Arizona school voucher foes hold rally as Ducey visits public school

PHOENIX — Members of a grassroots group that opposes Arizona’s expansive voucher law held a rally outside a public school Thursday as Republican Gov. Doug Ducey visited the location amid a growing legal fight over school choice.

Members of Save Our Schools Arizona held colorful signs outside a Phoenix school praising public education and criticizing Ducey as he visited the campus.

“I’m here because I’m tired of watching our Legislature and our governor systematically starve public education,” said Melinda Merkel Iyer, a mother of two children who attend that school.

“It’s crucial to our democracy, it’s crucial to our economy and what’s happening cannot be allowed to continue.”

Technically called Empowerment Scholarship Accounts, the Arizona program allows parents to take the state money a local public school would receive to pay for private or religious education. The current average award for non-disabled students is about $5,700.

“What that law will do is another small opportunity for the children that need it to access that choice — and that’s what I would like to see,” Ducey said.

Opponents of the law collected more than 100,000 signatures to stop the law from going into effect and let voters decide the issue in the 2018 election, but they are facing deep-pocketed opposition from conservative groups like Americans for Prosperity and the Goldwater Institute. Americans for Prosperity is funded by billionaire brothers Charles and David Koch.

The Goldwater Institute, a conservative think tank based in Arizona, was part of a coalition that filed a lawsuit Wednesday.

The law making private school vouchers available to every student in the state was a top legislative priority for Ducey and had firm support from the Trump administration and U.S. Education Secretary Betsy DeVos. It expands eligibility to all students by 2022, but it caps enrollment at about 30,000.

Arizona’s 15 county recorders are now reviewing a random 5 percent sample of the 108,224 certified signatures to determine if enough are valid. The high initial certification means they could reject 30 percent of the signatures and the voter referendum would still make the ballot. The measure is temporarily on hold until the process concludes.

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