The parents and educators who created SOS Arizona blocked the last expansion plan for vouchers by getting a referendum on the state ballot in 2018. They had to fight the governor, the legislature, the Republican party, the Koch brothers, the DeVos family, and other monied interests, who wanted to keep expanding vouchers until every student in the state was eligible for a voucher.
The all-volunteer SOS Arizona group gathered over 100,000 signatures to put a referendum on the ballot, fought the efforts of the Koch brothers to kick them off the ballot, and the referendum went to the public, where voucher expansion was overwhelmingly defeated by a margin of 65-35%.
Now SOS Arizona needs your help to put another referendum on the state ballot, to end voucher expansion. Volunteers must collect 350,000 signatures to initiate this referendum. They need YOUR help!
Save Our Schools Arizona (SOSAZ), the grassroots group responsible for stopping universal voucher expansion in Arizona in 2018, has gone on offense. In spite of their overwhelming 2-to-1 defeat of Empowerment Scholarship Account (ESA) voucher expansion, the Arizona state legislature attempted to pass 6 different voucher bills in 2019–all killed by SOSAZ and in 2020 is working to allow ESA vouchers to expand vouchers across state lines. Save Our Schools, once again, said “Enough!”
On February 26, 2020, Save Our Schools Arizona filed a statewide citizens’ initiative (read it here). A critical next step in fighting the privatization movement, capping the program once and for all. The Save Our Schools Act:
Limits private school vouchers to 1% of the AZ student population, allowing current students to stay in the program while blocking ALL new voucher programs in AZ FOREVER
Prevents taxpayer dollars from going to out-of-state private schools
Prevents taxpayer dollars from being deposited into personal accounts to pay for college expenses (a recent public records request by the Arizona Republic uncovered $33 million sitting in unspent recipient accounts including 9 families with a balance of more than $100,000 and dozens of others with more than $50,000.
Prioritizes existing ESA vouchers for special needs students, for whom the program was originally designed
Creates a “Taxpayer Protection Fund” to sweep remaining ESA voucher funds at the end of the fiscal year to enforce the law and increase accountability; remaining funds will transfer to the Exceptional Special Needs public school fund
To successfully place the Save Our Schools Act on the November 2020 ballot, SOSAZ has launched a statewide effort to gather 350,000 signatures by July 2. Please help by donating to this critical cause at https://secure.everyaction.com/gTzwyTPPjU2EeS_rLATvZA2
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Ohio public school districts have always offered services to private schools- it’s state law- so my local school district offers music programs and special education services to our local Catholic school.
With the ed reform promotion of publicly funded private schools I wonder if this will work the other way- will private schools (now that they’re all going to be publicly funded) be required to offer their programs and classes to public school students?
I’m not sure the ed reform “movement” has thought this privatization scheme through in any deep or rigorous way- what happens when all private schools are publicly funded? Are they then required to offer services to the public? If not, why not?
As usual, they push their agenda through with no real thought or planning and instead rely on their ideological beliefs about the magic of markets to answer all of these questions. Slogans about “choice” won’t be good enough when the public starts to ask real questions about this works in practice.
They’re building planes in the air again! Look out for crashes!
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The local private school has a “latch key” program for after school. Now that they’re publicly funded will they have to offer that program to public school students?
If Ohio public schools must offer public school programs to private schools (and they must- it’s state law) will private schools reciprocate now that they’re publicly funded?
If not, why not? Will we have two tiers of publicly funded schools, one tier with a mandate to serve the public and one tier that gets special exceptions and may serve only their students? How is that fair and equitable to public schools or public school students and doesn’t it indicate that ed reformers treat private schools preferentially?
Public schools and students were completely ignored when these voucher schemes were jammed thru, but that won’t be possible if the ed reform dream of privatization is realized. If the public is paying for it they will demand services.
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“Will we have two tiers of publicly funded schools, one tier with a mandate to serve the public and one tier that gets special exceptions and may serve only their students? ” Our city is already right there.
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Diocese of Phoenix (2018)
“Students Rally…to demonstrate their support and appreciation for school choice legislation…prior to rally,,,Catholic school students gathered for mass”
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