The “Starve Public Schools” initiative

by David Safier

Its sponsors call HCR 2006 "Private School Tuition Programs." The Star uses the word "Vouchers" in its headline for the Howie Fischer article on the topic.

Both are accurate but incomplete. The true impact of the bill makes the most accurate title, the "Starve Public Schools Initiative."

Let's go to the heart of the proposed legislation. Its purpose is to make it constitutional to fund religious education by creating an initiative asking voters to amend the Arizona Constitution in two places: Article II, Section 12 and Article IX, Section 10. Those are the sections forbidding the use of public funds for religious education. Here are the relevant passages as they currently stand:

Article 2, Section 12: “No public money or property shall be appropriated for or applied to any religious worship, exercise, or instruction.”

Article 9, Section 10: “No tax shall be laid or appropriation of public money made in aid of any church, or private or sectarian school.”

The amendments would make two separate exceptions to those restrictions. Students with "disabilites" or students "who have been in foster care" would be able to get unspecified amounts of public funds to attend religious schools. Students "in public schools with an average classroom size of thirty-five students or more" could get $5,500 a year to attend religious schools, an amount which would be adjusted yearly for inflation.

The purpose, of course, isn't to simply carve out an exception for religious schools. The purpose is to wipe out the constitutional prohibition against vouchers for all private schools, since the sticking point is always the money used for tuition to religious schools. Get rid of that restriction, and the legislation can pass voucher laws without worrying about the courts. Currently, the courts are looking at the constitutionality of the "Education Empowerment Accounts" because of the religious school issue. The case would be irrelevant if this initiative passes.

The "disabilities" and "foster care" portions of the proposed initiative are old stuff. They're the elephant-trunk-in-the-tent technique of focusing on those students because, What kind of monster would stop those students from getting all the help they need? Establish vouchers for them, and soon enough, the rest of the voucher elephant will squeeze its way into the education tent.

But the 35 student class size part is a new and dangerous wrinkle. It creates an incentive for voucher supporters to cut public school funding until classes average 35 or more students. This is a real two-fer for the "dismantle public education," usually referred to as the "education reform," crowd. It both privatizes education and hurts public education. It's a major step toward institutionalizing the goal of creating a two or three tier education system, where the "haves" get excellent-to-good education and the "have-nots" are warehoused in substandard reading-and-writing factories.

A Vote-2012 Note: The right is always looking for hot button initiatives to get its base to vote. This would be one of those initiatives, so its passage this time around may be less important to conservatives than its ability to energize their base.

A NOTE TO DEMOCRATIC LEGISLATORS AND STRATEGISTS: Spend the money to poll voters about their reaction to the word "Vouchers." In the recent past, it has been a very unpopular word, nationwide. No state electorate has ever voted in a voucher initiative (unless that has changed in recent years), not even conservative Utah where a 2007 voucher initiative went down with 62% voting against. It failed in every county. If Arizonans don't like vouchers, use that information in your campaign against this initiative in the legislature and, if it passes, during the election cycle.