With public schools becoming untenable for many parents, Arizona’s GOP legislature set to work on a school choice bill that will give parents the opportunity to send their child to the school of their choice. The bill is heading for Republican Arizona governor Doug Ducey’s desk, and he is expected to sign it in the coming days.
“This session, let’s expand school choice any way we can,” declared Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey in his State of the State address on Jan. 10, “Let’s think big and find more ways to get kids into the school of their parents’ choice. Send me the bills, and I’ll sign them.”The Arizona Legislature on Friday night answered Ducey’s call, passing a bill to expand eligibility for the state’s Empowerment Scholarship Accounts (also known as education savings accounts or ESAs) to all K-12 students.Once signed into law, Arizona will reclaim its title as the state with the “most expansive ESA” policy in the nation.Empowerment Scholarship Accounts empower families with the freedom and flexibility to customize their child’s education. Arizona families can currently use ESAs to pay for private school tuition, tutoring, textbooks, homeschool curriculums, online courses, educational therapy, and more.The ESAs are funded with 90% of the state portion of Arizona’s per-pupil funding, including the additional funds for students with special needs.
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Opponents of the move are outraged that Arizona’s children are no longer to be held hostage to the ideological whims of K-12 teachers and the structures that support their cliff dive into grossly over-stepping their educational mandate with racist “antiracism” training and teaching little children about sex, including homosexual sex, and the unscientific claim that there are more than two genders. They don’t say that’s why they are outraged, of course, but that’s the bottom line.
The 16-10 Senate vote came as proponents said parents want more choice for their children. Sen. Vince Leach from SaddleBrooke said schools in his district, which includes parts of Pima and Pinal counties, are “hemorrhaging kids.””This is not over one year, this is not over a COVID year,” he told colleagues, but over the past five years.”They’re leaving because parents are making a decision,” said Leach, as schools spend less time teaching basics and more time on things like Common Core standards “when 2 plus 2 equals anything but 4 and parents can’t help their kids with simple basic math problems.” On top of that. he said, are programs like structured English immersion and what’s been called “critical race theory.”And the charter schools in his district, Leach said, public schools that are privately owned and operated, are all full.”What does that tell you about the government schools?” he asked.The solution that Republicans say HB 2853 offers is to allow each of the 1.1 million students in Arizona public schools to get a voucher they can use to attend a private or parochial school.But Sen. Martin Quezada, D-Glendale, said there’s a reason for the loss of students.”We created the crisis,” he said, by not properly funding public schools. “And we are at fault for people wanting to look for other choices.”And what’s worse, he said, is that the people who have been able to afford the cost of private school already have their kids there.”Now we’ve just handed them a check for $7,000 for each one of their kids,” said Quezada. Legislative budget staffers figure that the cost of giving vouchers to parents of kids already in those private schools will cost the state about $125 million a year by the 2024-2025 school year, meaning even less money for public schools.”We are perpetuating the discrimination, we are perpetuating the inequity, we are in fact codifying the segregation of our schools,” Quezada said.The vote came after Republicans used a procedural maneuver to block any attempt by Democrats to propose amendments, skipping the normally required floor debate and instead allowing only an up-or-down roll call. That denied Sen. Christine Marsh, D-Phoenix, the opportunity to seek votes on some suggestions she said would make the plan to use public funds to send children to private schools a little more acceptable.For example, she wanted students using those public funds to be tested annually to see if they are making academic progress.Supporters of vouchers, however, say such public reporting is unnecessary.Sen. Paul Boyer, R-Glendale, said the nature of providing resources to parents to make education choices necessarily makes them more involved in their child’s education as they have the resources to choose a school.”Remember: this is for whatever the parent thinks is best for their kid,” he said. “And, for the life of me, I still can’t fathom why anybody would oppose that.”
[Featured image via YouTube]
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