies, while others, like Minnesota, have defended their legality.

Tyler Montague, a Republican strategist and former chair of Yes On 308, said the federal challenge of Arizona’s law doesn’t make sense from a policy perspective. 

“There are plenty of issues and problems surrounding undocumented immigration, but kids starting to go to college to be self-sufficient aren’t one of them. They’re one of the opportunities in that realm,” he said.

Prop. 308 took effect at Arizona’s public colleges and universities in spring 2023. But the law did not require schools to report how many students used the tuition provision.

As part of its investigation, AZCIR requested information from 22 public community colleges and universities on how many students had received in-state tuition through Prop. 308. Only seven schools could provide data, while 14 said they did not track usage. One did not answer. 

Across the seven schools, about 720 students had received the in-state rate as of fall 2025, the majority of them at Arizona State University. For comparison, nearly 12,000 undocumented students are estimated to be enrolled in higher education in Arizona, with about 1,000 graduating from high school in the state each year. 

Advocates who work with undocumented students told AZCIR that differences in how schools implemented the policy had created confusion. They suspected some students were still paying the higher tuition rate—150% of the in-state rate—that applied to undocumented students at state universities before Prop. 308 passed. Others may not have known about the lower rate and therefore not seen college as a realistic option, they said. 

Carolina Silva, executive director of ScholarshipsA-Z, a southern Arizona nonprofit working with undocumented students, called the lawsuit part of a broader effort to reverse in-state tuition policies for undocumented students and restrict their access to higher education. She said Prop. 308 was approved by voters and is consistent with state and federal law, adding that her organization expects the challenge “will not hold up in court.”

Aliento, a nonprofit that works with undocumented Arizonans and has advocated for stronger implementation of Prop. 308, similarly criticized the lawsuit as an effort by the DOJ to “do everything they can to stop Dreamers from attending college” in a statement to AZCIR.

“Dreamers” typically refers to immigrants who were brought to the United States without legal status as children and grew up here. Many have temporary deportation protection and work authorization through the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, program.

“For Arizona Dreamers, it is important for you to know that you belong in higher education and you have the support of Arizona voters and Aliento,” CEO Reyna Montoya said. “A lawsuit does not change Dreamers ability to pay in-state tuition. This can be confusing, but I encourage you all to keep going and get an education.”

DOJ lawsuit seeks to end in-state tuition for undocumented students is reporting published by Arizona Center for Investigative Reporting, Arizona's only nonprofit newsroom dedicated to statewide investigative reporting.

Without sustained funding or coordination, Arizona’s push to boost postsecondary enrollment falls short is reporting published by Arizona Center for Investigative Reporting, Arizona's only nonprofit newsroom dedicated to statewide investigative reporting.

In 2016, Arizona leaders set an ambitious goal: By 2030, 70% of high school graduates would continue their education after graduation, whether at a university, community college or trade school.

Despite a decade of initiatives and millions of dollars invested to boost postsecondary enrollment since then, the state’s rate has actually gone down. Only half of Arizona high school graduates continue their education within a year of graduation, a three-point drop since the effort began, according to data from Education Forward Arizona and the Center for the Future of Arizona.

The decline is widespread, affecting nearly every demographic group and most counties. It puts Arizona well below the national average, with the most recent federal data showing 63% of students enrolled in college within months of finishing high school.

With almost three-quarters of Arizona jobs expected to require some form of postsecondary education or training by 2031, researchers say lower enrollment rates could leave students with fewer economic opportunities—and make it harder for Arizona to build the skilled workforce state leaders have spent years trying to create.

For Jack Parrish, a recent graduate of Boulder Creek High School in Anthem, the decision to continue his education came down to a question he wasn’t sure how to answer: Was college worth the cost?

“I hear a lot of personal accounts of people who didn’t exactly regret college, but regretted taking out so many loans to go,” he said.

Though he once thought he would study engineering at Arizona State University, Parrish decided to spend at least one more year working in food service while considering his next move.

Education leaders say that kind of hesitation is becoming increasingly common as rapid changes in the job market, including the growing use of artificial intelligence, leave many unsure of whether a degree is worth the investment. Arizona students also face structural challenges beyond their control, including longstanding inequities in the state’s public education system.

The state has put at least $166 million toward boosting postsecondary enrollment since 2017, an AZCIR analysis of Arizona’s education spending shows, funding a range of programs backed by the Governor’s Office and largely administered by the Arizona Board of Regents and Department of Education. But those investments to expand dual enrollment, increase access to financial aid and launch the Arizona Promise Program—a scholarship that covers tuition and fees at the state’s public universities for qualifying low-income students—have done little to improve the state’s postsecondary enrollment trajectory.

Part of the problem, researchers and education leaders told AZCIR, is that Arizona has had neither sustained funding nor the centralized leadership needed to drive meaningful change. No single entity is responsible for coordinating the work and measuring whether it’s effective.

“There is growing concern that Arizona’s systemic design is not built to hold somebody accountable for this, or to even provide a clear signal of who should be in charge of solving this problem,” said Rich Nickel, president and CEO of Education Forward Arizona.

Compounding the challenges of the state’s decentralized approach, students and their families are struggling to justify the cost and time of a college degree or postsecondary credential, according to high school graduates, administrators and counselors who spoke with AZCIR. A Gallup survey from September found that just 35% of people thought a college education was “very important,” down from 75% in 2010.

That skepticism is increasingly translating into students’ decisions after graduation. A recent study from education research firm EAB found the share of students who chose not to attend college and cited cost of living as a primary concern jumped from 51% in 2025 to 67% this year. Researchers also found fewer students taking gap years and more prioritizing immediate employment, underscoring what they described as a growing emphasis on short-term economic needs.

“It’s not always clear what a college or university degree gets you,” said Patrick Denice, a researcher studying postsecondary enrollment at the University of Western Ontario. As relatively well-paying jobs remain available to high school graduates, he said, more young people are questioning whether additional education is worth delaying their entry into the workforce.

Jacob Dominguez, a recent graduate of Mountain Ridge High School in Glendale, was one of them. As a freshman, he imagined attending college and playing football. But injuries, academic struggles and the desire to make money pushed him in another direction.

He considered a welding credential, but found that even trade school tuition could run into the tens of thousands of dollars. He opted to take a job at Discount Tire and was promoted to assistant manager shortly after graduation.

“If I can work my way up pretty fast in the past five, six-ish months, just imagine what I can do in, like, five years,” Dominguez said.

Still, the economic case for higher education remains strong, with college graduates about half as likely to be unemployed as peers with only a high school diploma. Typical earnings are 86% higher for bachelor’s degree holders, and median lifetime earnings are $1.2 million greater.

Research from the Helios Education Foundation estimated that increasing Arizona’s college-enrollment rate by 20% would also generate $1.82 billion in economic gains per high school cohort.

“Postsecondary enrollment is the key that unlocks all the locks,” Nickel said. “It is, again and again, the only proven method to transform somebody’s socioeconomic future.”

Education leaders and researchers agree there isn’t one “silver bullet” that can get more students to pursue education after high school. But half a dozen of them told AZCIR there is one important element Arizona lacks: coordination. 

When the state adopted its 70% enrollment target in 2016, no lead agency was designated to oversee the initiative. It was envisioned as a collaboration between K-12 schools, public and private universities, community colleges and career and technical education institutions.

Today, the Governor’s Office, Board of Regents and Department of Education all support programs aimed at increasing postsecondary enrollment. In written statements to AZCIR, representatives highlighted work ranging from college and career planning to financial aid outreach and data collection. None, however, identified who is responsible for ensuring progress toward the state’s goal.

“A lot of places are putting a really good effort in, but it’s disjointed,” said Lydia Ross, a professor at ASU’s teaching college whose research focuses on postsecondary pathways. “We have all of these different arms trying to do things,” she said, but “they’re not working in tandem.”

In a statement, a spokesperson for Gov. Katie Hobbs said there is “no single ‘right’ model” for states to coordinate higher education efforts, and that the state’s investments in postsecondary enrollment are having a “real impact for real Arizonans.”

One of the state’s most significant interventions has been the Arizona Promise Program, launched in 2022. It covers tuition and fees after other aid has been applied at ASU, Northern Arizona University or the University of Arizona for students who meet academic requirements and display exceptional financial need.

Promise programs exist nationwide and are generally considered an effective way to improve enrollment, despite varying in design and scope. Programs in Pennsylvania, New York, Arkansas and Connecticut recorded enrollment jumps of 5% to 14% in the years following implementation.

Such gains have yet to materialize in Arizona, though the program has served a growing number of students each year it’s been offered. Undergraduate resident enrollment across the state’s three public universities increased by just 2.4% between the year before the scholarship’s implementation and fall 2025.

ABOR executive director Chad Sampson said the scholarship “is a strong access tool” that has shown encouraging results, but “right now, it’s largely an unfunded commitment.”

Universities have shouldered most of the Promise Program’s cost, contributing about $734 million between academic years 2022 and 2025 compared with $87.5 million from the state, according to Board of Regents data. Though lawmakers upped program funding to $54 million last year, this year’s budget slashed that by roughly a third.

A new community college promise program received just $3 million in startup funding last year and no additional money in the most recent budget.

“Culture change takes time, it takes sustained effort, and it takes additional revenue,” Sampson said.

He said the Board of Regents holds the state’s public universities accountable for expanding access but has no authority over other parts of Arizona’s education system.

“We’ve made strides where we can,” Sampson said. “In other areas that involve creating a stronger college-going culture in Arizona, we do everything we can to reach out to our partners.”

On the dual enrollment front, the state has put roughly $5.9 million toward helping students earn college credit while still in high school. Research from Helios found students who participate are more than twice as likely to attend college and ultimately more likely to earn degrees. Nationally, more than 80% of high schools have provided dual enrollment opportunities, yet only half of Arizona high schools offered them as of last year.

