Jenny Clark, Co-Founder of Read The Word, said that limited access to available school facilities is hindering the establishment of innovative and hybrid schools in Arizona, despite interest from private operators. This statement was made on X.
“One of the largest barriers to launching new innovate, hybrid, or other schools: PROPERTY,” said Clark. “Empty Arizona public schools sit empty, with plenty of Private operators looking to lease or buy. I’m hearing this story every single week in Arizona. What can be done?”
According to a 2025 report by the Common Sense Institute, Arizona’s K-12 facility system is increasingly misaligned with the rise of school choice, charter, and hybrid models. Districts maintain large inventories of buildings despite declining enrollment and growing demand for alternative schools. The report found that district public schools currently hold 78 million square feet of excess space—enough to educate approximately 630,000 students—while charter and private schools struggle to find affordable facilities. It argues that traditional funding and capital-spending models, designed for perpetual growth, fail to adapt to shifting student preferences and prevent new school models from scaling.
As reported by the Common Sense Institute and media coverage in 2025, Arizona’s district K-12 public schools operate at about 67% of student capacity. This means roughly one-third of their seats and facilities remain underused. The estimated market value of their excess space is approximately $12.2 billion. The analysis also notes that district building space has increased even as enrollment has fallen by 5% since 2019, reflecting issues of over-building and under-utilization in the traditional public system.
Demand for non-district school options in Arizona has grown rapidly. The Arizona Empowerment Scholarship Account (ESA) program expanded from about 12,000 students in the 2021-22 school year to over 60,000 students in 2022-23—a growth of approximately 400%. This suggests a surge in families seeking charter, hybrid, or private school seats. In contrast, district school capacity remains underutilized while charter schools operate at roughly 95% capacity and private schools at about 75%, according to the Common Sense Institute report from 2025. This underscores a facility-capacity mismatch between growing demand in choice models and excess supply in traditional districts.
Clark is an Arizona-based school-choice advocate and mother of five children (three diagnosed with dyslexia). She founded the nonprofit organization Love Your School in 2019 to help families navigate school-choice options including ESAs, charters, hybrid, and microschool settings. She holds a Bachelor’s degree in Business Economics from the University of Arizona and a Master of Divinity from the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. Since January 2022, she has served on the Arizona State Board of Education.
Read The Word is a nonprofit based in Arizona co-founded by Jenny Clark and her husband Michael Clark. Its mission is to “mobilize churches to solve the American literacy crisis.” The organization focuses on building a network of congregations that partner with families and schools to provide reading support rooted in evangelical Christian principles.
