School voucher bills eyed

The Arizona Legislature is considering a set of bills that would widely expand the pool of students eligible for school vouchers.

Just over two years since Arizona voters resoundingly rejected an expansion of school vouchers to all students, the Legislature is back with a set of bills that would widely expand the pool of eligible students.

One bill, Senate Bill 1452, would allow an estimated 65% to 70% of students in the state to be eligible to take funds from public schools and spend them on private school.

Another bill, SB 1513, would allow children of veterans, first responders and health professionals to use the vouchers, called empowerment scholarship accounts (ESAs).

A third bill, House Bill 2503, would allow children who are victims of various crimes to qualify, including children who said they were bullied.

Currently, only students from six narrow categories can access ESAs. Students who qualify get 90% of the funding that would have gone to their school districts. Instead, those public dollars are loaded onto debit cards that can be used for private school, tutoring and therapy.

Already, the ESA program has grown to more than $145 million a year, even as questions persist about state

oversight, misspending and fraud. There are 9,700 ESA accounts, state records show. The bills could grow that number exponentially.

What education bill would do

SB 1452 would allow any student who lives in the boundary of Title I school to be eligible for an ESA account. That could be as many as 700,000 children, according to some estimates.

More than 1,300 of the 2,000 district schools in Arizona — about 65% — are Title I schools, which means funding is provided for disadvantaged students to close educational gaps. Even wealthy school districts include some Title I schools. One opponent of ESA expansion estimates 70% of Arizona students could be eligible for an ESA account if SB 1452 passes.

The Senate Education Committee will consider the bill at a hearing at 2 p.m. Tuesday.

In 2018, Arizonans considered a ballot measure to block legislation that would have allowed all 1.1 million public school students to apply for ESAs. Voters rejected those universal vouchers by a 65 to 35 percent margin.

But bill sponsor Sen. Paul Boyer, who chairs the Senate Education Committee, said people may have been confused by the referendum because some school-choice backers supported it and other were against it.

“I do think that COVID has changed a lot,” Boyer said. “I’m hearing more from parents now because they want their kids back in school because they see their kids struggling or they just don’t even have the means to have even more than one computer, where maybe Dad needs the computer at home or Mom needs it, and they’re just falling behind.”

He said the bill targets children from primarily low-income areas. While opponents say the bill could expand the vouchers to 70% of school students, Boyer said he didn’t know the exact number, but agreed the amount of students covered would be “significant.”

SB 1452 would make changes to how ESA and public schools are funded, some of the biggest education funding changes made in any bill in recent years. In addition to allowing far more students to be eligible, SB 1452 would:

● Require school districts that do not get state funding to pick up the costs for students who leave their schools to go to private schools. In some districts, property tax revenue is high enough that the state does not provide additional funding. Currently, students who leave these districts get ESA money from the general fund. The bill would change this, making property taxes from residents and business go to educate private school students.

● Take funds from the extension of Prop. 301 — which is earmarked sales

“This is not about voters and it’s not about education, it’s about sucking dry the institution of public schools.”

Dawn Penich-Thacker Spokeswoman for Save Our Schools Arizona

tax money for class size reduction, teacher salary increases and dropout prevention programs — and send that money to the student going to private school as well. The bill allows parents of incoming kindergartners to take that classroom site fund money to private school too.

● Allow ESA students to pay for public or commercial transportation to private school as well. Previously parents were unable to use the accounts for transportation.

● Waive the requirement that a student spend 100 days of the previous school year in public school to use public funds to pay for private school. Instead, students would only have to spend 30 days in public school in the current school year and then could immediately head to private school.

● Allow parents to use ESAs topay for the portion of education therapies not covered by health insurance.

● Previously, those using vouchers were prohibited from also getting funds from School Tuition Organizations, which get donations funded by tax credits and then donate those funds to pay for private school. Under SB 1452, students in high school could double dip and get funding from both sources up to amount of the per-pupil spending in their school district.

● Prevent parents from losing money they misspent on items not allowed, unless the Arizona Attorney General determines an account holder committed fraud. Currently, misspent money is forfeited rather than returned.

‘Cannibalizing public schools’

With all the changes to the voucher program, the Legislature is dropping the façade that the ESA vouchers are backed by logic or have rationale behind them, said Dawn Penich-Thacker, spokeswoman for Save Our Schools Arizona, which created the 2018 referendum that repealed the previous voucher-expansion attempt.

