The state’s universal voucher program is under the microscope this week and it’s getting attacked from both sides.
First, the Grand Canyon Institute came out with a headline-making report that families who get the Empowerment Scholarship Accounts, or ESA’s, haven’t spent a whole lot of that money and are sitting on some $360 million in accumulated state money.
Then, the Goldwater Institute came forward with a lawsuit from two homeschooling Arizona moms, who say they can no longer use ESA funds to pay for pencils, erasers or some books. They blame Democratic Attorney General Kris Mayes for adding curriculum requirements earlier this summer.
It’s all raising questions from all sides about the controversial program, which now serves more than 78,000 Arizona students at a cost of $718 million last school year. Wayne Schutsky with KJZZ's Politics Desk joined The Show to explain this.
Full conversation
LAUREN GILGER: Good morning, Wayne.
WAYNE SCHUTSKY: Good morning.
GILGER: OK. So let's start with this Grand Canyon Institute report. They are a nonpartisan think tank I should say, but this created quite a stir. $360 million that's been given out to families to spend on education. That's just kind of sitting and it's because these funds roll over year to year?
SCHUTSKY: Yes. And so, yeah, Grand Canyon, they are self-labeled nonpartisan. I will say that they're pretty critical of the ESA program generally. And so they typically do reports like this looking at what they see as flaws with the program. Yeah.
When, when a parent they get an a or a median amount of about $7,400 a year with these vouchers, if they don't spend all of that on private school tuition or homeschooling supplies, that kind of thing, it just sits in their account and they can either use it the next year or eventually if their child graduates, they can actually use that towards university.
GILGER: To university, OK. So have we ever, how does this compare, I guess to how much is being spent in the program, like we mentioned $718 million. This is a good chunk of that.
SCHUTSKY: Yeah. So as you mentioned, $718 million for the year that's expected to continue kind of ticking up as enrollment goes up in the program. And so it's, yeah, it's roughly half of the annual budget for the program since it was universally expanded to all students in the state.
GILGER: OK. So Wayne put this into context for us, this comes as we've seen report after report over the last year or so kind of saying just how much this program's costing. There have been lots of debates about this at the state Capitol. Lots of concerns about the cost of the program at the same time, we have a budget deficit. Talk about how this kind of plays into that larger narrative.
SCHUTSKY: Yeah, so until lawmakers and the governor made some fairly steep budget cuts across the board over the summer, we were facing a $1.21-$1.4 billion budget deficit over the next two years. Now voucher critics blame the voucher program for that because as you mentioned, hundreds of millions of dollars are going into that program including, to many students who weren't in the public school system before. So they view that as added costs.
Now, proponents of the program say it's a more efficient use of those dollars. And I saw without getting into the minutia of that, it's a huge part of that budget discussion and where our state tax dollars are going.
Now, I will say that proponents of the program also say that a lot of this money left over is more for students with special needs who get a higher award and maybe have those expenses spread out more over the year. So they may not have used it now. But if it rolls over to next year, eventually get spent. That being said, with $360 million in the bank that shows that a lot of that money is just kind of sitting there gathering dust.
GILGER: OK. So then let's talk about this other story, this lawsuit by these two moms. What's their complaint?
SCHUTSKY: So they're basically saying that their expenses aren't getting approved. When you have the school vouchers, you get these various school related expenses, you submit it to the Department of Education for approval to get reimbursed with that voucher money.
But earlier this year, Attorney General Kris Mayes' office contended that some of the rules that were adopted by the state Board of Education actually violated the law because they didn't require that curriculum component to say, “hey, I'm buying this because here's where it fits into a curriculum that my student is using.” The rule book doesn't say that, but the state law appears to say that and so Mayes kind of notified the Department of Education that I'm looking into this, the Department of Education agreed to use that moving forward.
GILGER: Right. Right. And, and we should say the Department of Education, the Republican Superintendent Tom Horn didn't, didn't, you know, fight those changes. He let them go through.
SCHUTSKY: Yeah, I mean, he made a statement at one point, he put out a statement at one point saying, you know, he ran what Mayes’ office was saying by some of the higher level folks in his office and said, don't treat this as a partisan. Just look at this as a legal argument. And what do you think?
And he basically said at the time that my staff kind of said, yeah, this is a sound legal reading of the law.
GILGER: And this kind of came as there were headlines about things that were, you know, being bought with these ESA funds that seemed pretty far outside of the school realm.
SCHUTSKY: Yeah. The big ones that get pointed to, I think there were some Snowbowl ski passes in there. There were some driving lessons at a place that uses like luxury vehicles for that kind of thing. I think maybe some grand pianos or things of that nature.
So it's some things that maybe you could make an argument, have an education purpose, but maybe we're on the higher end of those expenses, not something a public school student for instance would expect to be covered in their classroom.
GILGER: That's for sure. OK. So Republicans in the state Legislature expanded this ESA program and they have been very resistant to just about any kind of reform measures that Democrats have really tried to push for a long time here. We are, of course, in the midst of a campaign season, Wayne, I'm guessing this is an issue.
SCHUTSKY: Yeah, especially for Democrats who are, you know, have made rolling back this universal expansion that let all students under this program a few years ago. They said, you know, this is draining public education funds. We want to roll it all the way back.
Now, that message has been tempered in recent years to maybe not roll it all the way back, but put a lot of guardrails in there to make sure the money is being spent the correct way, make sure the right, safety measures are there to that, to make sure the folks that are teaching kids under these programs are held to the same standards as teachers in public school, that kind of thing.
I did speak to a pollster who told me basically there's broad bipartisan support amongst the electorate for those regulation increases, but maybe not for rolling back the program entirely.
GILGER: OK. So if Democrats do what they say they will do here, which is take, you know, at least one chamber of the state Legislature this time around this could be a very different story, right? There's a lot at stake here in terms of the ESA program.
SCHUTSKY: I think if you're, if we're going to see major changes, the Democrats would have to take both chambers because the Republicans, as you said, have been just super resident. This was a key issue for Governor Doug Ducey, the Republican back when he signed it, And for a lot of Republican lawmakers believe school choice is the way they believe parents should be able to take this money and educate their kids how they see fit.
And so I really don't see substantial changes to this program coming unless Democrats kind of control both chambers in the governor's office.
