By Shane Brennan Cronkite News PHOENIX – Of almost 11,000 students who have applied for one of the state’s expanded empowerment scholarship accounts, more than 8,200 have not been enrolled in public school before – a potential loss of $53.9 million to the state’s public schools.Lewis is executive director of Save Our Schools Arizona , which is in the home stretch of its push to collect at least 118,823 signatures to put the scholarship program on the ballot in 2024.
But supporters of the program argue that for a parent or student in a public school, “nothing changes” under the expanded ESA program, which they said is aimed at giving parents and children the freedom to choose the school that’s right for them. “With this legislation, Arizona cements itself as the top state for school choice and as the first state in the nation to offer all families the option to choose the school setting that works best for them,” Ducey said in a statement at the time.
Because the funding for ESAs come out of the state’s education and public school budget, those 8,288 students could be taking more than $53 million from public schools. “Part of the concern with any sort of voucher system is that it’s creating a third location for education funding, so not just public education, but then the charter schools and then now the private schools,” Garcia said.
Why would teachers oppose freedom of choice? Because they know students will leave their failing schools and they'll actually have to get a job they can do.