The Arizona Education Association is collecting signatures for a November ballot initiative designed to rein in home and private school vouchers.

Spending on Empowerment Scholarship Accounts is well over twice what the state budgeted. ESAs have been law in Arizona for 15 years and cost the state about $1.3 billion annually. The program has also been marred by allegations of fraud.

Association president Marisol Garcia said the initiative isn't meant to end the ESA program – it just regulates it.

"We can't turn back the clock," she said. "We have to exist in 2026, and so one of the things we can do, because the Legislature has not done so, is set up guardrails and ensure that taxpayer money is used appropriately."

Home and private-school educators often leave public schools so they can educate their own kids with fewer state mandates or because those schools can't offer services some kids need, especially those who have emotional or physical challenges. They say they want the choice to educate their own kids, and that most don't abuse the money.

Garcia said that because the ESAs are funded with taxpayer money, home and private schools should be held to the same expenditure standards that public schools are.

"Any parent can go to a school board meeting or do a Freedom of Information Act request and find out exactly how every penny is being spent in our public schools," she said. "Currently in our state, there's a $1.3 billion program that we have no idea how these funds are being used."

In addition to creating spending guardrails, the initiative seeks to prohibit the payment of family members with voucher money, except for students with disabilities. It would also require that teachers and staff at schools qualified for the program have fingerprint clearance and become subject to oversight from the State Board of Education.

Source: Public News Service