Arizona continues to be demonstrate how taxpayer-funded school vouchers actually work. Spoiler alert: it is not to rescue poor students from failing schools.
Of course, like other states that embrace taxpayer-funded vouchers, Arizona's choice boosters have used the old familiar pitch. When Arizaona made its taxpayer-funded vouchers universally available to all families in 2022, no matter how wealthy, then-Governor Doug Ducey declared "These kids are trapped in failing public schools. It's time to set these families free."
But that's not how it worked.
12News has offered solid coverage of taxpayer-funded shenanigans in the billoion-dollar program. None of the stories are pretty. While schools went begging for Home Ec supplies, vfamilies were using their taxpayer-funded vouchers to buy high end kitchen equipment. Plenty of wealthy families are using millions of taxpayer dollars to buy voucher families private dance lessons and other sorts of activities that public school kids (you know-- the ones that haven't been set free) can only dream of. A $16,000 cello. Dune bugies.
Shouldn't there be oversight of the program. Well, about that. 12News reported last December that state had a huge backlog of undistributed vouchers, so to clear te decks, state ed honcho Tom Horne decreed that they would distibute the money now and audit later.
12News did some digging into the program and found that the taxpayer-funded vouchers were being used mostly by wealthy non-rural families, and that those families were "escaping" some of the top-rated public and charter schools in the state.
Noe 12News has a new report that reveals yet another layer to the program-- families that bank their taxpayer-funded voucher dollars for later.
More than 10,000 famillies have over $10,000 banked from vouchers. 200 accounts have over $100,000. Ten have over $200,000. The law says that these funds, collected from taxpayers, can be rolled over for use as college funding. All told, it amounts to about $440 million sitting in private bank accounts. Nothing is escaping here except all the money "escaping" from taxpayers. Arpund $50 million is sitting in acounts that are inactive.
As always in Arizona, if you're expecting GOP lawmakers to say, "Well, that's gone a little too far," you will be disappointed. Reported 12News:
State Rep. Nick Kupper, R-Surprise, said in a written statement: “If there is around $440M sitting in the accounts of the 85,000 students using ESAs, I would say it sounds like it’s a popular program.”
He added: "Interestingly, there are mechanisms for getting unused ESA monies back when a student leaves the program, but there aren’t the same mechanisms to do that with public school monies. Perhaps we should take a look at correcting that.”
Yup. Why make the taxpayer-funded voucher program more accountable when you can just put tye screws to public schools, again.
Taxpayer-funded vouchersb run about $7-8 thousand in Arizona. Considerably more for students with special needs.
But this is the future of most voucher programs-- eventually universal, thereby establishing an entitled ment for the wealthy, paid for by everyone else. Paid, in fact, twice--once by the cost of their own tax dollars going to fund the vouchers, and again by either increased taxation or erduced services in the local school district. Ane eventually, Arizona's unsustainable program is going to felt by all the residents of the state as the budget collapses, leaving everyone (well, almost everyone) in a sort of financial and educational desert.
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