By Staff Reporter |
One of two ballot initiatives to reform school choice in Arizona has been called off.
This week, Fortify AZ ceased collecting signatures to qualify for the November ballot with their initiative to reform the Empowerment Scholarship Account (ESA) program filed in March, The Arizona Empowerment Scholarship Accounts Reform and Accountability Act.
The proposed ballot initiative would have required the Arizona Department of Education (ADE) to establish an online marketplace payment system next year for all ESA purchases with approved vendors, and would have eliminated the current reimbursement and debit card system.
The initiative would also have further restricted allowable expenditures, and required valid fingerprint clearance cards for qualified tutors and school personnel. Any parents who intentionally misuse funds would have been disqualified permanently from the ESA program.
Under the canceled initiative, the ESA program would have had to submit quarterly reports addressing vendor payments, disqualifications, and recovered funds to the attorney general as well.
Fortify AZ was supported in its signature-gathering efforts with millions from the American Federation for Children (AFC). Arizona campaign finance records reflected $1.2 million to their political action committee, but AFC said they invested over $5.3 million into the ballot initiative.
AFC said the proposed reforms were aligned with best policy practices implemented in other states: Texas, Arkansas, Florida, Iowa, Indiana, Ohio, Utah, Tennessee, New Hampshire, and West Virginia.
In a press release issued on Tuesday, AFC CEO Tommy Schultz said their organization backed the ballot initiative as the “best opportunity to save school choice in Arizona,” which they say is under threat by school choice opponents behind the other proposed ballot initiative which would end universal school choice, the Protect Education Act.
“After a small number of individuals acted to sabotage this chance for the school choice-gutting petition to be pulled and commonsense reforms enacted, we are evaluating our best next steps to ensure the union-backed petition does not rip school choice away from thousands of Arizona students overnight and fundamentally break the program for the rest,” said Schultz.
As the Arizona Agenda reported, Republican lawmakers and the Arizona Education Association, the state’s largest teachers union, nearly reached a secretive school choice reform deal to end both the Arizona Empowerment Scholarship Accounts Reform and Accountability Act as well as the Protect Education Act.
However, the Arizona Free Enterprise Club raised concerns over the impact of the secretive deal on the ESA program.
Ultimately, lawmakers voted against the proposed deal.
Matthew Nielsen, founder of the Educational Freedom Institute, called the Arizona Empowerment Scholarship Accounts Reform and Accountability Act an “ill-conceived, and now ill-fated […] waste.”
The other ballot initiative to end the universality of the ESA program will continue. The Protect Education Act would place a $150,000 income cap for ESA program enrollees.
Additionally, this initiative would not only require qualified tutors and schools to have valid fingerprint clearance, it would subject them to Arizona State Board of Education discipline and require them to pay a fee and register annually with ADE.
Protect Education, Accountability Now, the political action committee behind the still-active ballot initiative, has spent about $2.7 million of the nearly $4.6 million it has raised.
98% of those funds (more than $4.4 million) came from the National Education Association, a national teachers’ union and the largest labor union in the nation.
As of this report, the ESA program has over 100,700 students enrolled.
AZ Free News is your #1 source for Arizona news and politics. You can send us news tips using this link.
