Did You Know?

Did you know the Empowerment Scholarship Account (ESA) voucher program:

• is estimated to cost Arizona taxpayers nearly a billion dollars this year?

• was originally intended for students with special needs and military families, yet now they are less than 20 percent of voucher recipients?

• was changed to accept everyone, and now private school tuition has risen so much that most families can’t attend them even with a voucher?

• enrollment has skyrocketed since it was changed to accept everyone, and now nearly two-thirds of the vouchers go to students who were already in private schools or home-schooled?

• has no income cap; so the wealthiest are being subsidized by regular taxpayers to send their kids to the expensive private schools they were already attending?

• has paid for lingerie, vacations, diamond rings, and big-screen TVs?

• does not require teachers in private schools to be certifed or fingerprinted for the safety of students?

• does not require results testing to make sure students are getting a good education?

• is prompting the proliferation of private schools with unknown backgrounds and experience, risking our kids’ safety, education results, and misuse of taxpayer dollars?

There is a Protect Education petition coming to a place near you, and your signature will add accountability, safety, and reasonable guardrails to the ESA program. Please go to our LD17 Democrats website to find out where you can sign a petition and how you can help improve our education system. Our kids, grandkids, and communities deserve better.

Marian Hill