Local opinion: Protect Education Act petitions and your tax dollars

A letter published May 9 in the Arizona Daily Star and on tucson.com titled “Education of youth” provided inaccurate information regarding the intent of the Protect Education Act, saying, “I read the legislation description at the top of the page, and it was proposed legislation to end the school voucher system … ”

The Protect Education Act proposition in no way eliminates the Empowerment Scholarship Accounts (ESA) voucher program — it seeks to provide accountability at the state level, among several other issues that need to be addressed. The program was originally formed to ensure access to necessary educational services for children with disabilities and can include home education, tutoring, therapy, private schooling and other approved expenses. I’ve spoken with parents of children who have used the program in this way for services not available in their schools — some children have even transitioned to their local school system.

When the Arizona Legislature overruled voters to make the ESA voucher program universal, it expanded a program designed for 10,000 students with disabilities, not 100,000 households making millions of small discretionary purchases annually.

There is a compliance burden on families who are honest, use the program appropriately, and detail every purchase as required. But the Department of Education did not plan for and was not funded for oversight of up to 12,000 purchases a day, and chances of misuse of funds being spotted are low.

There is much more depth to the issues, but reading the proposed act — which is a modification of existing law and is in no way intended to end the ESA voucher program — shows the common-sense approaches needed not only to improve accountability at the state level but to ensure that the ESA voucher program remains viable in the future for those needing it.

My grandmother taught in a one-room schoolhouse in a mining camp in the mountains of Montana. About the petition circulators you may encounter: Most of us in the Tucson area are volunteers, out there because we believe in and support public education as one of the foundations of our country. The paid Protect Education Act petition circulators I have spoken with are trained and understand the basics of the petition they are asking you to sign. It’s possible the letter writer encountered a paid circulator for the decoy petition put out by an opposition group to confuse voters — one I spoke with had no idea what it said.

If you are asked to sign the Protect Education Act petition, please feel free to ask us what it is about and request resources to learn more. Take your time deciding, but don’t be misled by the idea that it will end the program. They are your tax dollars, and you should want them used wisely.