Since the passage of the Anti Voucher expansion Proposition 305 Ballot Measure in 2018, the reactionary members of the Arizona State Legislature have continued to push the envelope on proposed measures to allow families to spend state taxpayer money, through Empowerment Scholarship Accounts (ESA’s) on private (mostly religious) schools.
These fringe legislators have:
- Pushed bills to allow children to use Arizona funds in out of state private schools.
- Virtually done nothing to assist Kathy Hoffman’s Education Department in processing Empowerment Scholarship Applications.
- Called for the Voucher program (which Hoffman’s team has uncovered spending “irregularities”-abuses by some families who are using the funds meant for K-12 tuition on other expenses to be taken out of the Education Department’s jurisdiction.
The organization that spearheaded the Proposition 305 drive, Save Our Schools Arizona, has decided to launch a new ballot initiative to permanently block the legislature from expanding the voucher program beyond what has already been passed.
Issuing a statement on the new ballot initiative, the Communications Director of Save Our Schools Dawn Penich-Thacker wrote:
“Grassroots powerhouse Save Our Schools Arizona on Wednesday filed a citizens’ initiative – the Save Our Schools Act – to limit and reform the state’s infamous private school voucher program known as Empowerment Scholarship Accounts. The measure will place a cap on the program equal to 1 percent of the total Arizona student population, institute priority access for students with disabilities, and enact a number of financial accountability, transparency and tax dollar responsibility reforms.”
“Upon passage, the Save Our Schools Act will be the nation’s first direct voter action permanently limiting private school vouchers thanks to Arizona’s unique Voter Protection law.”
“The volunteer group composed of Arizona parents, business leaders, teachers, students, and retirees will run a statewide signature-gathering campaign similar to their successful referral of Proposition 305 in 2018. Then, SOSAZ was triumphant in defeating a universal private school voucher expansion by a 2-to-1 margin, with 65 percent of Arizona voters choosing not to allow more private school vouchers. Despite voters’ clear refusal to grow the program, pro-voucher lobbyists and lawmakers have put forward at least seven separate attempts to expand ESA vouchers in Arizona in less than two years.”
“The Save Our Schools Act aims to respect the will of Arizona voters by once and for all placing a reasonable limit, compassionate priority mechanism and several responsible reforms on the ESA voucher program. By succeeding, the Save Our Schools Act will permanently protect Arizona taxpayers’ investment in public education and add new accountability and oversight to the ways Arizona tax dollars are managed.”
“Petitions will be available across the state on Saturday at Changing Hands Bookstore in Tempe as well as other locations in Tucson, Flagstaff, Prescott and more.”
“To learn more about the Save Our Schools Act and get involved, visit YesSOSAZ.com.”
Further reporting by Rob O’Dell and Yvonne Wingett Sanchez of AZ Central revealed that the goals of the new initiative if passed, would:
- Stop the legislature from creating new categories of qualifying students that can apply for Empowerment Scholarships. There are currently six that include children who are special education and students who attend D or F schools.
- Cap scholarship enrollment levels at one percent.
- Disallow students from using state funds for out of state private school tuition.
- ” Closing the accounts of children who have graduated from high school or children with special needs who have reached the age of 22, and putting any leftover money into the “taxpayer protection fund.”
- “Preventing parents from rolling over unused money from year to year. According to a Republic records request, nine families out of the nearly 7,000 accounts had a balance of more than $100,000 in January. Fewer than 100 parents, or just over 1% of the accounts, had more than $50,000. Parents of students with disabilities can receive up to $40,000 a year.” Any unused funds would be placed in a “taxpayer protection fund.”
- “Preventing money from being transferred into college savings accounts such as Coverdell or 529 accounts. This occurred soon after the ESA program was created.”
- “Prohibiting money from being spent for college once a child has graduated from high school. College credits for children in high school would still be allowed. Records obtained by The Republic showed $232,000 has been spent on college expenses since 2017.”
Some Legislative District (LD) Democratic Candidates looking to become part of a new majority at the State Capitol in 2021 voiced their views on the new ballot initiative.
Colonel Felicia French, running to become the new State Senator in LD Six, wrote:
“Arizona’s special education funding formula is 40-years old and out of date. That formula, like overall funding for our K-12 education budget, including salaries for our educators and school support staff, no longer meets the needs of our families. It’s critical that Arizona prioritizes investments for quality public education for all our children, including funding for special education.”
“As your State Senator, I will fight to make sure ALL of Arizona’s children have access to quality academic resources, regardless of their zip code or school district, so every child is set up for success.”
LD 22 State House Candidate Kathleen Honne commented:
“The Save Our Schools Act gives Arizona voters the opportunity to ONCE AGAIN do what state lawmakers won’t, ensure tax dollars are utilized to most effectively benefit students. When elected officials refuse to work in the best interest of the citizens, the citizens must act. From its inception, this has been and continues to be the mission of Save Our Schools, with the narrow focus of protecting children and their educational future. In 2018 the people overwhelmingly expressed their desire to stop voucher expansion – not end them. The legislature hasn’t listened since then, so I suggest in addition to supporting this initiative, we replace them.”
The State Senate Candidate for LD 22 Sarah Tyree relayed:
“My understanding of the ESAs was that they were intended for children with special needs and maybe some of the more impoverished and rural communities. However, it seems to have turned into a free for all for the higher functioning families. I believe Save Our Schools is attempting to put the money and resources back to where it was originally intended and I support that and our children.”
