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Now that the political rhetoric and election drama is over, let’s get down to what we as individuals and corporations can do, right now, to help move the needle on making quality education accessible for all kids in Arizona.

In 2000, our state leaders wisely implemented legislation allowing school-tuition organizations, enabling non-profit, private organizations to collect donations for tuition at qualified private schools. Two years later they passed legislation allowing tax credits for donations to public schools.

These two milestones are a testament to the innovativeness of our political leaders, yet they net too few participants.

When Blanca Fuentes-Pholyotin was a little girl, her father told her to value education above all else. Although a captain in the Mexican army before he immigrated, in the United States he worked at a garbage-disposal center. “He told us the more knowledge you have, the better off you will be,” said Fuentes-Pholyotin, a health technician at the Carl T. Hayden VA Medical Center in Phoenix. Fuentes-Pholyotin’s father died young, leaving his 18-year-old daughter to care for her mother and five siblings. Not able to go to college, she joined the American armed services. While Fuentes-Pholyotin is grateful for the opportunities that being in the military afforded her, her dream for her five children is that they get a college education. And she believes her oldest son, Miguel Cordova, is on his way to doing that, thanks to Loyola Academy.