Other state investments have focused on increasing completion of the Free Application for Federal Student Aid, or FAFSA. Students who complete the form are 84% more likely to immediately enroll in college, and ABOR has tied scholarships and initiatives to FAFSA completion. Though 44% of Arizona seniors completed the form this year, up about 16% from last year, the state’s completion rate still ranks second to last nationally.

Many of these efforts are worthwhile on their own, experts told AZCIR. But without a clear strategy to connect them, Arizona is unlikely to see the broad enrollment gains officials envisioned.

Some district leaders are building their own coordinated systems to counteract the state’s fragmented approach—and are seeing results.

Santa Cruz County has seen the strongest postsecondary enrollment increases of any Arizona county. In 2016, just under 49% of graduates continued their education. By 2024, the most recent year with county data available, that figure had climbed to almost 60%.

Rio Rico High School, one of the county’s largest schools, saw its postsecondary enrollment rate rise from 44% in 2016 to 52% in 2022. Kayli Muñoz, one of four counselors there, attributed some of that growth to a sustained effort to reach students and families early with information about financial aid and college planning.

Muñoz said she’s noticed students “are very concerned about the money aspect,” including taking out loans. To combat those fears, counselors regularly host information nights and begin discussing scholarships, grants and other aid opportunities long before students start applying to colleges.

“A lot of our students and a lot of our families just don’t know what’s out there,” she said. “It is a messaging issue.” 

Rio Rico’s principal, Dagoberto Lopez, said staffing has also played a crucial role. Through grant funding, the school maintains four counselors for its 1,352 students, a ratio of nearly 340 students per counselor. Though still above the nationally recommended 250:1 ratio, it is much better than Arizona’s statewide ratio of 570:1—the worst in the country.

“With that number of counselors, we can definitely be intentional and strategic about our work,” Lopez said. “Students feel that they can really see their counselor as that resource where they can come and be supported.”

Nearby, the Nogales Unified School District has also seen substantial gains. Between 2016 and 2022, the district’s postsecondary enrollment rate rose from 58% to more than 69%.

Superintendent Angelina Canto said the district’s approach has evolved over time. Early strategies focused on helping students—many of them first-generation college-goers—understand how to apply to college. More recently, the focus has shifted toward helping families navigate the financial barriers.

The district has student ambassadors who serve as peer counselors and answer questions about the application and financial aid processes. It also offers monthly FAFSA information nights, partners with foundations and agencies to connect students with scholarships and works to educate the whole community about the importance of education, not just the students.

Canto hopes state leaders take note of what districts like Nogales have been able to accomplish through sustained outreach and support, and consider additional funding to help other districts enact change.

“I think if we value that role of K-12 more, the more support to get kids successfully educated and into the workforce will only benefit our state,” she said.

Without sustained funding or coordination, Arizona’s push to boost postsecondary enrollment falls short is reporting published by Arizona Center for Investigative Reporting, Arizona's only nonprofit newsroom dedicated to statewide investigative reporting.

Arizona universities quietly altered DEI offerings after Trump threatened funding cuts. They won’t disclose how is reporting published by Arizona Center for Investigative Reporting, Arizona's only nonprofit newsroom dedicated to statewide investigative reporting.

Arizona’s three public universities have quietly dismantled diversity, equity and inclusion offerings over the past year, renaming programs, consolidating resource centers and scrubbing websites—all while failing to detail the changes to students, faculty or the public.

The moves came after the U.S. Department of Education sent universities a letter in February 2025 threatening to cut federal funding if they continued to promote what President Donald Trump has called “radical” DEI programs. It advised schools they could not consider race in decisions about administrative support, housing and “all other aspects of student, academic, and campus life.”

In Arizona, university leadership has not publicly disclosed how or to what extent they’ve complied, shielding the public from understanding the impact of their decisions or how the changes might affect three of the state’s largest campus communities. It’s also unclear what changes, if any, have been reversed since a federal judge deemed the Trump administration’s guidance illegal last August. 

Officials at Arizona State University, Northern Arizona University and the University of Arizona, which serve over 241,000 students and receive hundreds of millions in taxpayer dollars annually, declined repeated requests for interviews and did not answer detailed questions from the Arizona Center for Investigative Reporting over several months. Public records requests were either denied on claims of attorney-client or work-product privilege, deemed too burdensome to fulfill or closed citing a lack of responsive records.

AZCIR identified a number of changes through a review of university websites, course listings, past media coverage and communication with state officials. All three schools have been accused of burying resources for minority groups, and UA and NAU have also removed or renamed multiple webpages and references to diversity and inclusion—despite still claiming inclusivity as a core value. The largest known shift occurred at UA, which consolidated its cultural resource centers into one central hub.

Higher education experts say the lack of transparency is likely tied to a “chilling effect” from the Trump administration’s broader assault on higher education, prompting attempts by officials to avoid further scrutiny. 

Emelyn dela Peña, president and CEO of the National Association of Diversity Officers in Higher Education, told AZCIR that transparency is crucial now “because when institutions feel like they can’t talk openly about how they support students, it becomes harder for the public to understand the role that these efforts have.”

DEI initiatives in higher education generally serve a range of groups beyond those more commonly considered vulnerable, including first-generation students and veterans, among others. Programming is often designed to emphasize things like belongingness, critical thinking and community engagement, according to the USC Race and Equity Center. The result, experts say, can be increased student retention and graduation rates.

Nolan Cabrera, an expert in racism and anti-racism in higher education and a professor at UA, said decisions made behind closed doors sends a negative signal to students and faculty. 

“This isn’t your university anymore,” he said. “This isn’t a community.”

As those tied to universities and the public at large attempt to understand the impact of DEI changes to campus life, Arizona’s Republican lawmakers are advancing a ballot initiative that would pose the question of DEI’s place in schools to voters directly. The move would bypass Gov. Katie Hobbs’ veto power and amend the state constitution to restrict DEI initiatives further.

The potential of losing federal dollars—the single largest funding source for university research and development nationwide—prompted a number of schools to proactively comply with the guidance over the past year. Even as legal challenges to the February Dear Colleague letter and executive orders seeking similar restrictions on DEI made their way through the courts, some universities opted to publicly disclose their changes.

The University of Cincinnati, for example, issued a statement saying the institution had “little choice but to follow” the guidance and admitted to “removing references to DEI principles” and evaluating programming. The University of North Carolina Chapel Hill’s leadership released a statement detailing changes to offerings for students after its university system suspended DEI course requirements. Similar statements were made by universities from Alaska to Colorado.

Megan Gilbertson, a spokesperson for the Arizona Board of Regents, which oversees Arizona’s public universities, declined an interview and did not say whether it advised schools on federal compliance. ABOR shifted 10 of its own policies last summer, removing references to “affirmative action,” and replacing “diversity” with “differentiation,” among other changes. 

Presidents at NAU and ASU did not address the federal guidance in public statements, and campus community members said they had not received internal communication, either.

At UA, President Suresh Garimella began shifting diversity efforts shortly after Trump’s January 2025 executive order, which alleged higher education institutions have adopted “dangerous, demeaning and immoral” DEI practices and called for their end. 

In a Feb. 17, 2025, email obtained by AZCIR from Garimella to Arizona Senate President Warren Petersen, who had called on the state’s public universities to eliminate DEI a week earlier, the university president said “we intend to fully comply with the order.” 

The next day, Garimella announced the creation of a federal updates page that now states UA was “mandated to discontinue certain activities and programming,” but provides no details. He also said they would take “a proactive approach” to compliance, including creating an inventory of DEI-related activities. 

AZCIR requested that inventory in September 2025, but was told the document was “protected under the attorney-client/work-product privilege.” 

On Feb. 19, 2025, a spokesperson confirmed to the Arizona Daily Star that the school removed websites for its Office of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion and Cultural and Resource Centers, but did not answer questions about what other changes were coming.  

Vanessa Perry, a former professor at UA, said she only got more information after Petersen posted another letter from Garimella to social media updating him on actions the school had taken as of April 1, 2025. 

The letter described a sweeping compliance effort—discontinued programming, internal “DEIA reviews,” instructions to college deans, changes to job postings—that the university has yet to detail publicly.

“It really told me that no matter what we could do as organizers, that Garimella would not be moved,” said Perry, who was also part of UA Resist, a collective against DEI changes on campus. “That he had that little valor in doing the right thing and standing up for us.”

AZCIR requested the information detailed in the letter, including communications sent to deans, the internal reviews and the action plans for change. The university withheld the records, again citing attorney-client or work-product privilege, and has not responded to repeated attempts to clarify the denial or provided further comment about changes made throughout its system.

UA also announced last May it was consolidating six of its seven cultural resource centers, which served LGBTQ+ students, disabled and gender-based groups, along with several racial and ethnic minorities. The Native American student center was moved into the Office of Native American Initiatives. 

UA officials did not say at the time whether the decision was tied to the federal directives and did not answer AZCIR’s questions about the consolidation. UA spokesperson Mitch Zak shared two messages sent to campus about the consolidation, one of which clarified that “activities, physical spaces, and embedded counselors” would also make the transfer, and student workers would remain in place “to ensure continuity of support.” 

Zak said in the emailed statement that the school is focused on ensuring all students can access the same opportunities and resources for success, does not “engage in preferential treatment in employment or programming” and is compliant with federal and state nondiscrimination requirements. 

“These (centers) were not just benevolently bequeathed from the institution. They were years of struggle, community activism, fundraising to create these spaces … that can just be eliminated by the whim of a president who has no idea what he’s doing,” Cabrera, the current UA professor, said. 

“That is devastating to the community, because we’ve been struggling for these minor amounts of inclusivity.”  

NAU’s spokesperson Kim Ott told AZCIR she was “not able to find anyone” who could speak to campus changes despite repeated outreach. She responded only that the school is focused on “ensuring that all students have the support and resources they need.”

The university denied AZCIR’s public records request for documentation of changes to DEI programs, positions or offerings, calling it “unduly burdensome” with more than 300,000 potentially responsive records.

An AZCIR review of NAU course plans showed that, as of last school year, some were described as meeting a “diversity” requirement. Plans for the current year show some of the same requirements now described as “inclusive perspectives.” 

