by Matt Beienburg
February 19, 2019
To Save Our Schools
Arizona and the Secular Coalition for Arizona:
Families participating
in Arizona’s Empowerment Scholarship Account (ESA) program received a warm and
welcome reassurance at the Senate Finance Committee hearing on SB 1395, a bill
that would alleviate many of the administrative struggles ESA parents have
faced in navigating the program’s rules.
In particular, Save Our
Schools (SOS) Arizona co-founder Dawn Penich-Thacker declared at Wednesday’s
hearing in unequivocal terms (emphasis is mine):
“No one is trying to get rid of the ESA program…I am here speaking as a leader of Save Our Schools Arizona and I am clarifying that we and nobody, no other organization that I know, is trying to get rid of the ESA program. We are not trying to kick out existing families. We are not trying to reduce current eligibility criteria. Those things get said. It is a fear-mongering tactic that I have personally heard. I have personally asked the people saying this not to say it. So again I want to say it in this public setting… No one is trying to end, reduce, or limit the existing ESA program.”
This is fantastic news,
and I’m sure nearly every ESA parent and child would share the reaction of the
Committee’s Chairman, Senator J.D. Mesnard: “I am thrilled from what I’m
hearing that we don’t want to roll it back. That we apparently are OK with the
ESA plan design at least as it is today. That is the new
common denominator between both sides. I am excited to hear that.”
While I would like to
share in the enthusiasm, I am deeply troubled by the accompanying testimony
from both SOS and the Secular Coalition that suggest Ms. Penich-Thacker’s
assurances may be well-intentioned but undermined by the organizations’ broader
statements.
First, while Ms. Penich-Thacker noted in very ironclad terms that “no one is trying to end, reduce, or limit the existing ESA program,” the representative of the Secular Coalition declared that “choice should not come at the expense of public taxpayer dollars…so we urge you to consider amending this bill to exclude…religious education from the program.”
It is difficult to
reconcile the assurance that no one—particularly no organization—seeks
to reduce or limit the ESA program, when one of the leading organizations present
at nearly every ESA bill hearing is explicitly urging that families be excluded
from using the ESA program for schools that may be religiously affiliated.
Second, in objecting to
a provision regarding ongoing evaluations of special needs ESA students, Ms.
Penich-Thacker herself stated: “I am in a military family, but we’ll be done
with the military in 3 years. Should my child still receive an ESA in 10 years
even though we are no longer an active duty military family or my other child
that accommodations are not required? No, there should be evaluations.
Taxpayers would expect that.”
My hope is that this
reflects an honest misunderstanding of the current ESA eligibility provisions
in law, because these provisions in fact make it extremely clear that her
children would continue to remain eligible for an ESA after
her husband’s military service ends: Under the existing program,
any student who is “a previous recipient” or “the sibling of a current or
previous ESA recipient” is eligible for the program for their entire K-12
career.
Yet Ms. Penich-Thacker
appears to argue that families whose military service concludes partway through
their child’s education, for example, should be forced to pull their student
out of their private schooling arrangement or find other means of paying the
tuition and costs on their own. This would most certainly require a rollback of
the program’s eligibility provisions.
Given my objections to
the overwhelmingly dishonest portrayal of SB 1395 as an expansion
bill using the exact
“fear-mongering tactics” Ms. Penich-Thacker denounced (and indeed there have
been, and are, other bills dealing with ESA expansion, but entirely separate
from SB 1395), I do not wish to go the same route in accusing either SOS or the
Secular Coalition of seeking to deconstruct the ESA program if that is truly
not your intent.
However, I do ask: Will
you reaffirm Ms. Penich-Thacker’s statement that you would in no way “reduce or
limit” the existing ESA program, even for those students whose refuge and academic
hope amid backgrounds in the foster care system or failing public schools may
come, for example, from a school named for the saints? Is it indeed your
position that Arizona families are made better off by the existence of the ESA
program at the very least as an outlet for the disadvantaged populations
currently served?
Matt Beienburg is the Director of Education Policy at the Goldwater Institute.
Cross-posted from the Arizona Capitol Times.
