
Over the last few days, the organization Save Our Schools (SOS) Arizona has launched a state budget education campaign blasting the Empowerment Scholarship Private School Voucher Program (ESA)and the Ducey-approved Flat Tax for blowing a hole (about $1.8 billion) in the fiscal budget, making the Grand Canyon State the financial equivalent of Kansas from the last decade.
Citing figures from the 2024 second quarter Arizona Empowerment Scholarship report to the State Board of Education, SOS has pointed out what everyone has known since the ESA program expanded at the end of the Ducey era: the great majority of the students taking advantage of the voucher program are families whose children have not attended (recently at least) a public school in their residential area.
The numbers validate what everyone suspected: the ESA program, like the flat tax program passed with it, are nothing more than “welfare for the rich” programs.
SOS Arizona, in its May 27, 2024 newsletter also presented charts claiming that funds going to these ESA accounts are draining revenues from local public school districts.

SOS, led by their Executive Director, Beth Lewis, also held an event at the State Capitol today, calling for reforming this welfare for the rich program (a move favored by the great majority of Arizonans,) showing again (like ABC 15 did earlier this year) how several ESA receipents have used these funds for non educational purposes like “bounce houses, ski trips, and kitchen appliances.”
In her comments, Lewis called for “public schools to be prioritzied with public funds.”
She also wrote an Op-Ed in AZ Central, calling for Republican leadership in the State Legislature to recognize fiscal reality and adopt Governor Hobb”s proposal to reform the voucher program and save other vital needs like public education and public safety.
Responding to Blog for Arizona’s request to comment on the current state budget outlook and reforming the ESA voucher program, Senate Democrat Leader Mitzi Epstein wrote:

“Budget negotiations are moving along. Everybody is hoping for a budget to be ready by mid-June.
Will it be a good budget? Well, Republicans have been budgeting with their eyes and ears closed for so many years, you can imagine the mess they are making. They cut over a billion dollars of revenue a year with tax give-away to billionaires and big corporations. They expanded government by adding ESA universal vouchers to private education, but they did not plan a way to pay for it. So now we have the same dollars for education, and over 50,000 more students. That is how the ESA universal voucher program takes money away from public school students.
Today on the Senate Lawn, advocates for public schools set up some great props to illustrate the waste, fraud, and abuse in the Republican universal voucher program. Republicans have designed it to have no guardrails, and the results are taxpayers’ dollars being spent on ski trips and luxury toys instead of efficient spending choices. Over $3 thousand dollars for one golf store purchase and $10,000 for one sewing machine are examples of wasteful, inefficient expenses. Taxpayers deserve accountability and transparency.
Democrats are fighting for exactly that: accountability, transparency, and a quality education for every child. We are fighting to keep funding for books and buses, and free school lunch for students in need. In contrast, Republicans are suggesting cuts to education. They have not even committed to lifting the AEL so that school districts may spend the money that is budgeted for them. Lifting the AEL should be a standard accounting action that is done every year. They are making it a political football, at the expense of children.
Even though we are all in the same state, negotiations on the budget have left me feeling that my Republican colleagues are in an entirely different state of mind than our Democratic Caucus. Democrats want sensible funding for our state responsibilities to public safety, public health, and public education. Sen. President Warren Petersen set the Republican goal when he declared publicly in January that he was looking forward to budget cuts.
“Budget cuts” means that teachers have less money to put food on the table; caregivers leave their profession because it does not pay enough. There is a long list of personal results from this sanitized phrase, “budget cuts.”
You might have to wait on the phone line even longer to get to talk to somebody at the motor vehicles department to get answers to questions about traveling and your drivers license. You should be able to depend on the Dept of Insurance to help you fight your insurance company to make them treat your claim fairly, but with “budget cuts” your fight might get worse. You might not be able to keep your child in the hospital treatment that is helping your child, without that help from the Dept. of Insurance. That is reality.
Potholes? – forget about it: budget cuts.
It does not have to be this way. I have been clamoring for responsible budgeting for years, while Republican legislative leaders have slashed and burned our budget. Sixty years of Republican one-party rule is too long in our state legislature. It is time for a Democratic Majority to bring responsible budgeting, accountability and transparency to government. In turn, we will invest wisely in public education, quality and affordable childcare, healthcare, and workforce development. Democrats deliver for you.”
Superintendent Horne agrees with Lewis and Epstein.

In a great ironic twist, Arizona Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Horne issued a statement today in an attempt to refute SOS Arizona’s charges.
In it, he confirmed what Lewis, Epstein, and others in the world of reality are saying: rich private school families are taking advantage of the ESA program and not public school ones.
Commenting on SOS Arizona’s claim that ESA funds are taking away revenues from the Phoenix Union High School District, Superintendent Horne wrote:
“SOS pointed to Phoenix Union losing funds because of ESA’s. Any time they lose students, they also lose the cost of educating the student, so they’re resulting funding per student in their district remains constant. In the case of ESA students, only 40 students left Phoenix Union schools for that reason during the last school year. The 1,137 cited in the department’s Quarterly Report are children who live within Phoenix Union boundaries but have either never attended a Phoenix Union school or had not in recent years.”
According to Horne’s own figures, 97 percent of the children enrolled by their families in the ESA program in the Phoenix Union High School residential zones have never attended or stopped enrolling a long time ago in a public school program.
If that is not confirmation on the need for reform of the ESA private school voucher program, what is.
It is time for the Republicans in the state legislature to live up to their undeserved reputations of supporting fiscal prudence, funding public safety, and giving public schools the funds they need.
The rich do not need welfare from hard earned middle class and working class tax dollars.
That money should go to the public school teacher who has to spend their own salary to get supplies or the police officer or firemen who risks their lives to protect the communities across the Grand Canyon state. That is better use for the public dollar than letting families buy ski trips through ESA vouchers.
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It seems to me ESA is simply a GQP program to buy votes.
Nunna Urbiz :
You seem to be a little less cynical than I am.
I think that school vouchers exist so that GOPers can use public monies to line private pockets.
The one vote legislative majority is hot on putting every nitwit idea Hobbs would veto on the ballot, but sure as heck dont have the courage to put vouchers on the ballot. And if I see the walking corpse lie thru his teeth about his job is bettered REAL public schools, while also pumping budget busting vouchers, I’m going to strangle someone. Vouchers dont need reform, they need to be ABOLISHED.
Absolutely correct! Every time I see one of those Horne commercials touting the ESA program I want to throw my shoe at him or something. Arizona needs budget reform. No more tax cuts for the wealthy. Republicans seem to wonder why Arizona has a severe teacher shortage, they need to look no further than the way they deliberately hamstring public schools in favor of helping the rich send their kids to private schools or on ski trips.