Websites for NAU’s “diversity strategic plan,” which was announced in 2020 and sought to make the school a “true diversity university,” as well as its Center For University Access And Inclusion, are no longer active. Some program specific pages, such as the Institute for Public and Professional Ethics in Leadership and the clinical psychology department, however, still note a commitment to diversity. 

Sarina Cutuli, a third-year student at NAU and member of the Arizona Students’ Association, said that while the changes are subtle, they perpetuate fear among students and “it feels like this slow chipping away until there’s nothing left.” 

Cutuli said she believes administrators are acting in good faith, but that not communicating changes to the campus community is eroding trust.

“Saying nothing feels like [leadership saying] ‘I don’t care, I come first. I’m protecting myself first. I’m protecting my funding first. Your security as a student does not matter as much as money does,’” Cutuli said.

The largest known change on NAU’s campus was the sunsetting of five diversity commissions covering Indigenous communities, disability, ethnic diversity, women and LGBTQIA issues, some dating back to at least 2006. The commissions previously hosted speakers and discussions for students, faculty and staff, and gave awards for diversity work.

According to minutes from a November 2025 faculty senate meeting, University President José Luis Cruz Rivera said the commissions were “not sustainable” in their current form but that he wanted to reorganize them. Documents indicate the university sought to create an “Inclusive Excellence Advisory Board,” but officials did not say how it has progressed or how offerings have changed.

ASU officials also declined to make anyone available for an interview and claimed “no responsive records” to an AZCIR records request from February seeking documentation for changes made over the past year. Spokesperson Nikki Ripley instead emailed a statement saying ASU fully complies with federal and state laws, noting that the school’s charter “commits to an inclusive approach welcoming every learner who is qualified.”

Ripley also pointed to a March 2025 interview in which President Michael Crow said the university never had “ethnic diversity goals” to begin with. 

“Other people built that three word phrase, ‘diversity, equity and inclusion,’ and then built a rhetoric around that, and that’s what’s being attacked. We were past that,” Crow said at the time.

Hypatia Meraviglia, an ASU graduate student and member of United Campus Workers of Arizona, which represents staff at the three universities, said Crow’s response was left wanting. 

“We’re stuck in a situation where the workers at ASU, the students and the faculty and the staff are getting the worst end of the deal, which is, there are no university resources, or very few university resources for minoritized workers of any kind. And the resources we have are pulled,” Meraviglia said. 

ASU previously said it had not removed student support, though there were allegations last spring that online resources for LGBTQIA students were removed from public-facing websites. The university also renamed graduation events for minority students in May and was one of 31 schools spotlighted by the Education Department for ending participation with the PhD Project, an organization that supports underrepresented doctoral students and was being investigated by the administration for discriminating based on race.

Education Secretary Linda McMahon celebrated the program closures, saying it was “the Trump effect in action.” Ripley told AZCIR the university had already decided to end its partnership with the PhD Project before the federal government began investigating.

When the Education Department dropped its appeal in January of a federal ruling that found its guidance was largely illegal, some saw it as a “major victory” for diversity efforts in public education.

Shortly after, however, the Trump administration introduced a new plan requiring federal funding recipients, including universities, to certify that they do not have diversity programs before they’re eligible for federal dollars. 

Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes was one of 23 attorneys general who signed a letter urging the federal government to abandon its proposal, noting it was unlawful, would “undoubtedly” create confusion and may “chill legitimate activities of funding recipients who fear punitive actions.” 

Trump issued another executive order on March 26 saying federal contractors must agree to not engage in “racially discriminatory DEI activities,” and that their contracts may be terminated if compliance documentation isn’t provided.

In Arizona, Republican lawmakers are again trying to ban DEI from schools. Last year, Hobbs vetoed Senate Bill 1694, which would have cut public funds from universities offering DEI courses. 

Speaker of the House Steve Montenegro, R-Goodyear, introduced House Concurrent Resolution 2044 this year, which would send the issue directly to voters—bypassing the governor’s veto. The measure would ask Arizonans to determine whether the state’s Constitution should prohibit public entities from “preferential treatment” based on race or ethnicity, and would bar public funding for diversity offices or training. As of April 8, the resolution passed the House and was progressing through the Senate. 

At its most recent regular meeting in February, ABOR’s legislative update did not include the potential ballot measure, and it wasn’t discussed by members. When asked why it wasn’t introduced, Gilbertson said the board doesn’t take an official stance on every bill, but is working with the governor’s office and lawmakers on related legislation.

She did not specify how. 

Arizona universities quietly altered DEI offerings after Trump threatened funding cuts. They won’t disclose how is reporting published by Arizona Center for Investigative Reporting, Arizona's only nonprofit newsroom dedicated to statewide investigative reporting.

Arizona voters approved in-state tuition for undocumented students. The state left implementation to chance. is reporting published by Arizona Center for Investigative Reporting, Arizona's only nonprofit newsroom dedicated to statewide investigative reporting.

From the start of high school, Ignacio knew he wanted to go to college to become a nurse practitioner. But when he learned that being undocumented disqualified him from in-state tuition at Arizona’s three public universities, his plans unraveled. 

“It was definitely a hard time navigating through high school knowing that I probably wasn’t going to be able to afford college,” said Ignacio, who is being identified by his first name because of his immigration status. “I was like, ‘it’s unattainable, I’m not even going to try hard.’”

That shifted during his senior year, though, when he learned of Proposition 308. The 2022 ballot initiative promised in-state tuition to students who had graduated from an Arizona high school after attending for at least two years, regardless of their immigration status. 

“Prop. 308 — it changed my perspective on things,” he said. “It motivated me just to keep going.” 

The initiative narrowly passed that November, with 51.2% of the vote. The following spring, Ignacio enrolled at Estrella Mountain Community College. His career goal changed, and he eventually transferred to the University of Arizona, where he’s now pursuing a double major in law and political science.

Ignacio’s experience reflects what Prop. 308 was designed to do: Reopen college as a realistic option for undocumented students who had grown up in Arizona. But three years after the law took effect, it remains difficult to say how many students have actually benefited—and how many were left behind. 

Though national experts estimated that more than 3,600 undocumented students a year could qualify for in-state tuition under the measure, Arizona put no centralized system in place to oversee its rollout, track participation or ensure consistent implementation across colleges and universities.

“There wasn’t an effort from the governor or the Board of Regents, or any other effort to implement it,” José Patiño, vice president of education at Aliento, a nonprofit working with undocumented Arizonans, told AZCIR. “It was left basically to people who cared.”

As a result, students and advocates have shouldered much of the work required to benefit from the law, during a moment when political hostility toward immigrants has intensified nationally. Advocates suspect some students are still paying the higher, 150% tuition rate that applied to undocumented students at state universities before Prop. 308 passed, while others may be forgoing college entirely.

“I think at the end of the day, even though we want them to advocate for themselves, the students shouldn’t have to carry that burden of having to go look for resources,” said Blanca Alcantara-Hershey, a coordinator in the University of Arizona’s AGAVE office, a student support center. “We could avoid all that by having a streamlined process.”

Arizona’s disjointed implementation has taken on new urgency as the Trump administration moves to challenge tuition equity laws in other states, creating confusion and fear among families weighing whether college is worth the risk. Taken together, the gaps suggest Arizona may have missed a narrow chance to make the promise of Prop. 308 real, and advocates say students are paying the price.

Along with Washington, D.C., Arizona was one of 22 states with a tuition equity law on the books as of September. Texas and California were the first to implement such measures in 2001.

These policies often draw bipartisan support, given their potential to reduce high school dropout rates, encourage undocumented students to pursue higher education and provide an economic boost. One 2022 analysis projected that students enrolling under Arizona’s Prop. 308 could strengthen the workforce and inject about $23 million into the state’s economy, while another found that any lost tuition revenue from in-state rates could be offset by increased enrollment.

In Arizona, three Republican lawmakers sponsored the bill to take the matter to voters, and it received overwhelming support from Democrats. The “Yes on Prop 308” committee was also chaired by a Republican, and groups like Aliento and ScholarshipsA-Z worked alongside the Greater Phoenix Chamber of Commerce and other business leaders to secure its passage. 

Not all Republicans endorsed the measure, however. Some who had supported a 2006 initiative barring students without lawful status from receiving aid or in-state tuition urged voters to oppose Prop. 308, citing concerns about tuition costs and fairness. 

After the initiative passed in 2022, the Arizona Board of Regents—which oversees Arizona State University, Northern Arizona University and the University of Arizona—held a meeting to revise its non-resident tuition policy. At the time, ABOR executive director John Arnold, now UA’s chief financial officer, acknowledged that only a small number of students would be affected immediately but said he hoped participation would “dramatically increase over the coming years.” 

Arnold described the procedural policy change as “pretty straightforward,” and it passed unanimously. But multiple regents raised pointed questions about its implementation, including whether the three universities were prepared to enact the change the following semester and whether there was “any sort of communications plan to ensure that qualified students know about this.” 

Arnold replied that the universities were excited to move the program forward, and that ABOR would rely on the schools to ensure eligible students were informed. Regent Larry Penley pushed back, arguing responsibility extended beyond the universities.

“When we offer these opportunities to students, promotion really is incumbent upon us,” said Penley, who did not respond to AZCIR’s recent request for comment. “And in many cases, I don’t think we’re taking as seriously as we need to the job to join with the three universities and really promote things like this to the public.” 

Advocates working with undocumented students applying to college would likely agree with Penley’s assessment. Several told AZCIR that implementation lacked consistency because schools approached it differently, often requesting varying documents and information to prove eligibility. That led to confusion for students. 

Carolina Silva, executive director of ScholarshipsA-Z, which assists undocumented students in southern Arizona, said one school asked for a driver’s license to prove residency—something those without legal status cannot obtain in Arizona. Her organization intervened, she said, helping the school identify alternative documents students could realistically provide. 

“Some institutions created more hoops for students to jump through, not realizing, again, it would become another barrier,” Silva said. “It’s continued to just be a battle every step of the way.”

