Arizona voters blocked vouchers in 2018 by a 2-1 margin. The Koch-DeVos machine came back with an even bigger voucher proposal this year. Save Our Schols Arizona, a grassroots group of volunteers once more gathered signatures to compel a state referendum to block vouchers. The billionaires hate democracy and will try to stop the referendum.
The Arizona Republic reported:
A school voucher program scheduled to become law Saturday is on hold after public-school advocates gathered enough citizen signatures to temporarily block the controversial program.
On Friday, the Save Our Schools movement submitted 141,714 signatures to the Arizona secretary of state as volunteers concluded a drive to refer the voucher program to the 2024 ballot for voters to decide.
The law, authorized by the GOP majority in the Legislature and signed by Republican Gov. Doug Ducey, would be the first universal voucher program in the nation, using taxpayer dollars for private education efforts.
It would expand the state’s Empowerment Scholarship Account program to every Arizona schoolchild, providing an estimated $7,000 of taxpayer money per child for a range of educational services, from private school tuition to tutors to support for parents who opt to teach their children at home…
Raquel Mamani, an educator and parent, celebrated the petition drive, saying it puts on hold “the anti-public education, anti-parent, anti-student agenda forced into our state by extremists.”
Volunteers gathered signatures from all 15 counties in 80 days, a sign of widespread support, said Nicky Indicavitch, outreach director for Save Our Schools Arizona.
“Arizonans want top quality, fully funded public schools in every neighborhood,” she said.
This is the second time in five years public-school proponents have taken to the streets to block voucher expansion. In 2017, a similar referendum drive sent an expansion of the ESA program to ballot, where voters in 2018 rejected it by a margin of nearly 2 to 1.
Friday’s filing had echoes of the 2017 effort, but both supporters and opponents of the ESA program expect a more robust, heavily funded fight this time around.
The American Federation for Children [the DeVos organization] has signaled its support for the expanded program, and a “decline to sign” movement that tried to discourage people from signing the referendum petitions said it has proof of illegal signature efforts…
After the universal expansion passed in June, the state started taking preliminary applications. Data released last month showed 6,500 families had applied in just two weeks. Of those families, about 75% indicated they did not have a child previously in public school.
Those early findings solidified opposition from public-school advocates, who argued that the numbers showed the beneficiaries were likely people already paying private tuition and looking to cash in on a hefty state subsidy.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Even Utah hasn’t been this stupid. Every time vouchers have been proposed since they were defeated in a referendum in 2006, the bills have been shouted down so fast that those bills have never made it out of committee.
What is Arizona’s problem?? I know–rhetorical question. But sad to see that this fight has to keep happening in Arizona over and over again.
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This—vouchers in Arizona— is a case of billionaires who refuse to accept defeat. They own the governor and the legislature but so far they haven’t bought the voters.
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Having lived in Arizona (Pima County, actually) for two years, I knew there were a lot of stupid people there, but what a Pima County judge just did — effectively re-instated an abortion ban from 1864 ( before Arizona was even a state) — is weapons grade stupid.
And it was a woman judge!
Do these folks learn ANYTHING at all in law school? They just seem to be brain dead.
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You rock, SOS Arizona!
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The Dictionary of Clichés posits the term,
share and share alike, was first recorded
about 1566, alluded to the equal apportioning
of spoils and soon was broadened to include
equal sharing in the costs of a venture.
Children must learn to share and share alike.
Voucher grabbers will be taxed for the costs
of public schools ’till they take the dirt nap.
When it comes to WHO owns the keys to the
kingdom of taxpayer funding, the voucher
grabbers may think they deserve equal
apportioning of the spoils, in effect,
Mom was wrong, with the share and share
alike lesson.
I’m not pitching vouchers or choice
schools.
What part of “they are endowed by their
Creator with certain unalienable Rights,
that among these are Life, Liberty and
the pursuit of Happiness.” demands
keeping their hands off “your” stack
of dollars?
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Individual parents in Arizona pay, per capita, a little over $2,200 in state taxes each year and a little over $900 in local property tax, and some small portion of these payments goes to the public schools. As of 2020, Arizona was paying $8,785 per student in its public schools, FAR more than individual parents were paying into the public education coffers, even if you assume all two-parent households. So, taxpayers OTHER THAN student parents are partially subsidizing the cost of student’s educations IN PUBLIC SCHOOLS. It is only proper, then, that taxpayers demand that those subsidies be spent in public schools. If parents want to send their kids to private schools, they shouldn’t expect other taxpayers to pay for this, to the detriment of the public schools that they are constitutionally and morally obligated to fund. There is no moral obligation to take people’s money and give it to other people too send kids to be indoctrinated in sexist, homophobic, racist, Christian nationalist madrasas.
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I said, “partially.” I should have said, “largely.”
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Oops. That should have been a little over $450 per capita in local property tax.
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In other words, the parent who says, “Well, I pay taxes that support the education system, so I should be able to spend that money wherever I want” is confused. He or she pays nothing close to what it costs to educate his or her child in the public school. MOST of that cost is borne by others, and they have a right to their dollars going TO THE PUBLIC ENTITY–THE PUBLIC SCHOOL SYSTEM–THAT THEY ARE BEING TAXED TO SUPPORT, not into private pockets.
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The Koch-DeVos machine (ALEC et al) is nothing but human vermin, despicable people with too much money and power causing problems for the rest of society
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In addition to fighting vouchers, we must demonstrate that public schools are better. This will never happen using the artificial standardized test as the test is designed for “B” level education.
Public education must switch to an assessment that supports “A” level learning. This teaches kids to think. Unlike the test that prepares 5th graders to be 6th grader’s and seniors to be college freshman, “A” level learning prepares students for a life beyond the classroom walls.
In my writings I show ways to subvert the system in the interest of children. Teachers and parents have the power but we must prepare the alternative in order to convince parents to join the public school team.
THINK WHILE IT’S STILL LEGAL!
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Heather Cox Richardson’s Letters from An American today is about Arizona’s stripping women of their reproductive rights. Worth a few minutes of your time.
So, in 1864, a legislature of 27 white men created a body of laws that discriminated against Black people and people of color and considered girls as young as 10 able to consent to sex, and they adopted a body of criminal laws written by one single man.
And in 2022, one of those laws is back in force in Arizona.
https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/september-24-2022?utm_source=post-email-title&isFreemail=true&utm_medium=email
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Wow. How disgusting.
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