PHOENIX (AP) – Advocates for public schools failed to submit enough valid signatures to temporarily block the law ahead of a proposed 2024 referendum, proponents of a massive expansion of Arizona’s private school voucher system said Monday.
But the grassroots group said they “will wait for an accurate figure from the office of the secretary of state” to challenge a Republican-backed law that encourages families to drop their children from K-12 public schools.
“To be clear, there are no official numbers until the Secretary of State says there are, and the Secretary of State’s office is still in the early stages of fulfilling its statutory duty to review petitions,” said Beth Lewis, executive director of Save Our Schools, Arizona. said in a statement.
The group was formed in 2017 when it went through a similar expansion and successfully challenged it in the polls.
Lewis announced Friday that the group had submitted 141,714 signatures to block the expansion of private school coupons that the Republican governor signed into law. Doug Ducey in July.
The law extends the program to every child in the state.
If a review finds Save Our Schools Arizona has met the requirement of nearly 119,000 valid signatures — and if those signatures survive any court challenges from voucher supporters — it will be blocked until 2024 Elections in November.
The Goldwater Institute, a conservative and liberal public policy think tank in Phoenix, said that according to a petition provided by the secretary of state’s office, Save Our Schools “submitted only 88,866 signatures” and was “well short of the 118,843 required. One signature” to overturn the reforms through a referendum. “
“Preliminary results show that Arizona families have resisted attempts by special interest groups to deprive them of the ability to choose an education that best meets their children’s unique needs,” said Victor Riches, president and CEO of the Goldwater Institute.
Although about one-third of Arizona’s students are eligible for existing voucher programs — mostly students living in low-income areas — only about 12,000 students statewide currently use the system.
The expansion, signed by Ducey, will allow every parent in Arizona to use public funds now sent to the K-12 public school system to pay for their child’s private school tuition, homeschool materials or other educational expenses.
Arizona already has the widest range of educational options in the nation and, if the law goes into effect, will have the most comprehensive voucher system.
An estimated 60,000 currently enrolled private school students and about 38,000 homeschooled students will be immediately eligible for grants of up to $7,000 a year, although a few have already received vouchers.
All 1.1 million students attending traditional regional schools and charter schools will also be eligible to leave public schools and receive funding to enroll in private schools.
Lewis and other opponents of the plan said they were concerned the public school system could lose as much as $1 billion in funding. K-12 schools currently receive about $8 billion in state aid annually.