Walking by a school that might not exist the following semester has a subtly depressing quality. The smell of floor cleaner and chalk is still present in the hallways. At the bell, children still spill out. However, the figures don’t add up somewhere in a back office, and the people who should be fixing it are nowhere to be found.
For many Arizona charter school communities over the past few years, that has been their reality. And it reached an unavoidable peak in Phoenix. In order to keep a failing charter school from collapsing, parents—not administrators, state representatives, or wealthy owners—took over. Even though the politics surrounding Arizona’s charter school industry are anything but neat, this is the kind of story that doesn’t neatly fit into any political narrative.
One of the nation’s least regulated charter school systems was established in Arizona. Owners found that arrangement to be sufficient for many years. According to a 12News investigation released in early 2025, Damian Creamer, the owner of Primavera, the biggest online charter school in Arizona, has paid himself about $24 million since 2017. Primavera received “Falls Far Below Standard” ratings from the State Charter Board four times during that same period. “Does Not Meet Standard,” the second-worst rating, was recorded twice. Pupils were not succeeding. Money was coming in. Very few people stopped it.
In the end, the Charter Board did. The board decided to start closing Primavera in March 2025 following three consecutive yearly “D” letter grades. Even though it was taking a while, it appeared that accountability was finally coming. Both Chairwoman Jessica Montierth and Board member James Swanson discussed adhering to the correct procedure; the board had been working on this case for months, and the 9-2 closure vote seemed like the right conclusion. “Our authority is based on following through with policy and procedure,” Montierth stated following the vote. That kind of institutional stability is difficult to ignore, particularly in a political climate that doesn’t encourage it.
The uncomfortable part of the story is what happened next. Tom Horne, the head of State Schools, received a direct appeal from Creamer, a significant Republican donor. Horne, a strong proponent of school choice, stepped in. The grades were recalculated. The closure procedure was put on hold. At a press conference, Creamer, who was not present at the board meeting, expressed gratitude and described it as a correction of a “administrative error.” The board members were left to absorb a decision made above their heads after spending months working toward closure.
Whether the grade recalculation was warranted or just a convenient result of political pressure is still up for debate. Both statements may be partially accurate. However, the board members’ dissatisfaction was evident and genuine, and it was a reflection of a larger issue within Arizona’s charter industry.
It’s a startling broader reality. According to an analysis by The Arizona Republic, 40 Arizona schools’ charter holders were identified as “going concerns” by their own auditors during the 2016–17 academic year, indicating a real risk of financial collapse within a year. At least three of the four financial health metrics established by the state board were failed by more than 25% of charter holders with available data. More than twice as many school closures were caused by financial issues as by academic ones.
It’s hard not to feel as though the families in these schools are the last people consulted when you watch this play out. Therefore, it felt more like necessity than heroism when Phoenix parents took the initiative to take charge of their school’s future by organizing, resisting, and refusing to just accept institutional failure. No one else was willing to do it, that’s all. That may be the most truthful information this story offers about the true state of Arizona’s charter experiment.
