Spokespersons for the new citizen’s intitiative (David has a great rundown of the outline, so I won’t repeat) say It’s time to bring accountability, transparency, and safety standards to Arizona’s billion-dollar ESA voucher program, protect the vast majority of our kids’ educational opportunities, and give Arizona taxpayers the accountability and transparency we deserve.
Damned right we deserve it! The MAGA legislator zealots have wasted hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars over the past years, and are on the way to wasting over a billion taxpayer dollars just THIS year lining the pockets of the wealthiest parents by defraying the cost of their childrens’ private school tuition at some of the toniest private academies in the state (many of whom have merely raised their rates by the amount of the basic voucher in response).
Those MAGA public-anything-haters have shoveled money at shady educational vendors and scam schools swarming in to slurp up those tax dollars with zero transparency or accountability.
Of course, it has been a bonanza for those wealthy parents who treat the vouchers like a birthday present to their kids by buying all sort of crazy luxury products and services, all at the direct expense of Arizona’s public schools, or by simply shoveling it all into a publicly funded college fund for junior (an estimated $400–450 million collectively — is just rolling over into college tuition funds for our wealthiest citizens!).
Now, we common folks aremd with just the right to vote and some shoeleather, but without the millions to influence our MAGAfied legislature, will finally will get a voice in limiting this ruinous program by installing reasonable limits and oversight.
Every child in Arizona should have access to a safe, high-quality education that prepares them to succeed in life. That is the mission of our public schools that GOP and MAGA legislators have been beavering away to undermine for decades. They have found many ways over the years to screw our public schools while lining their own pockets (such as through the private tuition scholarship accounts that they invented, and some legislators then rushed to ‘administer’… for a ‘reasonable’ cut of the donations, of course), but none have approached the audacity and scale of the ESA voucher grift.
It was just a few years ago they finally hit upon this wild voucher scheme; they snuck it under tent Constitutionally (despite our Arizona Constitution preventing just that — thereby hangs a legal tale so tedious and tendentious I can barely keep MY eyes open thinking about it) by taking it incrementally, starting with the most charismatic and needy recipients. But then they sprung the tent once the AZ Supreme Court twisted itself into logic pretzels to allow such vouchers. The program was broadened to… well, pretty much anyone with enough money to contemplate taking vouchers (especially those who were ALREADY paying private tuitions). They finally got their ideal tool to undermine our public schools and shower money on the state’s wealthiest parents, stuff private schools with new tax dollars , and enrich rich shady and unregulated private school companies and providers of educational products and services (some of them MAGA legislators, of course) that would never fly in our public schools (due to their biased and religious content and sheer quackery, generally).
Arizona’s ESA voucher program is on track to spend more than $1 billion in taxpayer dollars, annually — with no accountability or transparency on whatever on how OUR dollars are spent by the overwhemingly wealthy and self-interested recipients. Our public school districts are left dealing with massive annual shortfalls in funding and declining enrollments (mostly due to falling birthrates, but also some losses to private schools (i.e. unregulated business without oversight or standards of that public money going to them, many of them largely or entirely online), and some charter schools). The MAGA legislators got to do all that damage to public education while shoveling those tax dollars into the pockets of their wealthiest supporters and donors, and themselves. Bo. Nan. Za!
Make no mistake, universal ESA vouchers were DESIGNED to have no protections against waste, fraud, and misuse: this was not a bug – it was a feature, and key selling point! Taxpayer dollars are being used for luxury items like diamond rings, lingerie, big screen TVs, and out-of-state vacations — basically anything can be called ‘educational’ , no matter how utterly implausible. Parent’s choice, right? Well, no; not with the public’s tax dollars! If those MAGA boys and girls at the leg saw all that unsuperivised money flowing to the needy and deserving, they would call it welfare, communism, and worse and demand immediate hearings, limits, prosecutions, and more. But, no, the MAGA legislators won’t brook ANY oversight: they are even primarying Republican Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Horne with Kim Yee because Tom is actually open to a small modicum of oversight of those public dollars. How dare he wreck our looting spree, scream the MAGAs!