AZCIR requested information from 22 universities and community colleges on how many students have received in-state tuition through Prop. 308 since it took effect. Just seven schools were able to provide a number. Fourteen said they did not track usage, which is not required under the law. Yavapai College did not answer repeated requests for information. 

Across the seven schools with data, about 720 students had received in-state tuition through the initiative as of the fall 2025 semester: 432 at Arizona State University, nearly 200 at Pima Community College and fewer than 70 at UA. For comparison, there are an estimated 11,000 undocumented students enrolled in higher education in Arizona, with about 1,000 graduating from high school annually. 

Asked about AZCIR’s findings, a spokesperson for Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs said the language approved by voters did not designate a lead agency for Prop. 308’s implementation, leaving responsibility to the Arizona Board of Regents for the state’s public universities and the governing boards of the state’s community college districts.

ABOR spokesperson Megan Gilbertson insisted the board provided clear policies, supported the schools in interpreting the law and provided “systemwide coordination.” She repeatedly pointed to the board’s FAQ page for Prop. 308, which she said is updated as questions arise.

Gilbertson did not share specifics about how the board communicated with schools to ensure consistency, however, acknowledging that “each university’s student information system is uniquely configured.” 

As with the universities, implementation at community colleges was left to individual campuses, according to David Borofsky, executive director of the Arizona Community College Coordinating Council. The nonprofit works to support and promote collaboration among community colleges.

Policy changes involving access for immigrant students often cause “confusion and errors at first,” requiring active monitoring to work as intended, according to Tanya Broder, senior counsel of health and economic justice policy at the National Immigration Law Center. 

“You can’t just declare victory and go home,” she said. “You really need to invest in making sure that these laws lead to good outcomes for the people.”

The FAQ document crafted and updated by the Board of Regents does not spell out how students can show they qualify for in-state tuition. It instead directs those with questions to contact the financial aid or residency classification office at their university. 

What happens next largely depends on where a student enrolls.

Ignacio, who received in-state tuition at Estrella Mountain Community College before transferring to UA, said the process wasn’t particularly difficult at Estrella Mountain. At UA, finding the correct form to show he qualified “definitely took some digging.”

UA’s registrar site outlines the documentation requirements and links to a form for students seeking the “Arizona High School Graduate – Qualifying Non-Citizen tuition rate.” Students at Pima Community College likewise must submit a form and documentation, though a spokesperson said the “specific paperwork required can vary depending on each student’s situation.”

Jessica Martinez, a coordinator in UA’s AGAVE office, said students who learn of their eligibility through community organizations like ScholarshipsA-Z often know how to proceed. Those without that support may not know where to look. 

Officials at ASU and Maricopa Community Colleges, the latter of which could not provide a count of students using Prop. 308, said applicants do not need to submit extra paperwork. Eligibility is determined using materials already included in applications, such as high school transcripts.

“We looked at making sure we weren’t collecting unnecessary information that wasn’t required under the law, just to make the barrier to enrollment that much easier for our students,” said Lindsey Wilson, a Maricopa Community Colleges spokesperson.

Lesli, an undocumented student being identified only by her first name, applied to ASU in the fall of 2022 before Prop. 308 took effect and was classified as an out-of-state resident after being accepted. 

Her high school counselor called the university, explained Lesli’s status, and her residency classification and tuition rate were corrected. Without her counselor, though, Lesli—who saw college as too costly before Prop. 308—said she would have struggled to navigate the mixup.

“I would have been stuck, and I just wouldn’t know where to start or where to go,” Lesli said.

Officials at NAU declined to explain how their students indicate they qualify and instead directed AZCIR to the university’s Prop. 308 website, which does not include instructions for demonstrating eligibility. 

Silva, with ScholarshipsA-Z, said the qualification process can hinge on “who you know” within the admissions office at any given school. “It’s kind of still like three times the amount of work and time and headache a regular student would do,” she said. 

Those added hurdles come as an unprecedented, nationwide crackdown on immigrants has heightened the stakes for undocumented students and their families. Patiño, with Aliento, said uncertainty around on-campus immigration enforcement and post-graduation paths to employment is making some question whether higher education is worth pursuing at all.

“How do we speak to the community about Prop. 308 and college, given the climate that is going on at the federal level?” he asked. 

In April, President Donald Trump signed an executive order directing federal agencies to stop the enforcement of local laws granting in-state higher education tuition to undocumented students, contending they favor “aliens over any groups of American citizens.” 

As of Jan. 6, his administration had sued seven states—Illinois, California, Oklahoma, Minnesota, Kentucky, Texas and Virginia—over tuition equity laws and policies. Kentucky, Texas, Virginia and Oklahoma sought to comply with the federal directive and end their policies but are facing challenges in court. Florida voluntarily repealed its law in February.

So far, the administration has not challenged Arizona’s statute, and state Attorney General Kris Mayes issued an opinion affirming that Prop. 308 complies with relevant federal laws. Still, advocates say the national backdrop continues to shape how families weigh their options.

As Silva works to increase visibility around Prop. 308, she said she has seen a shift in attitude among some of the families her organization assists, noting they “are just really scared in this moment.”

Despite that fear, she emphasized that “there is more access in Arizona than there has been for the past 20 years”—if students know how to claim it.

Arizona voters approved in-state tuition for undocumented students. The state left implementation to chance. is reporting published by Arizona Center for Investigative Reporting, Arizona's only nonprofit newsroom dedicated to statewide investigative reporting.

Arizona voters approved in-state tuition for undocumented students. The state left implementation to chance. is reporting published by Arizona Center for Investigative Reporting, Arizona's only nonprofit newsroom dedicated to statewide investigative reporting.

From the start of high school, Ignacio knew he wanted to go to college to become a nurse practitioner. But when he learned that being undocumented disqualified him from in-state tuition at Arizona’s three public universities, his plans unraveled. 

“It was definitely a hard time navigating through high school knowing that I probably wasn’t going to be able to afford college,” said Ignacio, who is being identified by his first name because of his immigration status. “I was like, ‘it’s unattainable, I’m not even going to try hard.’”

That shifted during his senior year, though, when he learned of Proposition 308. The 2022 ballot initiative promised in-state tuition to students who had graduated from an Arizona high school after attending for at least two years, regardless of their immigration status. 

“Prop. 308 — it changed my perspective on things,” he said. “It motivated me just to keep going.” 

The initiative narrowly passed that November, with 51.2% of the vote. The following spring, Ignacio enrolled at Estrella Mountain Community College. His career goal changed, and he eventually transferred to the University of Arizona, where he’s now pursuing a double major in law and political science.

Ignacio’s experience reflects what Prop. 308 was designed to do: Reopen college as a realistic option for undocumented students who had grown up in Arizona. But three years after the law took effect, it remains difficult to say how many students have actually benefited—and how many were left behind. 

Though national experts estimated that more than 3,600 undocumented students a year could qualify for in-state tuition under the measure, Arizona put no centralized system in place to oversee its rollout, track participation or ensure consistent implementation across colleges and universities.

“There wasn’t an effort from the governor or the Board of Regents, or any other effort to implement it,” José Patiño, vice president of education at Aliento, a nonprofit working with undocumented Arizonans, told AZCIR. “It was left basically to people who cared.”

As a result, students and advocates have shouldered much of the work required to benefit from the law, during a moment when political hostility toward immigrants has intensified nationally. Advocates suspect some students are still paying the higher, 150% tuition rate that applied to undocumented students at state universities before Prop. 308 passed, while others may be forgoing college entirely.

“I think at the end of the day, even though we want them to advocate for themselves, the students shouldn’t have to carry that burden of having to go look for resources,” said Blanca Alcantara-Hershey, a coordinator in the University of Arizona’s AGAVE office, a student support center. “We could avoid all that by having a streamlined process.”

Arizona’s disjointed implementation has taken on new urgency as the Trump administration moves to challenge tuition equity laws in other states, creating confusion and fear among families weighing whether college is worth the risk. Taken together, the gaps suggest Arizona may have missed a narrow chance to make the promise of Prop. 308 real, and advocates say students are paying the price.

Along with Washington, D.C., Arizona was one of 22 states with a tuition equity law on the books as of September. Texas and California were the first to implement such measures in 2001.

These policies often draw bipartisan support, given their potential to reduce high school dropout rates, encourage undocumented students to pursue higher education and provide an economic boost. One 2022 analysis projected that students enrolling under Arizona’s Prop. 308 could strengthen the workforce and inject about $23 million into the state’s economy, while another found that any lost tuition revenue from in-state rates could be offset by increased enrollment.

In Arizona, three Republican lawmakers sponsored the bill to take the matter to voters, and it received overwhelming support from Democrats. The “Yes on Prop 308” committee was also chaired by a Republican, and groups like Aliento and ScholarshipsA-Z worked alongside the Greater Phoenix Chamber of Commerce and other business leaders to secure its passage. 

Not all Republicans endorsed the measure, however. Some who had supported a 2006 initiative barring students without lawful status from receiving aid or in-state tuition urged voters to oppose Prop. 308, citing concerns about tuition costs and fairness. 

After the initiative passed in 2022, the Arizona Board of Regents—which oversees Arizona State University, Northern Arizona University and the University of Arizona—held a meeting to revise its non-resident tuition policy. At the time, ABOR executive director John Arnold, now UA’s chief financial officer, acknowledged that only a small number of students would be affected immediately but said he hoped participation would “dramatically increase over the coming years.” 

Arnold described the procedural policy change as “pretty straightforward,” and it passed unanimously. But multiple regents raised pointed questions about its implementation, including whether the three universities were prepared to enact the change the following semester and whether there was “any sort of communications plan to ensure that qualified students know about this.” 

Arnold replied that the universities were excited to move the program forward, and that ABOR would rely on the schools to ensure eligible students were informed. Regent Larry Penley pushed back, arguing responsibility extended beyond the universities.

“When we offer these opportunities to students, promotion really is incumbent upon us,” said Penley, who did not respond to AZCIR’s recent request for comment. “And in many cases, I don’t think we’re taking as seriously as we need to the job to join with the three universities and really promote things like this to the public.” 

