Before the start of the state legislative session in January, Arizona Gov. Katie Hobbs, a Democrat, proposed a plan to heavily regulate the state's universal education savings account (ESA) program. Her proposal aims to make private schools comply with some of the same standards adhered to by public schools, including requiring that private school teachers meet "minimum education requirements" before teaching ESA students and that private schools provide special education students the same services they had received in public schools. Additionally, she wants to require that students attend public schools for 100 days before receiving an ESA and for the state to audit expenditures at choice-participating private schools.
Hobbs's plan is an attempt to stifle Arizona's booming ESA program and bureaucratize private schools into operating much like the public schools that ESA students already opted out of. It also comes on the heels of a failed attempt to repeal the state's ESA program last year. Like last year, the state's Republican-controlled legislature is unlikely to go along with her measures and already killed one of the bills sponsored by Hobbs allies before it made it to committee in February.
