Local opinion: Voucher provision is a poison pill for Prop 123

The Republicans are holding funding for public education hostage in order to enshrine private and home school entitlement vouchers in the Arizona Constitution.

Proposition 123 was passed 10 years ago to use a percentage of interest from the sale of State Trust Lands to help fund public education. This voter-approved plan has accounted for about $280 million each year for public schools, but it must be renewed every ten years to continue, and that deadline is nearly upon us. Students, educators and parents are counting on us at the Legislature to act, but (shocker!) Republicans are dragging their feet and playing political games.

A Prop. 123 renewal is widely and broadly supported and should have been passed and placed on the ballot at the beginning of the session. But that hasn’t happened. Instead, Arizona House and Senate Republicans have cooked up a scheme to add their beloved entitlement vouchers for private schools to the bill to irreversibly burden our state with a billion-dollar program that is rife with fraud and abuse.

This is a poison pill, and they know it.

Arizona voters have already voted vouchers down once, and they will do it again. Approving funds for public schools only if enshrining vouchers in the Constitution is part of the deal is a false choice and should be stricken from the bill. If it’s not, Arizona voters will smartly see through it and say no.

In the meantime, we are forced to spend the $250 million from the general fund at a time when our state is facing reduced revenue because of excessive Republican tax cuts for the wealthy and uncertainty from the federal government caused by Donald Trump’s economic chaos that could impact federal funding and trigger a recession.

The bottom line is that the Republicans know that the vast majority of Arizonans choose and support public schools. They also know that other states are looking at our mistakes in the fraud and abuse of the voucher program and learning what not to do. And they know that they are jeopardizing general fund monies by using the poison pill of vouchers on the Prop 123 renewal.

To hold public schools hostage by saying that this is about teacher pay is wrong. When Republicans finally reveal their plan’s details, we expect it to be really all about universal vouchers that have no regulation on safety and no proof of learning required. This would completely abandon rural Arizonans who overwhelmingly rely on public education.

Your voices might be able to stop them. Please join me in saying no to anything but a clean renewal on Prop 123.