Local opinion: Protect Education initiative seeks balance, not an end to ESAs

No one should dismiss Dreama Peterson's family's experiences with the ESA school voucher program. If the vouchers helped her daughter escape a harmful school environment and gave her son access to services that allowed him to thrive, that is something we all should celebrate.

But her story is not the whole story — and it is not an argument against the Protect Education initiative.

Ms. Peterson’s op-ed asks readers to believe they face only two choices: preserve Arizona's universal voucher program exactly as it exists today or force children back into schools that did not work for them. That is simply not what the initiative proposes.

The Protect Education initiative does not take ESA eligibility away from students with disabilities. They would continue to have access to vouchers, as would those students whose families have an annual income of less than $150,000. Suggesting otherwise risks confusing voters about what the initiative actually does.

The real debate is whether Arizona should continue spending billions of taxpayer dollars on a virtually unrestricted universal voucher program with limited transparency, accountability, and student safety requirements, or whether those funds should be focused on the students with the greatest needs while ensuring taxpayers know how their money is being spent.

Ms. Peterson's family found a solution that worked for them. Other families have, too. But public policy cannot be built solely on individual success stories. It must also consider the over one million Arizona children who remain in public schools, the strain universal vouchers place on the state's education budget, and the lack of basic safeguards that would be expected for any publicly funded program.

Taxpayer-funded education should come with reasonable expectations. Parents deserve to know whether schools receiving public dollars provide safe learning environments. Taxpayers deserve transparency about how billions of public dollars are spent and the return on their investment. Students deserve protections against fraud, abuse, and neglect regardless of whether they attend a public, charter, or private school. Those are not radical ideas. They are common-sense safeguards.

Ironically, Ms. Peterson's own experience underscores why accountability matters. She describes years of adults failing to protect her children. I don’t know why she was unable to get the help she needed. I know that district public schools have a myriad of accountability and transparency requirements — such as mandatory background checks, fingerprinting requirements, and reporting of abusive behavior — not required of private schools. District public schools also have elected governing board members responsible to parents and their local communities.

The Protect Education initiative recognizes that some students — especially those with disabilities—may need educational options beyond their neighborhood public school. It does not seek to eliminate those options. Instead, it seeks to ensure that Arizona's education dollars are directed where they are needed most and that every publicly funded educational setting meets basic standards of transparency, accountability, and student safety.

Voters should read the initiative itself rather than rely on claims that it would strip educational opportunities from families like Ms. Peterson's. It won't. What it will do is ask Arizona to balance parental choice with fiscal responsibility and protections for the students those dollars are meant to serve.