PHOENIX -- The head of the House Education Committee said Wednesday that any plan to ask voters to increase pay of public school teachers also must include inserting a right to vouchers for private and parochial schools into the Arizona Constitution -- a proposal that could blow up the whole plan.
Rep. Matt Gress said he believes that House and Senate Republicans are supportive of finding the dollars to raise teacher pay. That proposal would provide a $4,000 across-the-board increase, a move that would put average salaries here above the national average.
But the Phoenix Republican told Capitol Media Services his GOP colleagues want something else: protecting school choice.
Both state and federal courts have affirmed the legality of vouchers, rejecting various challenges that it amounts to the improper use of state funds for private and religious education. Those rulings have concluded that the vouchers of state dollars are given not to the schools but to the parents. And it is the fact that the parents decide how to use those funds that makes it legal.
Gress said what's missing, however, is a guarantee that the program will continue -- and without interference. And he said that's definitely needed.
"You've seen repeated assaults, particularly by Gov. Hobbs, in trying to eradicate one of the school choice options that we have,'' he said, notably what's formally known as Empowerment Scholarship Accounts.
"She is not going to give up until she has ripped out school choice by root and branch,'' Gress said. "And I think that worries a lot of Arizona families.''
Hobbs, for her part, says what Gress and the GOP are proposing is "a complete and total nonstarter.''
"Business and education leaders are opposed to that shamelessly partisan plan,'' she said in a statement to Capitol Media Services. "The reckless partisan games from politicians in the Legislature need to come to an end before they endanger pay raises for teachers in order to gut public education.''
Senate Minority Leader Priya Sundareshan said the disclosure of the new GOP demand comes even as Democrats have been trying to work with Republicans to craft a deal to extend Proposition 123.
Approved by voters in 2015, it has provided close to $3.5 billion since then in additional dollars for K-12 education by making additional withdrawals from the state land trust.
That funding, however, runs out this year. Both Republicans and Hobbs have proposed asking voters to extend that extra funding, though there are differences.
Republicans want all the dollars for teacher pay. Hobbs has her own plan -- one that would take even more money out of the trust -- to finance not just teacher salaries but also support staff, general school funding as well as cash for school capital and safety improvement. Those talks, Sundareshan said, have broken down.
"That would explain why they have walked away from the table for so long,'' the Tucson Democrat said Wednesday on being told of the GOP interest in now adding voucher protection to the mix.
"We have been waiting for over a month with the Republicans to come back with a proposal,'' Sundareshan said.
And what if Republicans insist that higher pay for public school teachers has to be linked to constitutional protections for vouchers?
"I hesitate to say 'non-starter,' '' Sundareshan said. "But, yes, as we know, vouchers are not a good policy in our view.''
In the end, however, it may not matter what Democrats -- or the governor -- think.
Any extension of Prop 123 would be crafted as a constitutional amendment. And that means if Republicans who control the House and Senate can line up the votes among their own members, it would go directly to the ballot, bypassing the governor.
The fight is the latest dust-up over vouchers that actually began more than a decade ago.
At that time they were limited to students with certain disabilities who could not get their needs met in public schools. Over the years, however, GOP lawmakers gradually expanded eligibility to include foster children, those on reservations and students attending schools rated D or F.
In 2022, however, all the limits came off as Doug Ducey, Hobbs' predecessor, signed legislation for "universal vouchers.'' These essentially are checks of state dollars starting at about $7,500 -- with higher amounts for students with special needs -- that are available to all, whether to pay for private schools or for materials used by parents who home school their children.
The result is that a program that had fewer than 1,000 students in 2014 and only about 11,000 in 2022 has now grown to more than 87,000, with another 1,721 already signed up for next school year. And the cost has ballooned to more than $770 million a year, at least in part because the vouchers are now being used by parents who, until now, were sending their children to private schools on their own dime.
Hobbs had no luck when she first took office in 2023 in convincing the Republican-controlled Legislature to kill the universal expansion. So now she's proposed what she calls a compromise: Keep universal vouchers -- but tie state aid to the ability of the parents to pay.
Under her plan, families making up to $100,000 a year would still be eligible for a full voucher. But there would be a declining amount above that, with the ability to get a voucher disappearing at $200,000. Hobbs is calling this a "reform'' of the program, saying without the change the number of students who will enroll will top 94,000 with a price tag of $964 million. Gress said that's not going to get any traction.
"She may portray her policies as not getting rid of them,'' he said. "But the effective operational practice of her policy would be gutting the ESA program.''
While Republicans may have the ability to advance their plan linking teacher pay with protecting vouchers, there is a potential danger of voter rejection.
A decade ago, the original Prop 123 barely skated by with a 51-49 margin. And that was despite bipartisan support and the backing of both business interests and the education community.
Geneva Fuentes, communications director for the Arizona Education Association, said her members already were unhappy with the initial Republican plan to restrict in the Prop 123 extension how schools could use the dollars only for teacher pay. She said that leaves out things like facilities maintenance "to make sure that if the AC breaks in a school that kids can continue to learn safely there.''
But even if those issues can be resolved, Fuentes said AEA is unlikely to support anything that enshrines the right of parents to vouchers in the Arizona Constitution.
"There have been significant issues with waste, fraud and abuse with the current voucher program,'' she said, particularly high-dollar purchases made by parents of home-schooled children. "Constitutional protections for the voucher program would make it very difficult for lawmakers to implement future reforms to the program,'' Fuentes said.
Gress, for his part, said he does not see adding a constitutional right to vouchers to a Prop 123 extension as a poison pill that would kill the entire package when it goes to voters. Part of what he is counting on is support from the parents of all the youngsters now taking advantage of vouchers.
"We've seen the Empowerment Scholarship Account program grow tremendously from 13,000 or 14,000 to nearly 90,000,'' he said, with close to half of that growth being students who had been enrolled in public schools but are using the vouchers to go to a private or parochial school.
"They're overwhelmingly popular,'' Gress said.
"This has changed the game for a lot of these families who just didn't feel like the existing education options were satisfying the needs of their children,'' he continued. "So I think you're going to see a lot of support for not only raising teacher pay but preserving education freedom in the state.''
Putting a right of parents to get vouchers in the Arizona Constitution would also override any effort by Hobbs to link the program to the ability of parents to pay. Gress said that's fine with him, saying it goes to the principle of a universal education.
"We don't charge tuition to wealthy families who attend a district or a charter school,'' he said. "I believe that if you are of student age in the state of Arizona, you deserve to have state investment in your education.''
- - -
On X, Bluesky and Threads: @azcapmedia
