This week I want to talk directly with you about something that has been consuming our attention for months and that I believe represents one of the most consequential decisions for Arizona families in years. You need to know about the threat, about a potential deal that is on the table, and my honest assessment of the best path forward. You deserve the full picture — and there is no time to waste. The signature deadline is July 2. The window to act is now, not next week.

The Problem: A Well-Funded Campaign to Gut Arizona’s ESA Program

Since March, a coalition of teachers unions and progressive activists, fueled by money from out-of-state interests, has been collecting signatures across Arizona for a deceptively titled ballot initiative: the “Protect Education Act” (PEA). This measure is designed to fundamentally cripple Arizona’s Empowerment Scholarship Account program, which gives thousands of families the freedom to choose the education that is right for their child.

We believe that $10-15 million has been spent on this is serious, well-organized campaign. The initiative required approximately 255,000 valid signatures to qualify for the November ballot, and we believe they have collected at least that number. The remaining question is whether it will survive the signature verification process. That is not a comfortable position to be in.

If the PEA reaches the ballot and passes, the consequences for ESA families will be severe. As a voter-approved initiative, those consequences would be enshrined and protected in Arizona’s constitution. Under Arizona’s Voter Protection Act, the Legislature could not meaningfully fix it, even when the damage becomes clear to everyone. Here is just a taste of what the PEA would actually do:

Tens of thousands of children would be removed from the program. The PEA imposes an annual family income cap of $150,000 for students who enrolled under the 2022 universal expansion. Families above that threshold — including many who left the workforce so a parent could educate at home, or who have stretched their budgets to give their child a better option — would be disqualified. We are talking about tens of thousands of children currently enrolled who could lose access. A married firefighter and nurse could exceed that income cap.

Private schools would face sweeping new state regulation. The PEA extends state oversight authority into private schools that accept ESA funds in ways that current law does not permit. It removes the existing statutory protection that places the burden on the state to prove that any regulation is necessary and non-burdensome. Schools that have built their programs around their faith, their values, and their educational philosophy would face a new and unpredictable regulatory environment.

The Attorney General would become an independent enforcement authority. The PEA gives the AG the power to issue civil investigative demands, file civil suits, and pursue restitution — independently, without referral from the State Board of Education. In short, a partisan AG would have new tools to engage in lawfare against the families and schools that participate in the program.

Aggressive new rulemaking would be written outside the normal legislative process. The PEA includes an eight-month exemption from formal rulemaking requirements, allowing state bureaucrats to write regulations governing private schools and ESA families with minimal public accountability. Once embedded in a voter-protected law, those regulations would be extraordinarily difficult to challenge or change.

All of this would be essentially permanent. That is the feature of the PEA that concerns us most. Bad laws can usually be fixed. Initiative provisions cannot — at least not without another statewide vote.

Dishonest Media Coverage Has Made This Harder

The current political environment surrounding this fight is not favorable, and media coverage of the ESA program has been consistently misleading.

Arizona’s ESA program serves tens of thousands of families with an overall fraud and misuse rate of approximately 0.3%. There is literally no government program in America — not Medicare, not Medicaid, not federal housing assistance — that operates with that level of integrity. The program works. Families love it. The overwhelming majority of participants use their funds exactly as intended: to give their children an education suited to their needs and their family’s values.

And yet, every time an unallowable expense is identified and caught — which is how the system is supposed to work — it has been treated by local media as a fresh scandal. Bounce houses. Jewelry. Lingerie. These stories have been told over and over, without context, without comparison, and without acknowledgment that the ESA accountability system caught the problem. The cumulative effect of this dishonest reporting has been to create a public impression of a program riddled with waste and abuse. That impression is false. But it is the environment in which this ballot campaign is operating.

And then there is money: So far, the anti-school choice forces have invested $10-15 million to collect signatures. Once PEA is on the ballot, how much more will out-of-state progressive interests pour in to win the campaign? From where will the millions—if not tens of millions—necessary to combat the measure come?

Here is the bottom line: polling shows the PEA passing if it reaches the ballot. That is the reality we are working against, and it is why the question of whether this measure qualifies for the ballot is so important.

The Deal: What Is on the Table

Against that backdrop, Arizona legislative leaders have been negotiating a path to keep the PEA off the ballot. In a special session, the Legislature would pass a law making four changes to the ESA program by statute:

1. Luxury goods prohibition. ESA funds could not be used for a defined list of non-educational items — household appliances, jewelry, lingerie, amusement park admission, bounce houses, hot tubs, restaurant dining, and similar items that have generated the media coverage described above. Almost all of these expenses are already unallowable. This is a change most ESA families would consider entirely reasonable.
2. Fingerprint clearance cards. Teaching staff, school personnel, and third-party tutors paid with ESA funds would be required to obtain fingerprint clearance cards. A one-year grace period would give the ecosystem time to adjust. Importantly, this requirement does not apply to parents educating their own children at home — it applies to vendors and providers paid with ESA funds.
3. Carry-forward balance limits. Unspent ESA funds above a defined threshold would be returned to the state at the end of each year. The caps are $50,000 for students with disabilities and $24,000 for all other students. Families with existing balances above those thresholds would be grandfathered — their current balances, even if higher than the new caps, would not be touched.
4. Administrative fee. ADE would receive a dedicated fee of 0.5% per student to fund the administration and oversight of the program — giving the department the resources to do its job well.

