Following in Arizona’s footsteps

For now, it looks like the debate over school vouchers in Arizona is over, or at least taking a breather.

Arizona taxpayers are still shelling out hundreds of millions of dollars for vouchers, much to the chagrin of public school officials and their advocates.

But as a grand political issue, vouchers simply aren’t raising nearly as much of a ruckus as they did last year when officials were gobsmacked by the skyrocketing cost of the program.

Sure, Gov. Katie Hobbs kicked off the legislative session by saying the voucher program was “rife with exploitation” and she planned to block wealthy families from getting vouchers.

But with a GOP-controlled Legislature, Hobbs and Democratic lawmakers haven’t been able to do much more than point to cases of fraud popping up or propose bills to trim the voucher program that never get a hearing.

And Republican lawmakers at the state Capitol love school vouchers. It’s an idea that’s backed by decades of conservative planning, and now has the full support of the Trump administration.

But that’s just in Arizona.

The debate over vouchers and “school choice” is raging in other states that are trying to follow in Arizona’s footsteps.

Since Arizona lawmakers expanded the state’s voucher program to include every student in 2022, more than a dozen states have followed suit.

But as lawmakers in those states are finding out, having a model is a double-edged sword.

They can see that if they push vouchers across the finish line, they’re likely to be able to coast from there.

But they also have to acknowledge (or at least put a lot of effort into ignoring) that voucher programs are way more expensive than they might seem.

Lawmakers in Georgia, which is just setting out on its voucher adventure, already are seeing how tricky school voucher math can be.

They gave the green light to expanding the state’s voucher program last year and state officials started accepting applications this spring.

But just like in Arizona, they’re running into math problems that could turn out to be very costly.

When Georgia lawmakers were debating how big the program should be, they estimated 22,000 students would be eligible, at a cost of $144 million.

The system they set up would make vouchers available to students in under-performing schools. But the new board that manages the program interpreted the law to be much broader.

Basically, the board said if you live in a district that includes a single under-performing school, even if you don’t attend that school, then you’re eligible.

Some hawk-eyed reporters at the Associated Press spotted the discrepancy and calculated more than 400,000 students would be eligible.

Over in Texas, the political backlash against school vouchers almost derailed the GOP’s efforts to get their program off the ground.

Texas lawmakers tried to set up a voucher program in 2023, but they couldn’t agree on who should be eligible and what the academic accountability rules should look like.

Texas lawmakers held marathon negotiating sessions and Gov. Greg Abbott invested a lot of political capital in getting school vouchers across the finish line.

When that didn’t work, Abbott helped push out the Republican lawmakers who voted against vouchers in last year’s elections.

Now there’s much less drama at the Texas Legislature, although Democrats are still trying to put up a fight.

The voucher plan was the first bill passed in the Senate this year. Today, the Texas House is set to vote on a state budget that includes $1 billion for education savings accounts.

Ohio is a little farther along than Georgia or Texas.

It has already seen how expensive voucher programs can get, but is going full steam ahead anyway.

After Ohio started offering vouchers to every student two years ago, enrollment jumped from 23,000 students to 88,000 students, at a cost of $475 million.

Ohio lawmakers are now debating whether to expand the program and add another $500 million for vouchers.

Behind the state-level moves is a conservative establishment that has never had such a wide-open opportunity to make school choice the norm.

School choice was at the top of their education agenda when they put together their Project 2025 blueprint, citing Arizona specifically as the model for education.

Now they have a champion in the White House. As soon as President Donald Trump took office, he issued an executive order that would put federal dollars toward state voucher programs for K-12 schools.

And as Trump officials dismantle the U.S. Department of Education, state officials could have even more freedom to spend federal dollars on vouchers.

One of the few dark clouds on the horizon for school choice advocates is the fact that voters appear to be souring on vouchers.

Last November, voters in Nebraska, Colorado, and Kentucky rejected ballot measures that would have paved the way for school choice (just like Arizona voters did back in 2018).

But that’s probably not enough to stop this train.

In his January 29 executive order, Trump directed the heads of several federal departments to send him a plan for how to use federal grant money to support school choice.

The deadline for that plan is April 29, so get ready for a whole lot of news about school choice two weeks from now.

Crusade hits home: The fight over DEI policies escalated last week when Arizona Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Horne threatened to withhold more than $1 million that a Tempe school district planned to use for low-income students and teacher training, AZFamily reported. Officials at the Kyrene School District say their “Staff Social-Emotional Wellness” policy, which the governing board considered last week, is meant to promote a “culture of care and compassion.” But Horne says it violates a Trump administration mandate earlier this month to either root out anything related to DEI or lose federal funding. Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes fired back, saying schools should follow the law, but “they should feel free to ignore baseless, politicized threats from the State Superintendent’s office, which has no legitimate role whatsoever in blocking the distribution of these federal funds.”

Trans policy backlash: Governing board members at Mesa Public Schools got an earful when they proposed a “gender dysphoria policy,” the Mesa Tribune’s Cecilia Chan reports. The policy would require school staff to notify parents if their kids ask to go by a pronoun or name that’s different from the one on their birth certificate, as well as force them to use bathrooms and play on teams that align with their sex at birth. Most of the 80 people who spoke at the board meeting last week criticized the proposal, saying it would make students feel “unsafe, unwelcome and unsupported.”

New laws incoming: Gov. Katie Hobbs signed two Republican bills into law that regulate cell phone use and ultra-processed foods in schools, per 12News’ Kevin Reagan. The lucky bills are Rep. Leo Biasiucci’s HB2164, which prohibits schools from selling or serving processed foods with ingredients like red dye 40 or potassium bromate, and Rep. Beverly Pingerelli’s HB2484, which forces schools to limit cell phone use during the school day with some exceptions for emergencies and academic uses.

Taking it to court: Mayes joined 15 other attorneys general in a lawsuit to restore pandemic relief aid for schools, the Associated Press reported. The Biden administration extended the deadline to use that money, but Trump administration officials said last month they wouldn’t honor those extensions. In all, the aid amounted to $189 billion, but U.S. Education Department officials haven’t said how much of that money is left.

Trying to pay the bills: While state and federal officials argue, local school districts are struggling to make ends meet. The Deer Valley Unified School District is asking the Legislature to help cover the ever-higher electricity costs for air conditioning at schools. The Scottsdale Unified School District is facing a shortage of bus drivers. And the Chandler Unified School District is reeling from a failed bond election last year that official hoped would pay for renovations at two elementary schools.

Leaning on AI: Former U.S. Sen. Kyrsten Sinema launched a learning center designed to use AI to help neurodivergent students, the Republic’s Stephanie Murray reported. Sinema partnered with Arizona State University and OpenAI, the company that made ChatGPT, to open the center. She also used $3 million from her campaign funds to get the center going.

As small business owners ourselves, we wish we’d had as much initiative as these kids do.

Frontier Elementary students held a “Kid Biz Market” this week to help teach them entrepreneurial skills, the Republic’s Erick Trevino reports.

The kiddos are in the after-school Kid Biz Builder Class, which PTSO president Natalee Sticht started after hearing from students who wanted to learn how to start their own businesses.