A fight over the future of the most sweeping school voucher program in the country has heated up in Arizona over the last few weeks, as public school advocates race to gather enough signatures to trigger a ballot referendum aimed at overturning a voucher law recently passed by the state's Republican-dominated legislature. The referendum campaign, which faces a crucial deadline this Friday, has drawn intense opposition from Arizona conservatives. This has included funding for multiple anti-referendum websites, roadside protests starring Republican legislators and, over the last two weeks, conflicts between activists both on social media and in the streets.
At the end of June, Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey signed a law that immediately created the most expansive school privatization plan in the country, opening up a pre-existing program that gave vouchers to several categories of qualified students to any family in the state. The Empowerment Scholarship Accounts (ESAs) program was first launched in 2011, ostensibly to help high-needs students whose parents had opted out of public school access specialized educational programs with tuition vouchers for private schools, including religious schools, and other educational expenses. In subsequent years, the program was steadily broadened to include other groups — like students in F-rated schools, in foster care, on Native American reservations or in military families — until this spring, when Arizona legislators responded to Ducey's request to "expand school choice any way we can" by opening the ESA option to any student in the state.
