For Star subscribers: The program enacted by GOP lawmakers will cost Arizona taxpayers 63% more next school year than budgeted just a month ago.
Howard Fischer PHOENIX — The system of universal vouchers enacted by Republican lawmakers will cost Arizona taxpayers $900 million next school year, 63% more than budgeted just a month ago.
It's up from the $552 million estimate prepared just months ago by the Joint Legislative Budget Committee. Even assuming Horne's projections that just half of the additional 39,000 students expected to sign up before the end of the next school year already are in private schools, with the median voucher running $10,000, that alone adds up to an additional $200 million.
Prior to that, vouchers were designed specifically to help students who fit certain categories who may need help beyond what they could get in public schools. These included students with special needs, foster children, children living on reservations, and those attending schools the state rates as"D" or"F."
In the end, Hobbs signed the state government's $17.8 billion spending plan for the coming year, saying she got other key victories, including $300 million in one-time funding for K-12 education."The school voucher program in its current form is not sustainable,'' she said in a prepared statement."Legislative Republicans need to explain why they are forcing this runaway spending on Arizona taxpayers and making working families foot the bill for private school tuitions.
Vouchers for high schoolers are worth $7,532, about $540 more than the state provides to public schools. Competition issuesJohn Ward, an internal auditor for the Arizona Department of Education, said his agency was not hiding the true cost of the expanded voucher program when lawmakers adopted the budget a month ago with its $552 million cost estimate. He said state law requires only that a report be prepared every year by May 30 of anticipated voucher enrollment and the cost for the coming school year.
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