Action
Ballot Argument Submission

Anti-ESA Measure

⛔ We Oppose This Measure

Official Title: I-09-2026 Protect Education Act

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Background

Why This Matters

Arizona's Empowerment Scholarship Account program provides families approximately $7,500 per year to direct toward the educational setting of their choice: private school, homeschool, tutoring, therapies, or online academies. Over 102,000 children are currently enrolled, and roughly 20% have special needs. A 2026 ballot initiative bank-rolled by Washington, D.C. based National Education Association would impose a $150,000 household income cap with no adjustment for family size. The cap grows at 2% annually while incomes grow at 4%, excluding more families each year. An estimated 20,300 current families would immediately lose eligibility, without a grandfather clause, hearing, or transition. The measure also mandates new bureaucracy for participating private schools which would force many to increase tuition, stop accepting kids with scholarships, or even close altogether. The initiative additionally grant unprecedented enforcement and investigative powers over participating families and schools to agents hostile to the scholarship program and families who use them.

Key Points:
  • ✓Revokes Millions in Scholarship Funds Awarded to Disabled Children: The measure would immediately seize millions in scholarship awards from disabled children and their families that they planned to use for their education. These families did nothing wrong, yet they will likely lose access to critical services and instruction that is needed for the child's development. It is unfair and wrong to take these education scholarships from special needs students.
  • ✓Forces Kids Into School Options That Don't Work for Them: This measure will eliminate educational choices for families by pricing them out, regulating their school out of participation, or burying them in bureaucracy until they give up and force their kids back into district schools that don't meet their needs.
  • ✓Immediately Kicks 20,300 Kids Off Their Scholarships: This measure would immediately strip ESA eligibility from an estimated 20,300 families currently using the program. And that is the point because the measure doesn't grandfather current families using the program. Families who signed up under the current rules, made school decisions, and built their kids' lives around those choices would lose funding overnight.
  • ✓Punishes Families Who Played by the Rules: These families applied through the proper channels, were approved by the state, and spent their scholarships on their children's education. They did nothing wrong. Now this measure retroactively changes the rules and strips their eligibility — no hearing, no appeal, no transition period. A family making $155,000 who's been in the program for three years just loses it. That's not reform. That's pulling the rug out from under families who trusted the system and followed every rule.
  • ✓Arbitrarily Caps Scholarship Eligibility at $150K for a Family: $150,000 household income in Arizona is solidly middle class. A firefighter married to a nurse, two teachers with side jobs. No allowance for number of children. The cap adjusts by only 2% per year, but Arizona incomes grow closer to 4%. So, by 2045, more than half of all Arizona families with children would be excluded. Today roughly 30% of families are above the cap. Within two decades it's 52%. This isn't a cap, it's a phase-out of the entire program.
  • ✓Seizes Kids' Scholarships to Funnel Money Back to the System Kids Left: This measure claws back a family's personal education scholarships to redistribute to the district schools those families chose to leave.
  • ✓This Is a Poorly Drafted Measure That Will Create Chaos: Even if you think ESAs need reform, this isn't the way to do it. The measure has no grandfather clause. The income cap doesn't adjust for family size — a single parent making $151,000 is treated the same as a household of six. The 2% annual adjustment lags real income growth, meaning the cap gets more restrictive every year in ways the drafters either didn't understand or didn't care about. This measure is a shoddy blunt instrument that will create unworkable problems that can't be fixed in the future.
  • ✓Washington, D.C. Teachers Union Power Grab: Follow the money. This measure is bankrolled by the National Education Association, the nation's largest teachers union, headquartered in Washington, D.C. They spent millions to put this on the ballot and they'll spend millions more to pass it. Their goal is to force 102,000+ Arizona children back into district classrooms where union membership grows and dues flow back to Washington. Arizona parents, not D.C. union bosses, should decide how their children are educated.
  • ✓This Isn't the Right Fit for Arizona: Arizona isn't like other states. We have the most robust school choice ecosystem in the country — ESAs, open enrollment, charter schools, microschools. Over 450,000 students use some form of school choice. This measure applies a one-size-fits-all regulatory framework designed by national unions that don't understand how education works here. What makes sense in a state with one dominant school system doesn't make sense in a state where families have built their lives around having options. Arizona's education landscape is unique. It deserves Arizona solutions, not a template shipped in from Washington.
  • ✓Gives Public Unions Unprecedented Enforcement Powers: The measure creates new enforcement and investigative authority that empowers entities aligned with public-sector unions to scrutinize how families spend ESA dollars. This builds an unprecedented investigative apparatus to agents hostile to school-choice that makes families afraid to use the program.
Sample Argument

Vote NO on Prop XXX

This measure doesn't protect education. It takes scholarships away from children who already have them, including 20,000 students with special needs who depend on ESAs for critical services and specialized instruction their families chose specifically for them.

More than 102,000 Arizona children use Empowerment Scholarship Accounts. Their families applied through proper channels, were approved by the state, and followed every rule. This measure retroactively changes those rules. An estimated 20,300 families currently in the program would immediately lose eligibility because this measure does not include a grandfather clause, no hearing, or transition period.

The income cap is set at $150,000 with no adjustment for family size. A single parent making $151,000 is treated the same as a household of six. The cap adjusts by only 2% per year while incomes grow at 4%, meaning it excludes more families every year. By 2045, more than half of all Arizona families with children would be locked out. That's by the design. The goal of this measure is to eliminate the options afforded by these scholarships.

The measure also imposes mandates so burdensome that many good schools who serve thousands of families currently would have to close altogether.

Parents, not politicians, should decide where and how their children are educated. Arizona has the most robust school choice ecosystem in the country. Over 450,000 students use some form of educational choice. This measure undermines what makes Arizona's system work by applying a rigid, one-size-fits-all framework that doesn't fit our state.

Vote NO on Prop XXX. Protect Arizona families' educational choices!

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