Advocates working with undocumented students applying to college would likely agree with Penley’s assessment. Several told AZCIR that implementation lacked consistency because schools approached it differently, often requesting varying documents and information to prove eligibility. That led to confusion for students. 

Carolina Silva, executive director of ScholarshipsA-Z, which assists undocumented students in southern Arizona, said one school asked for a driver’s license to prove residency—something those without legal status cannot obtain in Arizona. Her organization intervened, she said, helping the school identify alternative documents students could realistically provide. 

“Some institutions created more hoops for students to jump through, not realizing, again, it would become another barrier,” Silva said. “It’s continued to just be a battle every step of the way.”

AZCIR requested information from 22 universities and community colleges on how many students have received in-state tuition through Prop. 308 since it took effect. Just seven schools were able to provide a number. Fourteen said they did not track usage, which is not required under the law. Yavapai College did not answer repeated requests for information. 

Across the seven schools with data, about 720 students had received in-state tuition through the initiative as of the fall 2025 semester: 432 at Arizona State University, nearly 200 at Pima Community College and fewer than 70 at UA. For comparison, there are an estimated 11,000 undocumented students enrolled in higher education in Arizona, with about 1,000 graduating from high school annually. 

Asked about AZCIR’s findings, a spokesperson for Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs said the language approved by voters did not designate a lead agency for Prop. 308’s implementation, leaving responsibility to the Arizona Board of Regents for the state’s public universities and the governing boards of the state’s community college districts.

ABOR spokesperson Megan Gilbertson insisted the board provided clear policies, supported the schools in interpreting the law and provided “systemwide coordination.” She repeatedly pointed to the board’s FAQ page for Prop. 308, which she said is updated as questions arise.

Gilbertson did not share specifics about how the board communicated with schools to ensure consistency, however, acknowledging that “each university’s student information system is uniquely configured.” 

As with the universities, implementation at community colleges was left to individual campuses, according to David Borofsky, executive director of the Arizona Community College Coordinating Council. The nonprofit works to support and promote collaboration among community colleges.

Policy changes involving access for immigrant students often cause “confusion and errors at first,” requiring active monitoring to work as intended, according to Tanya Broder, senior counsel of health and economic justice policy at the National Immigration Law Center. 

“You can’t just declare victory and go home,” she said. “You really need to invest in making sure that these laws lead to good outcomes for the people.”

The FAQ document crafted and updated by the Board of Regents does not spell out how students can show they qualify for in-state tuition. It instead directs those with questions to contact the financial aid or residency classification office at their university. 

What happens next largely depends on where a student enrolls.

Ignacio, who received in-state tuition at Estrella Mountain Community College before transferring to UA, said the process wasn’t particularly difficult at Estrella Mountain. At UA, finding the correct form to show he qualified “definitely took some digging.”

UA’s registrar site outlines the documentation requirements and links to a form for students seeking the “Arizona High School Graduate – Qualifying Non-Citizen tuition rate.” Students at Pima Community College likewise must submit a form and documentation, though a spokesperson said the “specific paperwork required can vary depending on each student’s situation.”

Jessica Martinez, a coordinator in UA’s AGAVE office, said students who learn of their eligibility through community organizations like ScholarshipsA-Z often know how to proceed. Those without that support may not know where to look. 

Officials at ASU and Maricopa Community Colleges, the latter of which could not provide a count of students using Prop. 308, said applicants do not need to submit extra paperwork. Eligibility is determined using materials already included in applications, such as high school transcripts.

“We looked at making sure we weren’t collecting unnecessary information that wasn’t required under the law, just to make the barrier to enrollment that much easier for our students,” said Lindsey Wilson, a Maricopa Community Colleges spokesperson.

Lesli, an undocumented student being identified only by her first name, applied to ASU in the fall of 2022 before Prop. 308 took effect and was classified as an out-of-state resident after being accepted. 

Her high school counselor called the university, explained Lesli’s status, and her residency classification and tuition rate were corrected. Without her counselor, though, Lesli—who saw college as too costly before Prop. 308—said she would have struggled to navigate the mixup.

“I would have been stuck, and I just wouldn’t know where to start or where to go,” Lesli said.

Officials at NAU declined to explain how their students indicate they qualify and instead directed AZCIR to the university’s Prop. 308 website, which does not include instructions for demonstrating eligibility. 

Silva, with ScholarshipsA-Z, said the qualification process can hinge on “who you know” within the admissions office at any given school. “It’s kind of still like three times the amount of work and time and headache a regular student would do,” she said. 

Those added hurdles come as an unprecedented, nationwide crackdown on immigrants has heightened the stakes for undocumented students and their families. Patiño, with Aliento, said uncertainty around on-campus immigration enforcement and post-graduation paths to employment is making some question whether higher education is worth pursuing at all.

“How do we speak to the community about Prop. 308 and college, given the climate that is going on at the federal level?” he asked. 

In April, President Donald Trump signed an executive order directing federal agencies to stop the enforcement of local laws granting in-state higher education tuition to undocumented students, contending they favor “aliens over any groups of American citizens.” 

As of Jan. 6, his administration had sued seven states—Illinois, California, Oklahoma, Minnesota, Kentucky, Texas and Virginia—over tuition equity laws and policies. Kentucky, Texas, Virginia and Oklahoma sought to comply with the federal directive and end their policies but are facing challenges in court. Florida voluntarily repealed its law in February.

So far, the administration has not challenged Arizona’s statute, and state Attorney General Kris Mayes issued an opinion affirming that Prop. 308 complies with relevant federal laws. Still, advocates say the national backdrop continues to shape how families weigh their options.

As Silva works to increase visibility around Prop. 308, she said she has seen a shift in attitude among some of the families her organization assists, noting they “are just really scared in this moment.”

Despite that fear, she emphasized that “there is more access in Arizona than there has been for the past 20 years”—if students know how to claim it.

Arizona voters approved in-state tuition for undocumented students. The state left implementation to chance. is reporting published by Arizona Center for Investigative Reporting, Arizona's only nonprofit newsroom dedicated to statewide investigative reporting.

Arizona colleges face ‘devastating impact’ after Trump slashes grant funds to minority-serving institutions is reporting published by Arizona Center for Investigative Reporting, Arizona's only nonprofit newsroom dedicated to statewide investigative reporting.

Ten community colleges and universities in Arizona will lose at least $13 million after President Donald Trump’s administration cut discretionary funding to minority-serving institutions, alleging the money was tied to “discriminatory racial and ethnic quotas.” 

The cuts—described by one grant administrator as a decision made with “little to no concern about the students”—are forcing some schools to end student support programs that improved grades and reduced dropped classes, while shrinking staff dedicated to underserved populations.

Federal data shows 23 Arizona schools met the 25% Hispanic enrollment threshold to qualify for Hispanic-Serving Institution (HSI) grants this year, more than most states. Many have much higher shares of minority students and are required to serve a large percentage of low-income learners. Arizona is also home to two Native American-serving nontribal institutions (NASNTIs), or schools where at least 10% of enrollment is Native American.

Achieving minority-serving institution (MSI) status does not guarantee a school additional federal funds, but it allows them to apply for grants designed to increase student success through tutoring, mental health support, personalized advising and other services. 

Nearly half of Arizona’s 25 eligible MSIs lost discretionary Education Department grants when the cuts were announced. Two of those schools did not respond to AZCIR’s request for information about affected grants, meaning the total loss will likely be well over $13 million.

“It is a huge and devastating impact,” said Mike Hoa Nguyen, principal investigator of the MSI Data Project at UCLA, noting that the cuts will disproportionately affect low-income, first-generation students. He called the abrupt loss of resources for those learners “horrible and misguided.”

“The way that it’s been done, and the framing of it is just—to me—it’s just cruel,” Nguyen said.

The cuts are not the first blow to MSIs under the Trump administration.

In July, the Justice Department said it would not defend the constitutionality of HSIs in a lawsuit brought by Tennessee against the Education Department. D. John Sauer, solicitor general, wrote in the decision that “the government lacks any legitimate interest in differentiating among universities based on whether ‘a specified number of seats in each class’ are occupied by ‘individuals from the preferred ethnic groups.’” 

Advocacy groups like the Hispanic Association of Colleges and Universities say the status is “race-conscious but not race-exclusive,” arguing it ensures federal resources are split equitably and that funds are used to help all students, not just those in one demographic. 

In early October, Arizona Gov. Katie Hobbs sent a letter to Education Secretary Linda McMahon urging her to restore MSI funding, calling the institutions “part of the fabric of Arizona’s higher education system” and estimating potential losses at $18 million.

As of the 2023–24 school year, Arizona HSIs alone enrolled about 194,000 full-time undergraduates, including 63,000 Hispanic or Latino students. Nationwide, MSIs serve millions, with one in five colleges qualifying for the designation.

“I’m really stunned that money would be taken away from these institutions when they educate over 50% of students of color,” Marybeth Gasman, executive director of the Rutgers Center for Minority Serving Institutions, told AZCIR. “It’s mind-blowing to me that that’s the case.”

Most of the Arizona schools that received funding in the 2024-2025 fiscal year were awarded grants around $3 million each over a five-year period, or about $600,000 annually. 

The University of Arizona, which reported a Hispanic or Latino student population of 26% last fall, received an HSI grant in 2023 that it planned to use to expand career readiness offerings, professional development fellowships and a writing program for freshmen. The program, Project ADELANTE, was expected to benefit more than 1,800 students, UA said in an announcement that year. 

UA declined to comment on how the abrupt end to funds will impact its offerings and programs, and would not say how much of the promised funding will no longer be distributed. A records request seeking information about HSI grants was unfulfilled as of Oct. 19. 

Northern Arizona University received about $500,000 of the $3 million grant it was awarded in 2024. Officials also declined to discuss the status of the remaining funds with AZCIR, saying they are “still trying to figure out details moving forward.” 

