AZ Political Podcast: How would the ESA‑reform ballot initiative reshape education in Arizona?

My guest this week on the AZ Political Podcast, public school advocate Beth Lewis, is not trying to kill Arizona’s Empowerment Scholarship Account (ESA) program.

Really.

ESAs are school vouchers that state law allows to cover private school tuition, homeschool curricula and supplies, student tutoring and more. There’s a lot of controversy surrounding them, and now, there’s a proposed ESA-reforming ballot initiative.

Latest AZ Political Podcast guest involved in ESA-reforming ballot initiative

The initiative was proposed by Lewis’ organization, Save Our Schools Arizona (SOS), as well as the Arizona Education Association (AEA). The two organizations are jointly working to place this initiative on your ballot this fall.

But Lewis wants to make one thing clear: the initiative doesn’t even deliver a body blow to ESAs.

To be sure, the mental journey that leadership at both SOS and AEA had to take to arrive at this point — acceptance that ESAs aren’t going away — must have included a lot of uphill twists and turns.

What impact would ESA ballot initiative have on Arizona families?

There is one group of people for which the Protect Education, Accountability Now Act would create an ESA kill switch: families with a household income of $150,000 or more.

But there’s even an exception for them: no matter how much their parents earn, students with disabilities would still be eligible to receive funds. Those are the kids the original ESA program was designed for. (It became a universal program in 2022, and as of mid-January, 100,000 students were accessing ESA funds.)

The other guardrails in the proposed initiative include schools receiving voucher money to either give assessment tests to students or be accredited (homeschools excepted) and a requirement for those same schools to investigate allegations of misconduct and comply with basic safety standards (including fingerprint clearance cards for employees).

For the rest of the requirements in the proposed initiative (and to see whether I make Lewis take a solemn oath that she’s not trying to kill ESAs), check out the podcast.

The AZ Political Podcast is available at KTAR.com, the KTAR News app and everywhere you get your podcasts.

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