“It’s strictly about cannibalizing public schools and finding ways to suck those dollars out of that institution and into private pockets,” she said.

Penich-Thacker said save our schools is looking at all of its options if the bill passes, including suing to block the bill because it violates the Voter Protection Act, which was passed by voters in the 1990s to prevent the Legislature from makes changes to voter initiatives and referendums.

In concept, once voters pass a ballot measure, the Legislature cannot override their intent. But that law’s effect on a referendum, in which voters do not pass a new law but instead vote to reject an already-passed law, has never been tested in Arizona’s courts.

The group could also revive an initiative to block any future changes to the ESA program that it started to gather signatures for last year. That effort was put on hold because of the coronavirus pandemic, she said.

“There’s really no question about what voters want,” Penich-Thacker said. “But this is not about voters and it’s not about education, it’s about sucking dry the institution of public schools.”

Chris Kotterman, lobbyist for the Arizona School Boards Association, said the sheer amount of changes to schools funding in this bill could make it one of the biggest school funding policy in Arizona in years.

“This has all the hallmarks of the wish list from Goldwater that they sat around and thought of,” Kotterman said about the Goldwater Institute, the conservative think tank. “That’s what I think when I look at this.”

Matt Beienburg, director of education policy for the Goldwater Institute, said Goldwater supports the legislation and the key changes in it.

Kotterman noted Gov. Doug Ducey made school choice a key part of his state of the state speech last month.

“The governor said in the state of the state that families should be allowed to make whatever arrangement they’ve come up with permanent,” he said. “They’re using a narrative around school closure to advance this agenda they’ve had for a very long time. I don’t think they are going to be nice about it.”

C.J. Karamargin, Ducey’s spokesman, said the governor doesn’t comment on pending legislation and Ducey’s speech should speak for itself.

Push costs to school districts

One of the most contentious and controversial aspects of the bills is that it will force some school districts to pick up the costs of the children who leave to go to private school.

Currently, those costs are picked up by the state and advocates claim that ESA accounts actually save the state money because ESA’s are funded at 90% of public schools.

But for districts that don’t receive state funding because their property tax bills are so high, children who leave public schools for an ESA actually cost the state money because the state has to pay for a child it previously hadn’t been funding.

SB 1452 would change that and force those districts to pay the bill of the children headed to private school. It unclear exactly what the costs would be annually.

Boyer said he didn’t get the argument that the money was coming from those districts.

“If you look at the child as a dollar sign ... then I guess I get that argument, but I don’t look as the child as ... just another dollar sign,” Boyer said.

He said the district could look at the paying for those children’s education in private school as the amount of dollars that the district is missing. But he said they should look at it as now those children who left the district are now “kids whose parents are fully engaged in their education.”

Kotterman said that local property tax payers are not going to be happy to foot the bill for private schools students, especially those who pay commercial property taxes, which are assessed at a higher rate than residential.

“Now, if I am in a non-state aid district and I pay property taxes to the school, not only am I going to pay for the students who are enrolled in the school, I’m now going to pay for students who were enrolled and who decided to go get an ESA,” he said.

Penich-Thacker said the shift to the schools could be an attempt to hide the cost of a program that with the expansion could be more than $300 million a year.

“It’s just blatant kind of shameless way to punish public schools,” she said.

Take more from teacher pay fund

The bill would also take money from the extension of Proposition 301 — the six-tenth of a cent statewide sales tax — which is earmarked sales tax money for class size reduction, teacher salary increases and dropout prevention programs.

The bill would send that money for teacher pay — which the Legislature approved after the Red for Ed walkouts — and send that money to with the child to fund private school education.

Boyer said he felt the money the that was earmarked for teacher raises and classroom size reduction should follow the children to the school they attend even if that’s a private school.

“These parents aren’t immune from this tax as well,” Boyer said. “They should see some benefit from it. I think money should follow the students to help them meet their needs.”

Kotterman said he sees the taking of the Proposition 301 money as punishment for the ballot measure passed by voters in November that put a tax on the top 1% of taxpayers to pay for schools. Now that schools are getting that extra money, Republicans want to take money from another funding source, he said.

Penich-Thacker said during the debate to extend Prop. 301, Republicans demanded that the money be put toward the physical classroom and teacher pay, without funding administration and other services. They were so insistent that it go for that purpose that they demanded audits to ensure it happened.

“Now suddenly that same money can just get loaded on an ESA,” PenichThacker said.