NAU used its grant to launch Comunidad, Cultura y Conexión (C³), a program for first-generation and Hispanic and Latino students that provides a range of supports aimed at improving their odds of post-grad success, according to the funding announcement.

Sophomore Ale Ortiz Leyva, a peer mentor in the program, said supervisors told her that it would not continue past its first year. She wasn’t surprised. 

“I knew that this was a reality that could happen under this administration,” Ortiz Leyva told AZCIR. “It was just disappointment and frustration that a program that I know is doing a lot of good—because I work with the students one-on-one—is no longer going to exist.”

A first-generation Latina student, Ortiz Leyva said there were times her freshman year when NAU felt “isolating” and “foreign.” She has seen the program help students adjust to campus life and find stronger community, allowing them to better succeed in the classroom.

“There is a lot of culture here and there is a lot of diversity, but it takes programs like this for you to realize that, and I think that’s the thing that these students benefit the most from,” she said. “They just feel a little safer.”

Pima Community College, where Latino and Hispanic students make up about half the student body, told AZCIR it has four grants at risk. That includes a $3 million Title V grant for Hispanic-Serving Institutions, of which about $1.8 million was canceled.

In a statement to AZCIR, Pima spokesperson Phil Burdick said school officials are advocating for funding to be restored and trying to minimize student disruptions. But “it is clear that the long-term sustainability of programs at Pima Community College cannot depend on uncertain state and federal funding streams,” he said.

Five HSI grant recipients were housed within the Maricopa Community College District, which received notices of cancellation for four active grants totaling nearly $5 million—including one HSI STEM grant at Glendale Community College that was believed to be protected, mandatory funding. A district spokesperson told AZCIR nearly 10,000 students will see fewer support services as a result.

“The value of our work, the value of our impact on students doesn’t seem to be at the forefront of their agenda,” said Rachelle Clarke, grant administrator at Rio Salado College. She described the cuts as a “shock.”

Clarice Wziatek, an academic life coach at Rio Salado whose position is funded by the grant, said she has helped countless students in the past two years figure out the right course of study and create plans for their futures. She reaches out to them if they’re struggling, and introduces them to resources they often didn’t know existed. 

Early data from her program shows success: Students who participated withdrew from classes less frequently, got fewer failing grades and saw GPAs climb by 20%. “The coaching is really about helping them find their grit, their resilience, their growth mindset, and inspiring them to fulfill the goals that they’re laying out,” Wziatek said. 

Chandler-Gilbert Community College’s grant similarly funds four specialists who work closely with students and one analyst. The school received a no-cost extension from the government allowing it to use remaining funds for one year, but officials said they only have enough for about six months.

Moving forward, the college will be able to keep just two specialists, and their workload will rise from 350 students each to about 700, according to Laura Latimer, grant administrator at CGCC.

“You cannot double a case load and be as effective. It’s just, the math is not there,” she said, adding the specialist-student relationships will also likely become less personal.

She said the decision to cut funding reinforces misconceptions about the grant program and HSI status, which Latimer maintained is about helping schools better serve all students and communities. “Student success should not be politicized. Supporting a community should not be politicized. Creating a skilled workforce should not be politicized,” she said. 

Other schools losing funds across the state include Central Arizona College, South Mountain Community College, Mohave College, Arizona Christian University and Northland Pioneer College. 

Northland Pioneer, one of Arizona’s two Native American-serving nontribal institutions, received $946,000 in the first three years of its grant cycle. The community college, where 29% of students were American Indian or Alaska Native in fall 2023, used the money to launch an online virtual student center, offer mobile computer units and strengthen ties with tribal colleges, among other supports. 

Though the school will no longer receive nearly $659,000 it was expecting, spokesperson Katie Matott told AZCIR that Northland Pioneer plans to implement all of the grant’s projects using other funds.   

Coconino Community College, another NASNTI school, received a 2021 grant classified as mandatory funding, which meant it was spared in the recent cuts. But Tony Williams, vice president of student services at CCC, said he does not expect NASNTI grants as currently structured to be available next year—and he “can’t imagine what it would be like to not have that resource.”

“We’ve seen an increase in our Native American student population. We’ve seen academic success in that population go up as a result of that work,” Williams said, adding that losing targeted funding will impact the quality of education for all students, not just the Indigenous ones.  

“If our underserved student population is beginning to be more engaged in the classroom, performing at higher levels, success rates go up,” he said. “And when we are all engaged on equitable footing, the power of that dialogue, the power of the learning, is profound, transformative.”

Arizona colleges face ‘devastating impact’ after Trump slashes grant funds to minority-serving institutions is reporting published by Arizona Center for Investigative Reporting, Arizona's only nonprofit newsroom dedicated to statewide investigative reporting.

Thousands of Arizona children now waitlisted for state child care assistance is reporting published by Arizona Center for Investigative Reporting, Arizona's only nonprofit newsroom dedicated to statewide investigative reporting.

More than 2,000 Arizona children have been waitlisted for state child care assistance, according to the Department of Economic Security, and that number is likely to climb as the agency reviews pending applications.

The waitlist counts, quietly added to the DES website after weeks of inquiries from AZCIR, publicly quantify for the first time the impact of state lawmakers’ failure to fill a gaping budget hole left by expiring federal pandemic funds last year. DES had warned state leaders that declining to address the shortfall would likely force the agency to reinstate its waitlist, which had taken a decade to eliminate. 

The current waitlist for subsidies—designed to help families in need pay for child care while guardians work, job-hunt or go to school or training—took effect Aug. 1. It applies to new applicants, minus those the state cannot legally turn away.  

“The reality is that the funding we get from the federal government for the CCDBG (Child Care and Development Block Grant) is not enough to support the whole system,” said Barbie Prinster, director of the Arizona Early Childhood Education Association. “This is why we have a waitlist, because we don’t have enough state funding to (make up the difference).”

That has been the case since at least the Great Recession, when lawmakers slashed and ultimately eliminated state child care funding to balance the budget. The $12 million in state dollars approved in 2024 marked the first time a Republican-led Legislature had agreed to spend General Fund money on child care in almost 15 years. 

Still, the amount fell far short of the $100 million Gov. Katie Hobbs had requested to temporarily stabilize the state’s child care system and avoid reinstatement of a waitlist. 

Republican lawmakers don’t seem particularly receptive to the even more ambitious child care plan the Democrat released in January, either. It proposes a public-private partnership that would allow the state, businesses and families to share the cost of care, among several other initiatives.

Despite some bipartisan support for increased child care funding at the federal level, the future of those dollars is also uncertain amid the ongoing blitz of spending freezes and budget cuts under the Trump administration. 

Chances that Arizona’s waitlist will be swiftly eliminated through falling caseloads or increased funding, the two possibilities offered by DES, seem slim. And the agency has yet to publicly address the scope of the problem, failing to acknowledge repeated requests by AZCIR to provide the number of cases still awaiting review. In the second week of February alone, DES added more than 300 children to the waitlist. 

Being waitlisted indefinitely can spur parents who would otherwise be working or in school to turn down promotions, cut back their hours or quit. Those decisions, in turn, can have a sweeping impact on Arizona’s economy overall. In 2023, a ReadyNation analysis largely funded by the Helios Education Foundation estimated that insufficient child care led to a $4.7 billion loss in earnings, productivity and revenue for the state.

“The child care waitlist is just more proof of what we’ve been saying: Arizona families and businesses are struggling with a system that isn’t working,” Danny Seiden, president of the Arizona Chamber of Commerce and Industry, told AZCIR via email. “Employers across the state tell us all the time that the lack of affordable child care is keeping people out of the workforce and making it harder to hire.” 

Seiden has pointed out that it costs the state far more to financially support a family with no income at all than to help a working parent with child care costs. He said the state “needs to look at real, bipartisan solutions that not only increase funding where it’s needed but also incentivize businesses to offer benefits that support working parents without imposing new burdens on employers.”

Prinster, the longtime advocate for child care reform, similarly said that “when not everyone has access to child care, especially low-income families, the economy and employers suffer.” 

“Child care needs to be affordable and accessible for everyone that needs it,” she said.

Thousands of Arizona children now waitlisted for state child care assistance is reporting published by Arizona Center for Investigative Reporting, Arizona's only nonprofit newsroom dedicated to statewide investigative reporting.

Contentious ‘Project 2025’ plan uses Arizona as education model is reporting published by Arizona Center for Investigative Reporting, Arizona's only nonprofit newsroom dedicated to statewide investigative reporting.

Project 2025, a contentious policy blueprint for the next Republican presidency, seeks to dramatically concentrate power in the White House while fundamentally changing how the federal government operates on nearly every front.

And when it comes to overhauling public education, the sweeping right-wing manifesto borrows heavily from Arizona’s playbook. 

The roughly 900-page “Mandate for Leadership”—crafted by think tank the Heritage Foundation and other conservative heavyweights—lays out an aggressive roadmap for dismantling the federal Department of Education, rethinking funding for low-income students and those with disabilities, and broadly diverting public school dollars to less-regulated alternatives like private schools and homeschooling.

Promoting universal school choice as “a goal all conservatives and conservative Presidents must pursue,” it argues that “every parent should have the option to direct his or her child’s share of education funding through an education savings account (ESA), funded overwhelmingly by state and local taxpayers.”

That’s precisely how school vouchers work in Arizona, a longtime darling of the school choice movement and the first in the nation to offer universal voucher eligibility. Heritage education policy expert Lindsey Burke, who authored Project 2025’s education section, references Arizona as a school choice pioneer almost immediately. 

Burke also advocates a change to the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act that would partially redirect IDEA funding to families instead of schools, citing “the way in which parents use education savings accounts in states such as Arizona and Florida.” And she promotes a funding model in which donors receive tax credits in exchange for contributions to nonprofits that provide private school scholarships, much like Arizona’s school tuition organizations, or STOs.

Burke and others from the Heritage Foundation, which declined an interview with AZCIR, use conservative buzzwords like “freedom” and “choice” to sell their vision of a new educational landscape that empowers parents to select a “set of education options that meet their child’s unique needs.” But experts in education policy and constitutional law suspect a much different endgame: setting public schools up to fail by stripping their funding while concentrating higher-need, harder-to-educate kids there.

