(C) Arizona Mirror
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Public school advocates demand voucher reform amid $1 billion deficit [1]

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Date: 2024-05-29  

Public school advocates are demanding that private school voucher reform be included in the state budget, as the governor and legislative leaders work behind the scenes to deal with a $1.3 billion deficit and a looming deadline to balance it.

Members of Save Our Schools Arizona, a public education advocacy group that has been a vocal opponent of Arizona’s school voucher system, joined Democratic state legislators and other supporters of public schools outside the Arizona Senate Wednesday morning before presenting a petition to lawmakers, signed by 3,000 Arizonans who insist that voucher reform be included in budget talks.

“Our state legislature has a clear choice: make devastating cuts to essential services and public education, or work with Governor Hobbs to reform the ESA voucher program and return public funds to our schools,” said Beth Lewis, executive director of Save Our Schools Arizona. “A budget without ESA voucher reform is no budget at all.”

Arizona’s voucher system is formally known as Empowerment Scholarship Accounts, or ESA, and works by giving the parents of participating students a debit card that can be used to pay for various educational costs, including private school tuition and homeschooling supplies. The money can even be saved for college.

It’s unlikely that Republicans, who have a majority in both the state House of Representatives and Senate, will take any steps to reform the expanded universal voucher program that they championed in 2022. Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs included significant restrictions and changes to the program in her proposed 2025 budget, which top Republicans Senate President Warren Petersen and House Speaker Ben Toma both dismissed earlier this year as “wildly unrealistic.”

When asked if he would consider voucher reform as part of budget talks among the legislative leaders and Hobbs, Petersen only told the Arizona Mirror that “budget discussions are confidential until we have reached a deal with the House, Senate, and Governor.”

The state’s 2024 fiscal year ends June 30, and Petersen, Toma and Hobbs must work together to balance this year’s budget and create one for fiscal year 2025 before that deadline. There is a combined estimated shortfall of around $1.3 billion between the two budgets.

The voucher scheme was created in 2012 to allow special education students to attend private or parochial schools using state funding. After the Arizona Supreme Court determined that the program did not violate Arizona’s constitutional ban on directing tax dollars to religious entities, the ESA system was later expanded to include other groups like foster kids and those attending failing public schools.

In 2022, legislative Republicans voted to expand the program to allow any K-12 student in the state to attend private school or to be homeschooled using public money, even if that student’s parents were already paying for them to attend private school before a voucher was available.

Signa Oliver, a member of Phoenix Union School District’s Governing Board, called the universal ESA expansion a subsidy for the wealthy.

“My tax dollars should never subsidize the children of people who have the resources to afford to send their children to private and parochial schools,” Oliver said. “Disadvantaged communities should never have to subsidize the ultra-rich children’s privileged education wants.”

Earlier this year, Hobbs’ office estimated that around 67% of students participating in the ESA program in January had never attended a public school.

During the Wednesday press conference, public school advocates surrounded themselves with props, including an espresso machine, inflatable toys, a keyboard and golf clubs — a sampling of the luxury items that parents have purchased using voucher funds.

Democratic Rep. Analise Ortiz of Phoenix pointed out that when a keyboard, for example, is purchased for a voucher student, it is used by one family, while one purchased for a public school could be used by hundreds of students.

“This is ridiculous,” Ortiz said. “It’s abuse of taxpayer dollars.”

Public school advocates have been saying since before the program was expanded that it is a drain on Arizona’s public school system, which is already one of the worst-funded in the nation.

The 2024 state budget was created with the assumption that 68,380 students would take part in the expanded program at a total cost of $625 million. As of January, revised estimates placed this year’s cost at around $723.5 million, with an enrollment of more than 74,000.

Doug Nick, a spokesman with the Arizona Department of Education told the Mirror that, as of May 29, the total estimated cost for the 2024 fiscal year was a little under $700 million.

However, halfway through the 2024 fiscal year, which ends June 30, the program had 71,520 participants and had already awarded more than $698 million in vouchers, without accounting for administrative costs, according to the ESA program’s own report. As of May 29, more than 75,200 students were enrolled, according to the ESA website, at a median cost of $7,000-$8,000 per student.

At the time this article was published, Nick had not answered follow-up questions from the Mirror about how the total cost estimate for the program could be less than $700 million if it had promised almost that much in scholarships six months before the end of the fiscal year.

In response to SOS AZ’s press conference, Republican Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Horne accused members of the group of being so “immersed in ideology” that “it has made them coldhearted with respect to students’ academic needs.”

Horne has previously said that the voucher program gives poor students the same options that students from wealthy families have always had, and added in his response statement that vouchers create competition, which he said makes public schools better.

But a recent report from the Brookings Institute, a nonprofit think tank, found that families in privileged Arizona communities receive a disproportionately high percentage of universal voucher funds, while families in the state’s poorest communities are least likely to benefit from the program.

“We cannot wait,” Ortiz said during the press conference. “We need this in the budget this year because waiting another year means potentially millions of dollars that will be thrown down the drain on this wasteful and reckless program.”

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[1] Url: https://azmirror.com/2024/05/29/public-school-advocates-demand-voucher-reform-amid-1-billion-deficit/

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