Paul Stapleton-Smith, a candidate for one of the State House seats in LD Ten wrote:
“Regarding the SOS Initiative to limit the explosive expansion of ESA vouchers, we must recognize that public schools are under relentless attack by for-profit corporations.”
“For-profit private schools are businesses that seek to enrich their owners and shareholders at taxpayer expense. Our children become commodities that represent profits, and their education is always subordinated to the endless greed of corporations.”
“Arizona has watched billions of dollars in public school funding slashed over many years by the architects of this corporate greed. They demonize our public school teachers, attempt to break our teacher’s unions, avoiding any transparency and accountability. They divide our voters and confuse our parents with claims of a broken public school system that they have deliberately underfunded—by breaking the public schools, they then claim that private businesses will step in and do better. This is a con: The only thing that they do better is to line their pockets at the expense of our children and taxpayers.”
“We already have terrific ways to legally accommodate students with special needs, and with challenges in rural areas with our public schools, but multimillionaire for-profit private school operators would have you believe that they need special privileges, benefits, and exemptions to run their business. Nonsense.”
“Not a nickel of taxpayer money should ever go to for-profit school operators and conmen.”
“It’s time to stand up for working families, and our children and stare the privatizers in the eye and say, “No more.” The endless promotion of for-profit schools at taxpayer expense must end now.”
The Reactionary Republican members of the State Legislature and Governor’s office have stepped too far into fringe land with their attempts to appease their zealot base with voucher expansion and other measures on nonexistent voter fraud and LGBTQ discrimination.
Voters should do what they did with Proposition 305 in 2018 and overwhelmingly support the new Save Our Schools Ballot Initiative in November 2020.
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And I forgot to mention that the “separate amendment rule” is sometimes called the “single subject rule for amendments”. Oh well.
(There is only a “single subject rule” per the AZ Constitution for the laws passed by the legislators. Statutory popular initiatives are not restricted, at this time, to a single subject, according to a recent AZ Supreme Court decision.)
Of course in my previous comment I meant the “separate amendment rule”! Sorry about that! I didn’t have a proof-reader available.
Given the Rep. law-makers aim to neuter AZ direct democracy (‘House targeting ballot measures’ by A. Oxford), civic groups need to organize now. What they need to organize is a dedicated direct democracy federation (DDF). They need to get ready to go into action immediately after the next election. They need to pool their resources to not just stop this attack on direct democracy. They need to reverse all the incremental damage done in recent years. If all the big civic groups and many of the smaller groups join together that could be enough to do the job. The window to do this is closing fast.
This will take one very big effort. So, civic groups should NOT risk relying on the “voter protection act” to safeguard an omnibus statute. It will take a gang of AZ constitutional amendments due to the “single amendment rule”. Amendments are more difficult to put on the ballot as they require more petition signatures. But they are the gold standard. The legislature will have to work a lot harder to change a constitutional amendment. And, by definition, even the “Ducey-packed” AZ Supreme Court will have a hard time declaring any amendment UNconstitutional. Just don’t violate the “single amendment rule”! But the ‘Supreme threat’ still means that the language of all the ballot amendment measures needs to be very tight (free of ambiguity and contradictory clauses). They must be immune from any nullifying ‘re-interpretation’ by the state’s hand-packed Ducey ‘Supremes’.
The key things are: 1) organize early; 2) figure out what you need to do, how much you need to do, and how you need to do it; 3) vet the hell out of the text of the amendment proposals before the next general election(!), using the legislature’s staff and even AG Brnovich’s staff (he’ll be pissed); and then 4) be ready to use all 20 months available to circulate the petitions, and don’t stop until you have an overwhelming number! Gathering signatures helps publicize the ballot initiative, and solicit more donations. And the sheer numbers of signatures just by themselves can be a potent argument for passage.
Given what the corona-virus may do to make gathering enough signatures harder, both the ‘Invest in Ed’ and ‘Save Our Schools’ ballot efforts may regret starting so late! Why take such chances. Follow the “Outlaw Dirty Money” example. They learned the lesson, the hard way. Start as early as possible! Get everything done that can be done before the 20-month signature-gathering window begins. Use all 20 months to gather signatures! With 20 months and the combined resources (money, staff, expertise, and volunteers) the monetary cost per signature will be lower, and the cost per civic group will be smaller.
Civic organizations need a permanent direct democracy confederation. Then they all have a credible threat to ‘recall’ (for a popular referendum) any non-emergency law passed by the law-makers before it becomes effective. That can get them a small seat at the legislative negotiating table before final versions of laws are passed.
There is NO government reform civic group with progressive public policy goals that will NOT benefit from a direct democracy federation (DDF). Similarly, there is NO civic group with progressive goals that will NOT benefit from an increase in state government revenue via a graduated rate (progressive) income tax increase. Ballot measures change the agenda. They bring out new voters. Progressive ballot measures create issues that progressive candidates can run on. This may be the quickest way to help Arizonans break the mindless “(R)-habit” when voting. A voter’s cognitive-dissonance from hearing an “(R)” candidate bad-mouth a proposition that the voter agrees with can be a mind-altering experience. A DDF can do the polling surveys to find the best issues to put on the ballot to provide these experiences.