Complaint alleges out-of-state money funding Arizona anti-school choice ballot initiative

An Arizona ballot initiative to restrict school choice has raised millions of dollars, but a complaint has been filed alleging most of those funds came from outside of the state.

Education freedom opponents reported raising $4.6 million in efforts to place the Protect Education Act on the November ballot.

The committee overseeing those funds, the Protect Education Accountability Act Now Committee, reported that 9% of contributions came from out of state, a disclosure Arizona requires. But reports show the vast majority of those funds – $4.5 million – came from one source: the National Education Association, the nation’s largest teachers’ union, based in Washington, D.C.

That led Jack Johnson Pannell, a Phoenix microschool founder, to file a campaign finance complaint seeking a declaration that the committee violated the law and action against it.

“I’m proud to file this complaint because AZ families deserve the truth,” Pannell posted online. “More than 100,000 families are choosing great options for educating their children. It’s a cheap shot to accuse hardworking people of cheating the system. It just ain’t true.”

Teachers’ unions have long funneled money to Democrats and left-wing causes, with one analysis finding 99% of their donations going to those efforts.

Unions also oppose school choice, arguing it takes money from public schools, and have filed multiple lawsuits and other challenges against it. Still, school choice advocates have a long history of winning in court. School choice has expanded, especially since the COVID-19 pandemic, to 35 states and more than 1.5 million students.

Arizona made its Empowerment Scholarship Accounts universal in 2022 and has expanded the program to more than 100,000 participants. An initiative that year failed to get enough signatures to appear on the ballot, but opponents are trying again, this time to limit the program to families earning $150,000 or less and end the rollover of funds from year to year, which families can save for college.

The initiative is also citing reports of fraud in the program – which is closer to 1%, not 20% as media reports have claimed – to encourage people to sign the petition. Proponents say they have gathered more than 150,000 of the required 256,000 signatures to qualify for the ballot. The collection deadline is July 2.

School choice advocates are running a counter “decline to sign” campaign and argue families support the program, which they say does not need major changes.

“This act will do nothing to improve outcomes for students, families, or the state of Arizona,” Goldwater Institute’s Matt Beienburg wrote. “Rather, it amounts to an ideologically driven assault on the educational opportunity of our students. Arizonans deserve better.”