(The Center Square) – Arizona Education Association’s new Empowerment Scholarship Account ballot initiative focuses on “reform, accountability and safety,” according to Geneva Fuentes, the teacher union’s communications director.
“ Our goal is to make sure that the voucher system does not continue to be a drain on Arizona’s finances,” Fuentes told The Center Square.
Earlier this month, AEA, which is Arizona’s largest teacher union, and Save Our Schools Arizona, an organization that supports public schools, submitted the ballot measure. The initiative imposes an income cap and provides more oversight of ESAs. The measure will be on the Nov. 3 general election ballot if it gets approval from Secretary of State Adrian Fontes, a Democrat, and if supporters collect 383,923 signatures from registered voters.
Fuentes said the teacher’s union is concerned that as voucher spending continues to increase, public school funding will be cut along with other services Arizona families rely upon.
”There is a real threat to the future of Arizona and to the government’s ability to execute the priorities of the people of Arizona if this program is not reigned in,” she said.
AEA’s ballot initiative proposes an income cap of $150,000. Fuentes said Arizona’s median income for a family of four is around $108,000.
The ballot initiative’s $150,000 cap is well above what the average family earns in Arizona, she added.
“ The average family would need to receive nearly a 40% immediate raise to surpass the income cap in the ballot initiative,” Fuentes noted. “Our ballot initiative also includes an inflation adjustment over time, so as income levels rise with inflation, so too with the cap and the ballot initiative.”
The initiative has an income cap because the “focus of any program should be on helping folks who need help,” the communications director explained.
Katie Ratlief, the executive director of Common Sense Institute Arizona, previously told The Center Square that the average income of an Arizona family with two parents and kids at home was around $120,000.
She said the proposed income cap could remove approximately 15% of current ESA program participants.
Ratlief noted there are multiple ways to measure incomes, including the median and the mean.
Ratlief said CSI’s research uses the mean or average income when “looking at and comparing income levels.”
The teachers’ union cited the median income, which is a different number, Ratlief explained. A median income is right in the middle, meaning half of the people earn more than that number.
According to Fuentes, the AEA’s ballot initiative would not make “substantial changes to [the ESA] system except for rooting out a lot of the waste, fraud and abuse that we’ve seen.”
The initiative is designed to “make sure bad actors are not taking advantage of this program to enrich themselves at the expense of our children,” she said.
Fuentes added that many ESA families “are buying items out of pocket and getting reimbursed.”
Families who are unable to make purchases out of pocket can make them through the Class Wallet Financial Management program’s marketplace, which would not change under the ballot initiative, she noted.
The marketplace is where ESA parents can buy educational-related supplies with their ESA funds.
Ratlief said parents who use the ESA’s reimbursement method may “be subject to long periods of waiting times to get reimbursed, which disproportionately hurts low-income families,” as well as vendors who aren’t on the marketplace. Some vendors did not want to participate at different points during the rollout of the universal program, she explained.
Fuentes said private schools, meanwhile, need to “either be accredited by a nationally recognized accrediting organization, and then if they’re not accredited, it [the initiative] would require them to administer assessments similar to those used for public school students.”
The ballot measure is an attempt to “make sure taxpayer dollars are going to legitimate academic institutions,” the communications director said.
Most Arizona Catholic schools, Christian schools and independent private schools will meet the accreditation standard and not have to worry about the assessment, Fuentes explained.
Most private schools seek accreditation from legitimate organizations because “it sends a message to the families that they’re seeking to attract that they are a reputable school that will provide a good education to students,” she noted.
The initiative is not an attempt to tell private schools how to “manage their student bodies,” Fuentes said.
Assessments play a factor for institutions that are not accredited, which Arizona “should step in and make sure [they] are actually providing legitimate education to the students that they purport to serve,” she said.
Arizona’s ESA program, meanwhile, surpassed 100,000 participants this year, a 725% increase since 2022.
And CSI research shows Arizona public school enrollment hasn’t grown since 2008, Ratlief noted.
“I think it’s clear Arizonans expect they will have options when it comes to selecting the school that is right for their [children],” she said
When asked about the popularity of the ESA program, Fuentes said it has “never been popular in Arizona.”
Fuentes noted most Arizona students, including those with disabilities, attend public schools. She added that a decrease in public school enrollment can be attributed to “declining birth rates.”
Another reason for fewer students is that Arizona underfunds its public schools, she told The Center Square.
“ Plenty of families and businesses choose not to come to Arizona because our state has made this conscious decision to not invest in the schools that the vast majority of students attend,” Fuentes explained.
While most students go to public schools, according to Ratlief, the “majority of students are also exercising school choice.”
She said this is being done in a variety of ways, including using ESA money to homeschool, attending a private school or charter school or going to a different public school via the open enrollment program.
Regarding the ballot initiative, Ratlief said, “It’s very important to ensure that voters understand the facts about the reality on the ground currently. That will be our focus.”
