ESA (Voucher) Vote Thursday!

Arizona’s public district school children (all one million plus), need your help! Both chambers of the AZ Legislature are scheduled to vote on the full expansion of Empowerment Scholarship Accounts (ESAs) on Thursday, April 6, and district school advocates aren’t sure we have enough votes to kill the bills (SB1431 and HB2394.)

Please act now to help! Here’s information on how from the Arizona School Boards Association:

This is It! ESAs Going to a Vote

SB1431 and HB294 empowerment scholarship accounts; phase in

 The ESA expansion bills are going to a vote tomorrow. ESAs may have the one vote they need to pass the Senate but we still have a chance to stop them in the House. If we can help the House hold strong, it will be a victory for education advocates. Below are our friends and potential supporters who should know their constituents are watching! Take a moment to call and/or email and let them know:

  • Arizona cannot afford universal ESAs
  • ESAs are not a savings and will take general fund dollars away from all other state priorities, not just education.
  • No amendments will make universal ESAs an acceptable use of public funds. Tax dollars are still diverted for private use
  • ASBA considers this a fundamental indication of which members truly support public education

Thank/Stay Strong/Continue Support

LD 15 Rep. Heather Carter hcarter@azleg.gov 602-926-5503

LD10 Rep. Todd Clodfelter tclodfelter@azleg.gov 602-926-4850

LD 5 Rep. Regina Cobb rcobb@azleg.gov 602-926-3126

LD 16 Rep. Doug Coleman dcoleman@azleg.gov 602-926-3160

LD14 Rep. Drew John djohn@azleg.gov 602-926-5154

LD25 Rep. Michelle Udall mudall@azleg.gov 602-926-4856

LD28 Sen. Kate Brophy-McGee kbrophymcgee@azleg.gov 602-926-4486

Potenial No Votes

LD13 Rep. Darrin Mitchell dmitchell@azleg.gov 602-926-5894

LD28 Rep. Maria Syms msyms@azleg.gov 602-926-4840

LD8 Rep. David Cook dcook@azleg.gov 602-926-5162

ASBA *can* help stop ESAs. These members need to know that they will be supported for doing the right thing! Call and/or email now!

5 thoughts on “ESA (Voucher) Vote Thursday!”

  1. According to Karl Marx, the entire history of mankind is the story of the struggle between the oppressed and the oppressor. His narrative didn’t apply to the free market of the US. But, it did apply to the oppressive governments of Europe where they had ten times as many bureaucrats crushing the spirit and prosperity.

    His dictum also applies to our education system where the underprivileged, the at-risk, the minority and the poor are trapped in a system which doesn’t come close to yielding their potential. They are the oppressed and you all are the oppressors.

    The entire “education” system is in a war with poor and minority kids. Go volunteer at a high poverty high minority school and observe for yourself.

    These kids hate school. They would hate it even more if they knew what was possible.

    So, continue the oppression, trap these kids, take away their power. Be a montgomery school where that poor girl had her head pushed down in a toilet while she was sodomized. Tell the mom of that girl, all the moms out there that they don’t know what’s best for their child.

    Be proud.

    • Just one question:

      How much money, under the current construction of this program (not your stylized ideal version), would be going to inframarginal families who will not change their behavior, because they already send their children to private schools?

      And how many people would still be trapped because, even with a voucher, they still wouldn’t be able to pay anywhere close to the cost of private schools, which in many cases run 2-3 times more expensive than does public schools? Not with your ideal, handwaved notion that anything good must be the result of school choice and tax cuts, and every social malaise is always the result of regulation, but with an actual economic analysis?

      Do you have literally any citation or evidence to suggest that educators, school boards, etc. are engaging in a systematic war against minorities? If so, why do you believe this to be the case? If not, why do you keep making statements to this effect for cheap political points?

    • Racism is the reason for the poor and minority kids school issues. You don’t fund their schools, you use the broken windows style of law enforcement to lock up fathers, and you use a racist bail and prison system to ensure “those” people are kept locked up.

      But you choose to leave those cherries on the tree when you go picking, Falcon9.

      I wonder why?

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