Teachers at EdKey’s Sequoia Pathway campus in Verrado say years of broken promises, missing funds and staffing shortages are draining morale and jeopardizing students’ education at one of Arizona’s largest charter school systems.
Two teachers, who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation, described a pattern of inconsistency and mismanagement that has left classrooms without essential staff, supplies or promised pay raises.
“It’s always an excuse. Our 301 funds are monies allocated for teachers,” one teacher said. “Never have I ever received the full amount. That money was meant for teachers.”
301 funds are a dedicated stream of education dollars generated by a statewide sales tax increase that voters approved in 2000. The money flows into what is called the Classroom Site Fund, which by law is supposed to pay for teacher base pay, performance pay, professional development and certain classroom programs like class-size reduction, according to the Arizona Department of Education.
Teachers allege that EdKey is still requiring professional development but not paying for it.
“They make us go through all of these tests, our professional development, but they never give the full amount.”
Instead of creating more qualified teachers, they said, EdKey has cut paraprofessionals, music, art and computer instructors. A high school coach now teaches art. Special education staff are stretched so thin that students with the highest needs are being placed in general classrooms without proper support. Teachers aren’t provided with even the basics, like staples, only printer paper on which to educate.
Administrators have also canceled prep periods, declined to hire substitutes and shifted classes onto other teachers and paraprofessionals, the teachers said. Some staff have not signed contracts this school year, hoping to hold out for promised raises. Instead, EdKey human resources told them their contracts would “just roll over” from last year.
EdKey did not respond to requests for comment to verify these claims.
“When you work with a district that consistently lies, it drains you emotionally,” said a longtime Edkey educator.
EdKey operates more than a dozen campuses across Arizona. The Verrado school, which opened six years ago, has already had five principals, the teachers said.
Financial oversight has also drawn criticism. Jim Hall, director of Arizonans for Charter School Accountability, and longtime charter school critic, said EdKey’s budget practices are a symptom of a larger issue in the state’s charter sector.
“Many charter schools, including EdKey, don’t really use their adopted budgets as a budgeting tool,” Hall said. He pointed to the EdKey board approving all of its 2025-26 budgets in just 27 minutes, calling it a sign of the system’s lack of scrutiny.
Hall said that in his years as a school administrator at Phoenix's Fowler Elementary School, every expenditure required explanation to the governing board, even the small ones.
“When I was a principal at Fowler Elementary, school board member Marge McClanahan would look at the month’s expenditures and say, ‘Jim, what was this $86 for board games from Acme Inc.?’ I signed each requisition and made sure I knew what it was for so I wouldn’t be embarrassed in public by my boss,” Hall recalled. “The charter school board has no requirements for public membership and only is responsible for policy, with no role in finance other than to blindly approve the budget every July.”
He said the lack of checks and balances has allowed EdKey’s leadership to operate without accountability.
“That’s how the EdKey CEO got away with using credit cards for purchases and the board having no oversight,” Hall said. “Most charter schools see the budget as a required submission to the state, not an integral part of efficiently running a large organization,” alleged Arizona’s largest charter school critic.
EdKey, with its D-rated bond, financial reporting underscores those concerns. Records submitted to bondholders last week showed that Edkey overspent its most recent budget by nearly $12 million, even as the state placed it under formal “financial intervention” after auditors raised “substantial doubt” about its ability to survive. EdKey reported $64.2 million in revenue against a budget of $38.1 million, and $66.6 million in expenses against a budget of $50.8 million.
The mismatch comes as the network carries more than $145 million in bond debt, faces lawsuits over unpaid loans and has laid off much of its workforce.
The turbulent financial disclosure coincided with the departure of interim chief operating officer Yovhane Metcalfe, less than a year after she took on the role. She had been the public face of the organization during the audit fallout but confirmed in an email she was “no longer with EdKey” as of Sept. 2.
Teachers say the consequences are clear inside classrooms: limited supplies, increased workloads and growing doubt about the school system’s future.
“If it keeps going the way it’s going, EdKey won’t be around,” one teacher said of her current employer. “If you were a parent and your child didn’t have the resources promised, would you keep your child in school?”