In exchange for these four statutory changes, the PEA would not be placed on the November ballot. Three additional ballot measures that the Legislature designed specifically to counter the PEA would also be removed from the ballot:

• HCR 2048 — the Military Families College Savings and Scholarship Protection Act, which would have constitutionally prohibited the state from confiscating scholarship funds from military families
• HCR 2040 — the Public Resources Protection Act, which would have barred school districts from using public funds or resources to support teacher union operations
• SCR 1032 — the Prioritize Teacher Pay Act, which would have required larger school districts to spend at least 60% of their operational budgets on direct classroom instruction

All three were strategically designed to counter the PEA’s political narrative. If the PEA does not reach the ballot, they are not necessary.

Addressing Your Concerns Honestly

We know that some of you have concerns about this agreement. We share some of them. Here is our honest assessment.

“This gives away too much.”

We get it — and we would prefer a better deal. We are concerned about how the fingerprinting requirement would affect ESA families who educate their children at home, where the context is genuinely different from a private school or tutoring center. We are also concerned about the carry-forward limits for families of children with special needs, for whom accumulating a balance over time is not a loophole — it is how they afford expensive therapies and build an educational program designed to help their child thrive over many years.

Here is the crucial difference: because this is a statute, these provisions can be refined in future sessions. If the fingerprinting requirements prove unworkable for home-educating families, the Legislature can fix it. If the carry-forward caps prove too restrictive for families of children with disabilities, the Legislature      can adjust them. That flexibility exists because this is legislation, not a ballot initiative.

If the PEA passes, that flexibility disappears. The PEA’s income cap, its aggressive carry-forward recoupment, its independent AG enforcement authority, and its sweeping private school regulations would all be made near-permanent in the constitution. They could not be fixed — not next year, not in five years, not without another statewide campaign.

“Aren’t we handing Hobbs a political win?”                                                 

Some have argued loudly that this deal is a political gift to Governor Hobbs, and that the smarter play is to fight the PEA on the ballot because ESAs are a winning issue for conservatives. We don’t agree — and more importantly, this question should follow, not lead, the question of what is best for ESA families.

On the ballot fight: ballot measures are unpredictable, even on favorable terrain. The campaign against the PEA would not be a debate about fraud rates — it would be an emotional television campaign built around images of bounce houses and jewelry purchased with public funds. Those images are real. That unallowed spending happened. Yes, it was caught — but in the fog of a ballot campaign, that fact will be drowned out. Arizona is now a genuinely competitive state: progressives have won five of the last five major statewide offices. In that environment, with a media that has been actively hostile to the ESA program, a ballot campaign is not a guaranteed win. A loss would be catastrophic — and written into the constitution.

On the money argument: it has been claimed that this deal frees up $10-15 million in progressives’ campaign spending that will flow directly to Hobbs, Fontes, and Mayes. This simply does not follow. Campaign budgets are not a pool of water that sloshes automatically from one bucket to another. Money that out-of-state teachers unions or progressive donors might have spent on a PEA ballot campaign is not the same money, given by the same donors, for the same purposes, as funding for a gubernatorial race. The claim assumes a redirection of progressive spending that does not reflect how political money actually works.

On the “gift to Hobbs” argument itself: consider the alternative. If the PEA reaches the ballot, Democrats do not need to spend a dollar making the accountability argument — the initiative makes it for them, and the media makes it for them. If the PEA passes, Governor Hobbs receives not a talking point but a crowning achievement: permanently crippling ESAs in Arizona. The agreement forecloses both of those outcomes. Keeping the PEA off the ballot is not a gift to Hobbs. It is the removal of her best weapon.

The Bottom Line

Arizona’s ESA program is one of the most successful expressions of parental freedom in education anywhere in America. It was built on the conviction that parents — not bureaucrats, not teachers unions, not the state — are best positioned to make educational decisions for their children. Tens of thousands of Arizona families, including many who share the values that animate our work, have built their children’s educational lives around this program.

The PEA is a serious, well-funded, and well-organized attempt to destroy that program from the outside — through a ballot initiative, beyond the reach of your elected representatives, in a way that could never be undone. The deal on the table is imperfect. We would negotiate it differently if we could. But there is no time: without this deal, the PEA signatures will be turned in on July 2 with a likely win to follow.

The deal addresses the documented concerns that have driven public support for the PEA, does so through a process that preserves future flexibility, and keeps the most harmful provisions permanently off the table. For ESA families, for parents educating their children at home, for families of children with disabilities and learning challenges, and for every parent who believes they have the right to direct their child’s education — this matters.

If we lose this opportunity — if the PEA signatures are turned in next week — we will still fight this attack on ESA families with everything we have. But today, and the next few days, we have a chance to stop it in its tracks. It is too important an opportunity to let pass.

Please Act Now:

1. Contact your legislators and tell them you support a special session to save ESAs
2. Thank legislative leadership for pursuing an agreement that would protect the program. You can reach Rep. Steve Montenegro, Speaker of the House, at smontenegro@azleg.gov. You can reach Warren Petersen, President of the Senate, at wpetersen@azleg.gov.
3. Forward this email to friends and family who care about educational freedom in Arizona.

We will continue to keep you informed as events develop.

Additional Resources:

• Text of the deal. The deal does not yet have a bill number. But there was an earlier attempt at the end of the regular legislative session. It is substantially similar to what is on the table now, and you can review it here.
• Comparison Chart: This chart compares the proposed deal provisions, with those of the PEA.

As always, thank you for standing with us for Arizona families.