The Center for Economic Integrity and Pima Supervisor Rex Scott heartily endorsed a newly-filed ballot initiative to bring accountability and transparency to Arizona’s $1 billion universal ESA voucher program.
“I’m a strong supporter of it,” Scott said at a meeting of the Center for Economic Integrity on March 15, 2026, in Tucson. Scott and the CEI strongly support early childhood education to break the cycle of poverty and improve learning.
“It’s going to take citizens to step forward,” Scott said, “because the ESA Voucher system is blowing a massive hole in the state budget.”
The Protect Education Act is a public initiative that is led by the Arizona Education Association, Save Our Schools Arizona, and CEI. Supporters must get 255,949 valid signatures by July 2, 2026, to put the measure on the ballot.
The initiative will put guardrails and transparency measures in place for the fraud-ridden ESA Voucher system, which is a parasite on public schools. Vouchers drain money from public schools and squander it on unaccredited private and religious schools and unsupervised homeschooling. Some 20% of all applications to the unmonitored Voucher system are wantonly squandered on “ghost children,” private and religious school tuition, trips to Disneyland, diamond rings and sex toys.
Kelly Griffith is the Executive Director of CEI, which is celebrating its 20th anniversary fighting for public schools, early childhood education and consumer protection. CEI formed a coalition that created P.E.E.P.S., which has awarded 5,000 scholarships to preschool education for Tucson students since 2021.
The Protect Education Act ballot initiative:
- Imposes an income cap so that most universal ESA vouchers are limited to families earning $150,000 or less, with the cap indexed to inflation.
- Adds safety and oversight rules for ESA-funded schools: staff background checks, basic health and safety standards, and either accreditation or standardized testing comparable to public schools.
- Tightens spending rules to block ESA funds from being used on “non‑educational” and luxury items and requires quarterly public reporting of ESA spending.
- Sends unused ESA dollars back through existing school funding formulas to public schools each year.
The event was hosted by Patricia Overall, Board Member.
Discover more from Blog for Arizona
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.