PHOENIX — Jenny Clark, Founder and Executive Director of Love Your School says, "We got the very exciting news that Save Our Schools Arizona was unsuccessful in their attempt to stop the universal ESA Program from going into effect.”
A last attempt to stop School Choice Expansion from falling short.
"It's really a David and Goliath situation we were up against,” said Beth Lewis, Director of Save Our Schools.
Secretary of State Katie Hobbs announced Friday morning, that the group, Save Our Schools did not get enough signatures or petitionsto put the issue into voters’ hands in 2024.
Lewis told ABC15, "The final days and hours of the campaign were hair on fire. We were relying on hand counts and long unpaid volunteer hours, and you know, there was a miscount, a misjudgment there.”
Here’s how we got here:
In 2018, Arizona voters rejected a similar School Choice Expansion plan. But this year, Governor Doug Ducey signed the expansion into law on August 16th.
That meant all Arizona K-12 students would have access to an ‘Empowerment Scholarship Account’ or ESA.
It now allows all families to use $7,000 a year for students to pick what school they wanted to go to, like private school, home education, charter school or tutoring.
“I can't tell you how many special needs meetings I've sat in, how many phone calls I've been on with families, and we just couldn't get them on an ESA. To think now that those kids that are struggling now can be on an ESA is just overwhelming,” said Clark.
With this law in place, the money for vouchers would come from the public education fund which is why Save Our Schools was trying to stop it.
“The legislature didn't appropriate any new funding for this Private School Voucher Expansion,” Lewis said, “Any of those dollars that are leaving, are coming directly out of our schools and our state funding. We're going to start to feel that over the next year or so as schools are contending with how to budget.”
For supporters of school choice, Friday is marked as a massive win, especially for families of children with disabilities.
We asked Clark how parents can apply to utilize the vouchers and she replied, “If you were a parent who did not apply yet for the ESA, you're going to need to do that now on the Department of Education's website. If you apply by the end of day today, the Department of Education has said they will go ahead and give you funding for the whole first quarter which was of course July through September. That's what made the referral effort so challenging for families is that they weren't sure if they were going to get funded or not. So, a lot of families waited.”
The deadline was originally set for Friday, but the Department of Education pushed it back to October 15 due to a high number of applications.
The Arizona Department of Education says it already received over 12,000 applications in the last 45 days.
Save Our Schools says it will continue to fight for public schools until they are fully funded.
For information on how to apply for a voucher, click here.