“The implications for students and public schools and the communities that rely on them are disastrous,” said Jessica Levin, litigation director at the Education Law Center, a nonprofit that advocates for public education. “And Arizona, unfortunately, is Exhibit A.”

Arizona’s initial foray into school choice came in 1994, when the state passed a far-reaching education-reform package that authorized charter schools to operate here. Three years later, the state became the first in the U.S. to establish nonprofit school tuition organizations to fund private school scholarships, offering dollar-for-dollar tax credits to donors.

By 2006, the Legislature had created an explicit school voucher option limited to students with disabilities and those in foster care. The Arizona Supreme Court later deemed that program unconstitutional, because it directly funded private, often religious schools. 

Policymakers soon changed course, launching the nation’s first “Empowerment Scholarship Account” program in 2011. ESAs, initially available to students with disabilities, similarly diverted state money to public school alternatives, but they circumvented the court’s decision by giving the cash to parents to spend. Republican leaders first expanded program eligibility incrementally, then dramatically.

Today, Arizona has the largest share of charter school students in the country. Its STOs rake in hundreds of millions annually, funneling would-be tax revenue to private schools. And its now-universal voucher program enrolls nearly 75,000 students, to the tune of more than $700 million.

The state also has some of the worst-funded public schools in the U.S., ranking 49th on the U.S. Census Bureau’s most recent Annual Survey of School System Finances.

Even before the state universalized voucher eligibility, Columbia University researchers who analyzed education budgets from 2008 to 2019 found Arizona was one of the few states where public school spending declined even as enrollment increased. Per-pupil public school spending dropped by 5.7% during that period, according to the analysis, while spending on voucher and tax-credit programs climbed by 270%.

“(Arizona) has consistently refused to create quality public schools, and therefore forced people—and I think that’s the key, forced people—to make other choices,” said University of South Carolina Professor Derek Black, who specializes in the intersection of constitutional law and public education. 

In other words, the harder you make it for public schools to succeed, the easier it is to sell the alternatives. And there are plenty of well-financed conservative groups working to do just that. 

Former U.S. Education Secretary Betsy DeVos’ American Federation for Children, the Koch brothers’ Americans for Prosperity and the American Legislative Exchange Council have all doggedly pushed for expansions in vouchers and other school choice  programs throughout the country in recent years, using Arizona as a proving ground.

Libertarian think tank the Goldwater Institute, the primary architect of Arizona’s ESA program, has repeatedly said it “won’t stop until parents in every state in the nation are empowered to decide what educational path truly meets their children’s needs,” though it declined to discuss the implications of Project 2025’s voucher proposal with AZCIR. 

Framing education as a consumer product rather than a public good, these groups argue families should have the ability to escape subpar, out-of-touch public schools in favor of private or self-directed options that better serve their kids and more closely reflect their values—all on the taxpayer’s dime. 

That argument has gained traction amid some families’ frustrations over how public schools navigated the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as ongoing culture wars over issues of race, gender and sexuality. (Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts writes in Project 2025’s forward that the “noxious tenets of ‘critical race theory’ and ‘gender ideology’ … poison our children.”) But in most cases, it’s Republican lawmakers, not families, who have pushed hardest to make it easier for public dollars to go toward private alternatives. 

Every time major voucher expansions have been put to the public, including in Arizona, voters have rejected them. 

Project 2025 paints a rosy picture of an educational marketplace where parents hold the ultimate power to customize their child’s learning experience. As Roberts puts it in his introduction, “Schools serve parents, not the other way around.”

Indeed, parents of some public school students—from those with disabilities who needed special instruction, to those from lower-income families who felt trapped at failing or unsafe schools—have successfully used vouchers to find and afford placements better tailored to their children’s learning styles. 

“A family may have three children, two of whom thrive at their neighborhood public school, but one struggles, and the parents choose to get ESA funds to send that child to a school that meets his needs,” Arizona Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Horne said. “I believe school choice options should be available to parents throughout the country as decided on a state-by-state basis.”

At the end of the day, though, only public schools must be open to all. Private schools can generally pick which students to accept or reject, meaning they ultimately do the choosing, not families. 

In Arizona, that has left some parents who’ve pursued vouchers for children with disabilities unable to find spots for them. Those who do secure private school placements give up certain anti-discrimination and disability protections present at public schools.

These considerations apply to the minority of Arizona ESA recipients who’ve left district or charter schools in favor of private schools since the state universalized eligibility. Over the past two school years, more than 60% of ESAs went to students who weren’t previously enrolled in public school, state data shows, indicating families are likely using vouchers to subsidize expenses they had formerly covered.

Rather than saving the state money, as school choice advocates claimed ESAs would, both of these shifts have created budgetary strain. School districts, which rely on consistent enrollment for state funding, have seen cash disappear alongside students, even as fixed costs have remained steady. The state, meanwhile, has taken on hundreds of millions in new spending for kids who were already attending private school, a trend that contributed to a $1 billion-plus budget deficit this year. 

Under Arizona’s existing laws, it’s almost impossible to see how students who use vouchers for private schools or homeschooling are performing, since they generate very little data. They don’t have to participate in state or national assessments, for instance, and their grades, graduation rates and postsecondary attainment go unreported. 

Levin cited a lack of accountability metrics as a key concern if vouchers go national, particularly given the associated price tag. In 2021, National Education Policy Center researchers estimated U.S. education spending would increase by anywhere from $67 billion to $203 billion a year to accommodate universal vouchers, depending on program parameters and enrollment. 

Most troubling to experts interviewed by AZCIR, though, were the possible impacts of Project 2025’s school choice proposals on student equity. 

When the quality and safety of public schools decline, families with the money and resources to leave will often do so. Even with vouchers in play, lower-income families may not be able to fully afford private school tuition, not to mention related costs like transportation and technology. 

Further concentrating high-performing, well-resourced students at some schools and lower-performing, lower-income students at others would exacerbate segregation and create a fragmented educational landscape, according to Black, the constitutional law expert. Project 2025’s recommendation to phase out Title I funding, designed to close achievement gaps at poorer schools, would only add to the divide. 

Such a fractured system would be at odds with the American tradition of using public schools to bring together children of all backgrounds and produce an informed citizenry, Black said.

“The people who propose these types of things, in my mind, are either highly ignorant of or highly dismissive of a 200-year commitment to public education with the understanding that democracy itself rests upon it,” he said. If Project 2025’s vision is brought to life, “you’ve really got to worry about how America moves forward.”

Contentious ‘Project 2025’ plan uses Arizona as education model is reporting published by Arizona Center for Investigative Reporting, Arizona's only nonprofit newsroom dedicated to statewide investigative reporting.

Arizona reinstates waitlist for families seeking state child care aid is reporting published by Arizona Center for Investigative Reporting, Arizona's only nonprofit newsroom dedicated to statewide investigative reporting.

Arizona will reinstate a waitlist for families seeking state child care assistance, the Department of Economic Security announced Wednesday—less than 24 hours before implementing the measure.

The move will not affect families already receiving state aid unless they submit renewal documents late, according to the agency. But new applicants, with the exception of those the state cannot legally turn away, will be locked out of the subsidy program indefinitely.

AZCIR and others had pressed DES officials for weeks about a possible return of a waitlist, after state lawmakers in June failed to fill a multimillion-dollar budget hole left by expiring federal pandemic funds. The department did not inform child care operators, advocates and others until Wednesday afternoon, around the time it uploaded a FAQ for families to its website.

“My phone has been ringing off the hook,” Barbie Prinster, program manager for the Arizona Early Childhood Education Association, told AZCIR a few hours after the DES notification went out. 

“Giving one day’s notice is just really, really tough—not only for providers but for families, too,” she said. 

Arizona’s subsidy program was designed to help families in need cover the steep cost of child care—which can top $12,000 for toddlers and $14,000 for infants—while they work, go to school, participate in training programs or look for a job. Those eligible to apply include working low-income parents, teen parents in school and parents living in shelters, among others.

State and federal rules do protect some applicants from being affected by waitlists, such as parents receiving Temporary Assistance for Needy Families and children in Department of Child Safety care. But other families will be out of luck ”until the DES child care assistance caseload drops significantly or the program receives more funding,” according to the agency.

Arizona last implemented a waitlist for child care aid during the Great Recession, after lawmakers slashed state subsidy dollars to help balance the budget. It remained in effect for about a decade, until 2019.

Even after eliminating the waitlist, state leaders continued relying on federal money to prop up the child care system, most recently aided by a $1.3 billion infusion of federal funding during the pandemic. With the last of those recovery funds scheduled to sunset this year, legislators cobbled together a portion of what was needed to replace them—but not all of it. 

The shortfall came despite a blunt warning from DES about the “dire impact” of inadequate funding late last year. In the agency’s departmental budget request, officials cautioned that a waitlist could result in an average of 5,200 fewer children being served per month. 

That, in turn, could lead to “productivity losses and foregone revenue as parents have to take time off work or leave the workforce altogether,” as well as repercussions for “the health, safety and well-being of Arizona’s children,” they wrote.

Prinster, the longtime child care advocate, raised similar concerns—particularly given the practically nonexistent timeline for notifying families. Parents who may have been considering applying in the coming weeks without knowing the waitlist was coming have now lost their chance, she said. 

“A single mom or single dad or a very low-income family is not going to be able to go to work now because they can’t get child care, or they’re going to have to put their kids in unsafe situations,” Prinster said. 

“It’s just a really hard spot.”

Arizona reinstates waitlist for families seeking state child care aid is reporting published by Arizona Center for Investigative Reporting, Arizona's only nonprofit newsroom dedicated to statewide investigative reporting.

Arizona could see return of waitlist for state child care aid is reporting published by Arizona Center for Investigative Reporting, Arizona's only nonprofit newsroom dedicated to statewide investigative reporting.

