Activists are expected to deliver more than 118,000 petitions to the secretary of state in an effort to put the measure on the 2024 ballot.
Opponents of a sweeping expansion of Arizona’s school-voucher program are expected to deliver more than 118,000 petitions to the secretary of state’s office Friday in an effort to put the measure on the 2024 ballot and block the program’s expansion until then.
The voucher program expansion, which as signed into law by Governor Doug Ducey in July, would make all 1.1 million Arizona K-12 students eligible for what is known as an Empowerment Scholarship Account. The scholarships would provide about $4,000 for kindergartners and $6,500 for other students through 12th grade to attend a school of their choice or to pay for other education-related expenses – tutors, textbooks, online courses.
Supporters of the law have called it the new “gold standard” for school choice. They argue, in part, that the learning losses American students endured during the Covid-19 pandemic show the need to empower parents to make critical educational choices for their kids.
“The question is not, are we paying for kids to go to public schools, and is it fair that they have choices? The question is, how do we help kids succeed? Because, clearly now we are in a crisis,” said Jonathan Butcher, a fellow with the Heritage Foundation and the Arizona-based Goldwater Institute, who backs the voucher expansion.
But opponents of the program argue that it would be a “nail in the coffin” for public education in Arizona. Organizers of the union-backed Save Our Schools Arizona, who successfully blocked a previous expansion effort in 2018, have spent months gathering signatures to put the voucher program expansion on the 2024 ballot. They are due today. If they are successful, implementation of the law would be halted until voters have a say.
Beth Lewis, executive director of Save Our Schools Arizona, told Cronkite News that their goal is to stop “the complete decimation of public education.”
Opponents of the voucher expansion argue that it will siphon off money from already underfunded public schools. They point to Arizona Department of Education data that show that of the roughly 11,000 new program applicants, 76 percent – or more than 8,000 – didn’t have children enrolled in public schools, according to a Cronkite News report. Those students alone would funnel $53 million out of the public school system, they say.
Backers of the voucher expansion note that the cost of the vouchers, about $6,500 for most students, is well below the approximately $11,000 annual state and local cost to educate a public-school student in Arizona. So, students who leave for a private school or another learning option will actually save the school system money.
Butcher noted that the number of ESA applicants to date is just a small fraction of Arizona’s student body. “There’s never been such an exodus that it disrupted the public school system so the doors didn’t open,” he said. He suspects more parents whose kids are already outside the public school system will request vouchers in the future.
Regarding the 8,000 or so kids not in public schools who’ve applied for ESA vouchers, “It would be more expensive if these kids went to public school, for taxpayers, next year,” he said.
The ESA program in Arizona, a longtime leader in the school choice movement, has roots stretching back over a decade. First approved in 2011, the program was initially limited to students with special needs who weren’t being served well in their assigned school. The program launched that year with about 75 students, Butcher said, but expanded over the years to include new groups of students: kids attending failing schools, kids on Native American reservations, kids in foster care, kids with parents in the military. More than 11,000 students were enrolled in the program as of last fall.
In 2017, the Arizona legislature attempted to expand the program, making it an option for most of the state’s 1.1 million students. The number of students who could receive the funds under that plan would have been capped at 30,000.
But Save Our Schools Arizona challenged that expansion, gathering more than 111,000 signatures, and putting the measure on the ballot in 2018 as Proposition 305. Voters ended up rejecting the voucher expansion overwhelmingly, though Butcher noted that questions about caps on the program likely caused some confusion at the time.
If Save Our Schools Arizona is able to repeat its efforts and put the new version of the voucher expansion on the ballot again, supporters of the program believe they’ll have a more favorable political environment to win this time around. Parents in Arizona and elsewhere were frustrated by pandemic-related school closures and learning losses, and at-home schooling gave parents a new look at how and what kids are taught in public schools. The federal government doled out more than $190 billion in Covid relief for public schools, but many school systems spent money on items not related to recovering from the pandemic: football fields, band risers, weight rooms, e-sports video-game centers.
Supporters of the ESA program have accused Save Our Schools Arizona activists of lying to voters about the voucher expansion and using taxpayer money in their efforts to undermine it.
The Save Our Schools Arizona effort also will likely face a court challenge.
Butcher said the effort to provide all parents and students in Arizona with a choice in education is not an effort to close assigned public schools.
“What there is is a concerted effort among parents who feel they are fearful for their children’s future to find the best opportunity for them,” he said. “Moving a child to a different school, anyone who has kids will tell you that’s not a small thing. You have roots there, you have friends, you know the teacher. You have a community there.”