This initiative — led by educators and parents who care deeply about actually educating our kids — is we Arizona voters’ chance to end the waste, fraud, and safety issues that were intended to happen in the universal ESA voucher-funded programs. We can finally act to reign in this ruinous program, since the MAGA legislators have proven absolutely obdurate to ANY limits.They even threated a total government shut down if Governor Hobbs even gestured toward doing anything about this out-of-control program. They even turned back a Democratic amendment to an education bill last session that would have capped universal ESA voucher eligibility at $1M income!?
Those parents taking home $1M a year can CERTAINLY afford to pay for thier kids’ private schools, should they choose to send their privileged little tikes to them. So why are they eligible for public funds to do it? Because univeral ESA vouchers are not just about helping those poor, barely scraping by multi-millionares, they aren’t just about wasting our money on crackpot educational, schemes, services, and products; they are about trying to weaken and ultimately wholly immiserate public education and the parents and kids who must use that system – which is, I would note, the greatest ladder to social mobility our Republic has ever invented. Why does MAGA hate public education with such a burning passion? Because… facts being taught? DEI-stuff like emotional intelligence and tolerance being taught? Public school teachers not being allowed to thump the Bible (very specifically) at their students? Because every kid can rise on their own innate talents and hard work, and maybe eeke moneyed scion, Rupert, out of his ‘rightful’ place in society? All that, I suppose?
So for now the MAGA legislators content themselves with making public schools as poor, miserable, and understaffed as possible while imposing literally insane schemes like banning certain ‘inapropriate’ books (according to whomever complains loudest, I suppose – certainly not educators), making teachers be disrespectful and dickish to their kids by not letting them call them by their real names or acknowledge their gender identity, maybe making teachers gunfight on behalf of thier pupils because we ‘can’t never-did do nothing’ about rampant gun violence in our schools, and generally making ‘sucky and stupid’ the rule in public schools.
The “Protect Education, Accountability Now!” (yeah, the initialism PEAN was perhaps not considered phonetically… gold spots on a black ground in heraldry? or maybe we can work an extra A in there for PAEAN, a song of praise or triumph? Anyhow… ) measure will finally bring about financial accountability and transparency to the disastrous ESA vouchers program, while also supporting the over 90 percent of Arizona’s students — including 91 percent of students with disabilities — who attend our neighborhood public schools. We can finally DO something to protect the public schools that the vast majority of our kids attend. We can finally stop tax money being plowed into the pockets of the wealthiest parents and the slap-happy fairy-dust salesmen selling miracle panceas and religious indoctrination desiguised as education. We can finally study if ANY of that voucher money is actually EFFECTIVE at educating the small minority of kids whose parents choose to participate.
For four long years now, Arizona politicians have refused to implement ANY reforms the ESA voucher program desperately needs – and that Democrats have offered repeatedly in good faith. Now, Arizona voters are able to take matters into our own hands to finally put the brakes on one of them most scandalous wastes of taxpayer money this state has ever seen. We are all legislators, too. And the MAGA legislators deeply hate that fact; they are constantly trying to cajole and trick us into limiting our own powers over them. Our laws are stronger than theirs, and we can change our Constitution – they can’t do that without our vote.
Remember the Alt-Fuels debacle at the turn of the century (also dreamt up by Republicans like Governor Hull and then-House Speaker Jeff Groscost) that exploded from an expected cost of an estimated roughly 3–10 million dollars into hundreds of millions, triggered political fallout, criminal and ethics investigations, and subsequent statutory roll‑backs and litigation over rescinded benefits? That’s a mere drop in the bucket compared to the ballooning billions of dollars boondoggle ESA vouchers have become!
And the legislature WON’T act as long as it controlled by the GOP/MAGA minions. The Democrats CAN’T act, unless voters finally get fed up enough to give them a majority! But now YOU CAN ACT to get this MAGA scam under control by signing the citizen’s initiative petiton, circulating it to your friends, neighbors, and the parents of kids in your public schools.
Large majorities of our fellow citizens, even pretty conservative ones, favor pulling back and putting some rational controls on this program. A lot of conservatives’ kids ALSO go to public schools and they can see what is being done to our public schools by this program.
We’ll need about 500K signatures to ensure this will be on the ballot, and we don’t have a ton of time to do it. Remember the mad race to get the Abortion Rights Initiative on the ballot? This will be much like that. Reach out to SOSAZNetwork.org, and add your granula to the pile.
We can do this! We WILL do this!
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