In this article, based on an ethnographic study in Sundale City, Arizona, I use an interpretive and anthropological approach to policy analysis to highlight how social actors interpreted the national charter school debate to enact local school choice policy development in their everyday lives. Specifically, findings from this study provide a contextualized portrayal that illustrates how an economic rationality of schooling and an absence of information on school choice policy served to polarize and fracture the potential for citizens to collectively grapple with and address local educational issues democratically.