Arizona ESA fight returns as opponents launch ballot petition drive

School choice opponents in Arizona are trying again to slash the state’s Empowerment Scholarship Accounts program, but school choice advocates are fighting back.

A coalition led by the Arizona Education Association, the state’s largest teachers’ union, and the anti-school choice group, Save Our Schools Arizona, is collecting signatures for a measure that would restrict the ESA to families earning $150,000 or less and add other requirements designed to reduce education freedom, said the Goldwater Institute’s Matt Beienburg.

“This is absolutely an attack on school choice,” Beienburg, the institute’s education policy director, told The Lion in an interview. “It’s an attack on families, on parents, on private education, on families who try to pursue home-based education.”

“The same organizations that tried to get schools shuttered and closed during the pandemic, unleashing horrific learning loss on students, are essentially bringing the same ideology to bear on private education and trying to choke out and smother school choice programs and private school providers that are serving kids and families.”

Arizona has faced a protracted battle since it expanded the ESAs to universal access in 2022, growing it into one of the largest programs in the country.

Activists tried a ballot initiative that year to overturn the law but failed “by tens of thousands of signatures,” Beienburg said. Since taking office in January 2023, Democrat Gov. Katie Hobbs has routinely proposed measures to reduce or eliminate the school choice program, only to be blocked by Republicans, who control the state Legislature.

This time opponents are citing the ESA’s $1 billion cost and raising concerns about private school safety and accountability to convince voters to sign the petition. Multiple public schools have closed since 2022.

“We have to be very honest about the crisis that is facing public education right now,” said AEA President Marisol Garcia. “This system is unsustainable.”

But Beienburg said the ESAs are just a fraction of the $16 billion the state spends on public schools – which receive plenty of cash.

“The year that the Legislature authorized the universal ESA expansion, they also put in $600 million of discretionary funding for public schools on top of all the annual inflation adjustments and formula adjustments, meaning in a single year, Gov. Ducey and the conservative state lawmakers put more money into public schools as a discretionary increase than the entire net change in award dollars for the ESA program,” he said. “Families have a choice between district schools, charter schools and ESAs, but the left and the radical activists who are opposed to this want to say ‘no, if any dollar does not go to an institution that we control, we are going to say that you have essentially stolen that from us.’”

Opponents cite reported fraud, such as expensive jewelry or designer clothing purchased with ESA funds. Beienburg said those were caught during audits and families must repay any illegal purchases.

“That type of spending is already prohibited under the law,” he said, noting that the Legislature approved an auditing process to speed up reimbursement, similar to how the IRS issues tax refunds before it audits for errors. “No one would suggest that it would be a better policy to say, ‘Yeah, we’re just going to hold everybody’s tax refunds until we’ve looked at this some years down the line.’

“So yes, of course you’re going to have some bad actors in any government program,” he continued. “Interestingly, Gov. Hobbs actually vetoed requested funding from conservative state lawmakers this past year to add additional staff at the Department of Education to review purchases to ensure that they are allowable. She literally vetoed the budget that had funding for that. And so it’s really remarkable to essentially see all these talking points from the left, but when it actually comes to it, they’re not offering solutions to the problems they’re identifying.”

More testing and safety concerns?

Similarly, opponents claim private schools need to be subject to the same testing requirements as public schools. But Beienburg points out that less than half of public school students score proficient on state math and reading tests, yet “90% plus of public schools are rated ‘satisfactory’ by the state. So, this is not a system that’s providing any kind of accountability, and they’re saying private schools now need this. It’s pretty difficult to make that case when you see the exodus of students” from public schools.

While some public schools have lost students, Beienburg said the vast majority – 300,000 – have transferred to other public schools or charter schools. Of the 100,000 students using ESAs, about 40,000 formerly attended public schools.

“These families going on this program to do private school, homeschool, whatever it might be, are not being forced to,” he said. “They’re doing it because they find the offerings of the public school system unsatisfactory, and as soon as they were given the financial wherewithal to pursue something better, they did that.”

Regarding safety concerns, such as requiring fingerprint background checks for private school staff, Beienburg said the Legislature is already considering bills to do that.

“Arizona law has language in it that says that if the state is trying to essentially put regulations on private schools, the state bears the burden of showing that law is necessary and does not impose undue burdens on qualified schools. This ballot measure goes in and completely erases that,” he said.

Opponents have until July 2 to collect nearly 256,000 signatures, which, if verified, would place the question on the November ballot. A counter “decline to sign” movement is being spearheaded by a collaboration called AZ Loves ESAs.

“The education union and activist groups pushing an anti-ESA ballot measure market it as “accountability” (already covered by the law) and hide their real goal: killing school choice in Arizona,” the pro-ESA website says.

Beienburg agreed the fight comes down to more than money.

“I don’t think the left will ever stop trying to attack this program,” he said of the opponents. “I think they are absolutely dedicated to this. They see school choice as a threat to their control over the education of students, the minds of students.

“I think you are going to see this really unleash a response from parents and families.”