More AZ Schools Close as Voucher Costs Mount to $1 Billion

💔 8 more community schools close: Our hearts break for the Kyrene and Scottsdale communities, as their school boards have voted to shutter neighborhood schools. Kyrene voted to close 6 schools, and Scottsdale Unified voted to shut down 2 schools at the end of this school year. These votes come after months of emotional community input and difficult conversations about budget constraints. This brings the total number of schools shut down since universal ESA voucher expansion to 28, with at least 4 more closures expected in Amphi. 

Sadly, as long as the Arizona legislature continues to drastically underfund our students and allow the $1 billion ESA voucher program to go unchecked, local districts across the state will be forced to make these heartbreaking decisions – and students and families pay the price 😡

👉Read our OpEd:  In October, we published a widely-read OpEd connecting school closures and vouchers. Give it a read and please share – the lobbyists pushing vouchers want to push a different narrative, but neighborhood schools are closing across Arizona, and it’s because of the universal expansion of vouchers: “The math is simple: Arizona doesn’t provide enough funding to adequately fund one school system, much less two — a public system open to all and a selective private system. Meanwhile, report after report shows many millions in fraud, waste, and abuse of our taxpayer dollars via the voucher system — money that could and should stay in the public schools that are being forced to close against the will of the families and educators choosing these schools.”

And keep in mind, this is the goal, because privatization cannot take root without the closure of local public schools. In order to change our public system to a private system that is unregulated, for-profit, open to discrimination, and lacking protections for kids, public schools must shut down. The privatizers aren’t even being quiet about it anymore — look at Moms for Liberty co-founder Tiffany Justice:

We are far past the time for alarm bells; this is a full-blown crisis for our state. The Republicans who control our state legislature are intentionally underfunding Arizona’s schools, which serve 92% of families, in order to usher in a privatized, two-tiered education system where some children are “picked” as winners and many are left behind. None of us should be okay with this. Arizona has a moral imperative and a constitutional obligation to fund public education for all families. Speak up now, before we lose our public schools for good. 

Take Action: Stop the Voucher Grift! 🚫💎 Arizona’s ESA voucher program has ballooned to $1 billion a year, and is wide open to bad actors. We need you to speak up! Tell Arizona leaders you expect them to put guardrails on this program NOW using our easy-to-use tools.

📨 Use our easy one-click email tool to send a letter to your elected officials  — then use our easy tool to call your members of the AZ legislature!

Federal Voucher Update & Action

Federal Voucher Scam: This year, Congress passed the nation’s first federal voucher program as part of its budget, despite massive opposition from public education advocates, educators, families, students, and voters across the country who’ve rejected vouchers every time they’ve been on the ballot.

Like AZ’s off-the-rails voucher programs, this scheme lacks basic accountability, opens the door for discrimination, and bypasses critical civil rights protections. Public funds belong in public schools — not private interests. 

• Our allies at the national Education Law Center — along with SOSAZ and groups like ours around the US — are urging states to reject the new federal voucher scheme, which threatens to drain billions more from our public schools. 
• Based on the Notice that Treasury/IRS issued, it looks like states are likely to have almost no say in overseeing the vouchers in their state, nor the schools that eventually receive voucher funds. The National Coalition for Public Education has an analysis of the Notice here.
• The Advancement Project has submitted a letter as a comment signed by 140 organizations, including SOSAZ. 

📣 Speak up NOW! The Treasury Department and the IRS have opened up a window for public comments that closes December 26 — this is our last chance to speak up against this program before regulations are proposed. You can see all the comments submitted so far here – let's make sure they hear the cautionary tales of vouchers from Arizona!!!

⏰Submit a comment on the Federal Registry by Dec. 26! (more info here)

1. Go to regulations.gov/commenton/IRS-2025-0466-0001 
2. Type your comment (we included a template below, but personal is always better!) Do not include personal information in your comment - this will be public record. 
3. Under “What is your comment about?” select “Community Organization / Parent/ Student/ Teacher” or whatever category is most appropriate for you
4. Enter your email address and (optional) opt in for an email confirmation
5. Under “Tell us about yourself” select either “An Individual” or “Anonymous”
6. Select “I am not a robot” and then hit “Submit Comment”

Copy/paste, then please personalize! 

Hi, my name is [name} and [introduce yourself]. I am writing in opposition to the use of federal tax dollars for the new school voucher program established under Section 25F of the Internal Revenue Code.

In Arizona, tax credit and ESA vouchers have decimated public education funding and are leading to devastating school closures, teacher layoffs, and more. The newly passed federal tax credit voucher is poised to do the same, diverting unlimited billions in taxpayer dollars to private schools each year without the transparency and accountability that public schools provide. 

Arizona’s voucher program is rife with fraud, waste, and abuse. Further, vouchers have fueled discrimination and segregation, enabling private schools accepting publicly-funded vouchers to exclude students with disabilities, English language learners, LGBTQ+ students, and more. Arizona’s voucher program has zero academic accountability, even though much of the research on vouchers has shown they limit or actively harm learning. Implementing the federal program with a similar lack of guardrails in the federal voucher program would open the floodgates to fraud, waste, and abuse of taxpayer dollars, just like we have seen in Arizona. 

Public funds must be for public schools that serve all children. No regulations can fix the fundamental flaw in new Section 25F of the Internal Revenue Code, as added by Section 70411 of Public Law 119-21, 139 Stat. 72, namely that it will result in billions of dollars being diverted from the US Treasury and handed over to unaccountable private schools and scholarship organizations that do not answer to the public. 

Across the country, voters have rejected vouchers time and time again. The national voucher program could force vouchers into states that have rejected them, including Arizona, Colorado, Nebraska, and Kentucky, where voters overwhelmingly rejected vouchers in the last election. A 2024 exit poll by All4Ed found that 68% of voters preferred increasing federal funding for public schools over private school vouchers, including 58% of Republicans. Forcing through a federal voucher program that defunds public schools is a rejection of voters' expressed will to support public education. 

As you consider regulations, it is vital that you allow states to oversee the entities distributing vouchers to stop the fraud, waste, abuse, discrimination, and destruction that plague Arizona’s voucher programs. In addition, you must ensure any provisions benefiting private schools should equally benefit public schools. 

Thank you for your consideration.

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