After deal fails, Republicans send 'poison pill' for Arizona school voucher reform to ballot

Arizona Republican state lawmakers made a last-ditch effort to hijack efforts to rein in private school vouchers on Friday, after a deal with the teacher’s union fell through.

The Arizona Education Association and Save Our Schools Arizona are gathering signatures to put “Protect Education Now” on the November ballot. If they succeed, and the ballot measure gets approved by voters, it would drastically alter the Empowerment Scholarship Accounts, the state’s universal voucher system.

Backed by the state teachers’ union and public school advocates, the proposal would put guardrails on how ESA money can be spent and place a $150,000 income cap on families to qualify for the program.

Republican lawmakers have fiercely fought back against efforts by legislative Democrats and Gov. Katie Hobbs to scale back Arizona school vouchers, which were expanded in 2022 to make all students eligible to receive taxpayer dollars to pay for the school or home-learning of their choice.

But on Friday, House Republicans said they’d struck a deal with the teachers’ union to impose some new restrictions on voucher dollars. In exchange, the union would have agreed to cease gathering signatures to place their own, more restrictive measure on the ballot.

Also as part of the deal, lawmakers agreed to drop an anti-teacher labor union measure, and another legislative ballot referral that would force schools to spend at least 60% of funds on direct instruction, rather than administration.

But the deal fell apart in the state Senate, where Democrats and two Republicans — Senate President Warren Petersen and Sen. Jake Hoffman — voted down the voucher reform bill crafted in the House.

A poison pill for voucher reforms

Instead, Republicans sent a different proposal to the ballot, one that includes a poison pill provision designed to neuter the union’s own attempts at reforms.

GOP senators claimed the legislative ballot referral is simply about asking voters to preserve vouchers used by military families. But the legislation also includes specific language intended to void the more stringent reforms backed by public school advocates and teachers.

Democrats criticized Republicans of being dishonest in claiming the ballot measure is intended to, in the words of Rep. Michael Way (R-Queen Creek), “protect protect military families.”

“This is not a measure about ESAs. In fact Arizona has various programs for assisting the children of military families,” Sen. Jake Hoffman (R-Queen Creek) said.

In a committee hearing, Republicans accused Democrats of impugning their motives by pushing the measure, causing public education advocates in the audience to laugh.

The audience was asked to be quiet multiple times, and were then blocked from entering the Senate gallery to view the following floor session.

“This is all political theater,” said Sen. Lauren Kuby. “It’s just simply trying to invalidate the pending citizen initiative.”

SOSAZ spokesperson Tyler Kowch called the measure a “blatant, undemocratic attempt to invalidate the will of voters.”

Kowch noted that SOSAZ never supported the earlier deal between the teachers’ union and House Republicans. A spokesperson for AEA did not respond to requests for comment.

“Democrats killed that deal because it was a bad deal,” Kowch said.

Retaliation

With a voucher reform deal off the table, Republicans pivoted and passed two other ballot referrals that would place new restrictions on public school spending and union organizing by teachers.

HCR 2040 would prohibit school districts from financially supporting labor unions. It would also prohibit union activities during working hours and prohibit teachers from distributing communications on a union's behalf. And it would ban public school teachers from going on strike, or risk losing their jobs.

“It is a punitive measure that we’re moving to the ballot that we’re moving specifically to target this particular group of people,” Sen. Priya Sundareshan (D-Tucson) said.

Democrats in the House also accused Republicans of reviving Gress’ HCR 2007 — which would require many districts to spend at least 60% of their budgets on in-classroom instructional costs — as retaliation after the voucher reform deal fell through.

“I just think that we are doing this at the 11th hour for reasons that have nothing to do with the amendment or the goals of the HCR,” Rep. Sarah Ligouri (D-Phoenix) said.

Gress also amended the bill to remove a requirement that districts spend at least 50% of operational dollars on teacher pay.

HCR 2007 would only apply to districts with more than 7,500 students or any district in Maricopa or Pima counties.

Gress said the measure will ensure more dollars are going into the classroom after an Auditor General’s report found the state’s public school districts spend about 52.1% of their money on those instructional expenses.

He pointed to a study by Georgetown University that found Arizona students’ test scores have dropped over the past decade, even as spending on education has increased.

“And we wonder why academic achievement has failed. It's because we have not adequately funded our classrooms enough,” Gress said.

But Democrats argued the measure will hurt students, because it doesn’t account for non-instructional spending like counselors, speech pathologists, resource officers and social workers.

Democrats also said the 60% requirement would hurt smaller districts in Maricopa and Pima counties, which have smaller budgets and could struggle to pay for fixed non-instructional costs, like electricity.

Legal questions

Democrats argued the anti-reform voucher question Republicans sent to the ballot is legally dubious.

Legislative Democrats sought — but didn’t receive — guidance on whether, as written, it’s legal for state lawmakers to trigger laws designed to nullify the will of Arizona voters at the ballot.

The state Constitution does give some direction in the event of conflicting constitutional amendments. If two conflicting measures pass on the same ballot, Arizona determines which takes effect by counting which measure received the most votes.

“If two or more conflicting measures or amendments to the constitution shall be approved by the people at the same election, the measure or amendment receiving the greatest number of affirmative votes shall prevail in all particulars as to which there is conflict,” the Constitution states.

However, proponents of the Republican’s “poison pill” measure argued that, as a constitutional amendment, it would trump the proposal being offered by the teachers’ union and public school advocates — a ballot measure that would change state law, not the constitution.