Arizona lawmakers gave the state’s child care system a temporary lifeline this month when they patched up a large part of the multimillion-dollar budget hole left by expiring federal pandemic funds. 

But the money isn’t enough to guarantee the state will avoid the return of a waitlist for families seeking child care assistance, meaning Arizona could give up ground it took nearly a decade to gain. 

The Department of Economic Security last implemented a waitlist for child care aid—available to working low-income parents, teen parents in school and parents living in shelters, among others—during the Great Recession, after lawmakers slashed state subsidy dollars to help balance the budget. Leaders later eliminated the state’s contribution to child care assistance entirely, leaving families to languish on the waitlist until 2019.

Long after Arizona was back in the black, lawmakers continued relying on federal money to prop up the child care system, aided by a $1.3 billion infusion of emergency pandemic cash. With the last of those recovery funds disappearing this year, the state needed to find an alternative to prevent what early childhood advocates warned would be an “immediate crisis.”

Legislators cobbled together much of what was needed during eleventh-hour budget negotiations—but not all of it. 

DES indicated it was still analyzing the potential impact of the shortfall in response to repeated inquiries from AZCIR. In May, before lawmakers finalized a spending plan, the agency had said it anticipated reinstating a child care waitlist “in the absence of further investment” from the state.

Industry experts, for their part, believe some families not already approved for state assistance could be locked out of the subsidy program in a matter of months. 

“I don’t even want to call it a waitlist, because nobody’s going to get in until we fund it,” said Barbie Prinster, program manager for the Arizona Early Childhood Education Association. “It’s a denial list.”

Inconsistent access to stable, affordable child care has far-reaching economic consequences for the state at large, as parents who would otherwise be working or in school turn down promotions, cut back their hours or quit. Yet it’s the impact on individual families that is most devastating, according to Bill Berk, CEO of Small Miracles Education, which operates preschool and child care centers in Maricopa and Pima counties.

“Last time we saw the denial list go into effect, we actually had families calling DCS (the Arizona Department of Child Safety) on themselves so that they could get in the child care door. That was a backdoor to get child care subsidies,” Berk said. “No family should be forced to make a decision like that.” 

Though the emergency child care funding Arizona received during the pandemic prevented a system-wide collapse, it wasn’t enough to reverse the decade of neglect the sector had endured at state leaders’ hands, AZCIR previously found.

By the time the pandemic hit, Arizona had already lost more than a fifth of its child care providers as they struggled to stay open amid low state reimbursement rates that had barely budged in 19 years. Constant turnover among child care workers, almost 20% of whom lived in poverty, only added to the instability. 

Nearly half of Arizonans lived in a so-called child care desert, meaning there were more than three children for every available spot, and those who didn’t often couldn’t comfortably afford care. Only the state’s wealthiest families could weather climbing child care costs and declining state support. 

This year’s state budget allocates $12 million in General Fund dollars to child care while leaning on federal sources for another $131 million. The money will likely allow Arizona to avoid reversing reimbursement rate increases implemented during the pandemic, as well as an immediate loss of child care assistance to enrolled families once federal relief funding runs out. 

But at least one early childhood education advocate deemed the stopgap funding the “bare minimum.” Rather than using the reprieve granted by emergency pandemic dollars to secure a more stable future for Arizona’s child care system, lawmakers funneled state surpluses toward Republican priorities like tax cuts and universal school vouchers. 

“We’re still in the same situation where we’re really expecting parents to cover the cost of quality, and we’re also subsidizing the cost of quality on low wages for the child care workforce,” said Eric Bucher, an early childhood policy expert who led the Arizona Association for the Education of Young Children. 

High-quality child care is increasingly expensive to provide, and with strict health and safety requirements, cutting corners isn’t an option. According to the most recent data available from Child Care Aware of America, the average cost of child care in Arizona ranged from $8,840 to $14,040 for infants and $7,800 to $12,662 for toddlers. 

Child care workers, meanwhile, earn about $37,000 a year on average here, contributing to a workforce shortage that has, in turn, made available spots scarce for private-pay and state-subsidized clients alike. Reinstating a waitlist for state aid will make it even harder for families in need to access care, while putting additional financial pressure on child care providers who primarily serve DES families. 

“It’s just a really unsustainable type of child care system,” Bucher said.

This year’s $12 million investment from the state fell far short of the $100 million in General Fund dollars proposed by Arizona Gov. Katie Hobbs and backed by advocates and families. 

Republican House Speaker Ben Toma cited the $1 billion-plus deficit the state faced this year, noting that “finding money for new spending means cutting even deeper elsewhere.”

Still, the new budget marks the first time a Republican-led Legislature has agreed to spend General Fund money on child care in almost 15 years. 

The shift may be due to increased pressure from groups like the Arizona Chamber of Commerce and Industry, a conservative-leaning organization that represents thousands of Arizona businesses. 

“A lot of people think of (child care) as just a family issue, but it is absolutely a business and economic issue,” Chamber President Danny Seiden told AZCIR. “It has a major role in employment decisions that families make, and it has a significant impact on employers and productivity.”

In 2021, the Arizona Chamber partnered with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation to quantify that impact. It found instability in the state’s child care system cost Arizona an estimated $1.8 billion in economic activity a year, as gaps in care forced parents to forgo professional and educational opportunities. 

In 2023, a ReadyNation study largely funded by the Helios Education Foundation put the state’s estimated annual loss in earnings, productivity and revenue at $4.7 billion. 

“If more and more people are not able to have their kids safely watched over while they’re needing to work, they’re going to fall out of the workforce completely,” Seiden said, noting that it costs the state far more to financially support a family with no income at all than to help a working parent with child care costs. 

“I think that’s illogical, whether it’s a Republican or Democrat, to think that’s a good thing,” he said. 

Berk, the Small Miracles CEO, similarly sees the state child care subsidy as “a path to self-sufficiency.” He called a possible return of the waitlist “very worrying.” 

Parents, especially single heads of household and those without paid time off or other benefits, need reliable child care to earn a living and advance. Further limiting access to high-quality care disproportionately affects rural communities, low-income families and working women. 

“Yes, there are families who stay on child care subsidies for quite a long time,” Berk said. “But, you know, those families are working, they’re contributing to society, and they’re earning the wage that our society pays, which unfortunately, doesn’t support paying for early childhood education.”

Arizona could see return of waitlist for state child care aid is reporting published by Arizona Center for Investigative Reporting, Arizona's only nonprofit newsroom dedicated to statewide investigative reporting.

Arizona could become latest state to ban attendance-related suspensions is reporting published by Arizona Center for Investigative Reporting, Arizona's only nonprofit newsroom dedicated to statewide investigative reporting.

An Arizona lawmaker is again trying to bar schools from using out-of-school suspensions to punish students who miss class, arguing the strategy is not only ineffective but harmful.

House Bill 2218 is Rep. Laura Terech’s second attempt to ban the practice of suspending Arizona students for tardiness and truancy, after a 2022 investigation by AZCIR and The Hechinger Report revealed the scope of the contentious disciplinary tactic in district and charter schools.

Among districts in the AZCIR/Hechinger sample that suspended for attendance, missing class led to 10 percent of all suspensions, resulting in tens of thousands of additional missed days of school.

“Any time out of school is really harmful to kids’ long-term academic success,” said Terech, a Phoenix Democrat and former elementary school teacher. She pointed to a growing body of research that has tied missing just two days of school per month to lower reading proficiency in third grade, lower math scores in middle school and higher dropout rates in high school.

“It just doesn’t make sense to punish kids (for) time out of school with more time out of school,” Terech said.

Chronic absenteeism—defined as missing more than 10 percent, or 18 days, of school in an academic year—has long been a problem in Arizona, and rates have continued to balloon in the wake of the pandemic. About 14 percent of K-12 students were chronically absent in 2019, according to state data. By 2022, that figure had jumped to 34 percent.

Arizona students had the worst rate of chronic absenteeism in the country in a recent analysis by national nonprofit Attendance Works. And some schools here have responded to rising absenteeism with even more attendance-related suspensions, contending the strategy can jolt students and parents into compliance.

A handful of lawmakers employed the same logic when opposing Terech’s initial bill last year, insisting attendance-related suspensions should have a place in schools’ disciplinary toolboxes. Though the measure advanced out of committee with bipartisan support, GOP leadership never brought it to the House floor for a vote.

This year, Terech’s bill has nearly twice as many Republican co-sponsors than Democrats, including Sen. T.J. Shope, who spent more than a decade serving on Coolidge Unified District’s school board.

“I just never really understood the idea that we’re going to punish a child who’s a truant by keeping them home,” Shope said, adding that he supports in-school suspension as a “corrective measure” because it at least keeps students on campus.

With out-of-school suspension, he said, “I just don’t know that there’s a lesson learned.”

Indeed, Lori Masseur of Read On Arizona, which convened a task force to address the spike in chronic absenteeism last spring, said there “currently is no significant research or data that suggests that suspensions reduce chronic absence or improve attendance.” At least 17 other states have already banned out-of-school suspensions in response to absenteeism.

School districts across Arizona generally declined to take a position on the bill when contacted by AZCIR, with several noting they’d already shifted away from suspending for absences and tardies. A spokeswoman for Dysart Unified School District, one of the more punitive school systems in the AZCIR/Hechinger sample, said the district would comply with any new state directives and “would be open to alternative strategies that have proven to be effective.”

Terech said she hopes her bill will force lawmakers to consider how to combat rising rates of chronic absenteeism, even if her proposed approach ultimately isn’t successful. Other education advocates stressed that eliminating attendance-related suspensions is only one piece of a larger puzzle.

“We need stronger wraparound services. We need trusted adults on campus that kids connect with,” Terech said. “Things as simple as extracurricular activities and peer-to-peer accountability—those are all steps in the right direction. So, I’m very optimistic and hopeful that this will be a vehicle to have a broader conversation.”

Arizona could become latest state to ban attendance-related suspensions is reporting published by Arizona Center for Investigative Reporting, Arizona's only nonprofit newsroom dedicated to statewide investigative reporting.