Arizona’s Chandler School District Cuts 60 Jobs After 4,000‑Student Enrollment Drop Under Universal School Choice

Chandler Unified School District, Arizona’s second‑largest district, has voted to eliminate about 60 administrative, dean and coaching positions after losing more than 4,000 students since 2022, a decline Superintendent Franklin R. Narducci links in part to "competition with charter schools" and the state’s universal school‑choice and ESA voucher programs. At a Wednesday board meeting, district finance chief Lana Berry said enrollment has fallen steadily since the legislature expanded Empowerment Scholarship Accounts statewide in 2022, with the exodus expected to continue as families use roughly $7,000 per child in ESA funds to leave neighborhood schools. Chandler Education Association president Laurel Miller blasted what she called the legislature’s "historical underfunding" of public education and a nearly $3 billion allocation to a "fraud‑ridden" ESA system, arguing that those dollars have "forced districts to make dire decisions like cutting beloved staff and closing community schools." A teacher warned that remaining staff will be stretched to do "the work of three people," and predicted more parents will bolt to charters if services like librarians disappear. The Chandler cuts put a concrete face on a broader national trend: as more red states follow Arizona’s universal school‑choice model, large districts are beginning to shed jobs and reconfigure operations in response to shifting student headcount and per‑pupil funding.