Somewhere in Arizona this summer, a man set up a folding table outside a grocery store with a clipboard and a stack of petitions. And somewhere in Arizona this summer, a mother pushing a cart with a toddler in the seat stopped, listened to his pitch, and said, “Actually, I’ve read about this. No thank you.”
Decline to sign. That is how we stopped the anti-ESA initiative in its tracks.
On Tuesday, the Arizona Supreme Court ruled in CLARK v. PROTECT EDUCATION, rejecting the final argument that stood between Proposition 212 and Arizona’s November ballot. Prop 212—the teachers’ union-backed initiative to restrict our Empowerment Scholarship Account program—needed 255,949 valid signatures. After Arizona’s 15 county recorders finished their review, the petition came back with a validity rate of just 75.2%, and everything came down to one claim about how signatures should be counted. The Court’s answer was four words: “We are not persuaded.”
The trial court applied that math and entered its final determination. The petition fell short. Proposition 212 will not appear on the November ballot.
Ballots are being printed right now without it. And more than 100,000 Arizona students begin this school year without the threat that hung over their families all summer.
A win with a lot of names on it
The ESA program was saved through a massive coalition effort.
The Goldwater Institute led the legal challenge and carried it through trial and appeal. The Arizona Free Enterprise Club combed through petition sheets line by line and documented what circulators were actually telling voters. Love Your School never stopped walking alongside families trying to find the right fit for their child—and shared the truth about the ESA program. Heritage Action mobilized supporters when it mattered. AZLovesESAs and parent advocates all over this state showed up, spoke up, and refused to let this program be defined by the people who want it gone. Important out-of-state contributions came from the American Federation for Children, along with other educational freedom advocates.
And then there were the parents at the grocery store tables. Dozens of them, in every corner of Arizona, who had done their homework and declined to sign. No one will ever write their names down. They may have been the difference.
To all of you: thank you. It is a privilege to stand with you.
What the record showed
The Arizona Education Association (AEA) and Save Our Schools (SOS) spent more than $7 million—much of it coming from out-of-state opponents of educational freedom—to force this measure onto the ballot. They turned in tens of thousands of duplicate signatures and relied on circulators who were not legally eligible to collect them, including those with serious criminal convictions. The Court’s opinion describes circulators who listed commercial mailboxes as their homes. It describes one whose entire pitch to voters, captured on recording, was that the measure would help low-income students go to college. It would not have.
I do not point this out to gloat. I point this out because, for four years, AEA, SOS, and their friends in the media told Arizona families they could not be trusted to document a receipt. Those families take pains to account for every ESA dollar. ESA opponents could not go through the trouble to account for the signatures on their own petition sheets.
Now the harder part
Here is what I hope we do not do: celebrate for a week and go back to our regular routines.
A courtroom can stop a bad idea. It cannot spread the truth for us. And the truth about ESAs still is not reaching most Arizonans.
Too many parents do not know the program exists. Too many believe it serves the wealthy, when the majority of ESA families are middle-income Arizonans earning between $75,000 and $150,000. Too many have been told the program is riddled with fraud, when documented misspending sits below one-tenth of one percent, and is identified through receipt-level transparency that no other program in Arizona state government provides. Too many have never heard about the child with dyslexia who finally learned to read, or the student with autism who finally got the therapy, or the family that left a bullying situation in a public school and finally found belonging.
So here is my call to you and every educational freedom advocate in Arizona: the coalition that saved this program should now be the coalition that makes it known.
In every district. Every church. Every neighborhood. Every language Arizona speaks. Not defending a policy—opening a door. A mother in Prescott with a struggling second-grader and a father in Tucson whose son is falling through the cracks should both know that Arizona has already made a way for their child, and should be able to walk through that door without needing a lawyer or a lobbyist to help them.
The goal was never to protect a program. The goal is a state where every Arizona family, whatever their zip code, their income, or their child’s ability, can find the setting where that child will actually thrive.
Parents are not the problem in Arizona education. They are the solution. This week Arizona said so out loud. Now we get to keep proving it.
Three things you can do
- Tell one family. Someone in your church, your neighborhood, or your extended family has a child who is struggling and does not know ESAs exist. Be the person who tells them.
- Share your story. If your family uses an ESA, your account is the single most persuasive thing in this debate. We would be honored to help you tell it. Just respond to this email.
- Pray. For the families this program serves. For the students starting a new school year this month. And for the people on the other side of this fight, who are also made in God’s image and who also love children.
A Final Chapter Marked by Love
Last weekend my mom Patty went to be with Jesus. In her last years, Alzheimer’s slowly took her memory—but it never touched her worth. And it never slowed the men and women who cared for her.
I want to honor them: the caregivers who treated her with respect and compassion, the nurses and aides whose patience never wore thin, and the friends who had already walked through aging, dementia, and decline and were willing to share what they had learned. As a son learning to support my dad as he shouldered the role of primary caregiver, I drew real encouragement from them. It meant more than I can say to meet people who were eager to help us love her well.
One of those compassionate guides told me early on how much the support of God’s people would carry us—and she was right. Faith in Jesus was the center of my mom’s life, and it remained the center in her final chapter, even as so much else fell away. That faith was not a memory she could lose. It was the truth that held her.
Pope John Paul II called this the “culture of life.” The people who served my mom showed me the gospel with their hands. They are the best answer I know to a culture that too easily treats some lives as burdens rather than gifts. To all of you who help families carry someone home—thank you. To those families, the Lord has you in his loving embrace, just as he has mine.
The Psalmist praised the Lord, knowing that we are all “fearfully and wonderfully made” and that every lived day is “written in [the Lord’s] book.” I’m so thankful that in my mom’s last chapter she was loved and cared for by people who treated her as a precious daughter of the King.
ICYMI
More coverage on Prop 212:
- Read here how the teachers’ unions spent millions to gut Arizona’s ESA program and still failed to qualify for the November ballot.
- Read here how school choice advocates fought this on every front, from a competing initiative to the signature challenge that finished it.
- Read here how the same ruling stripped Proposition 145 from the ballot, leaving military families without the protection lawmakers wrote for them.
Coverage of Prop 318:
- See here how the opposition to Proposition 318, the Protect Girls’ Sports Act, is hiding behind a copycat website with no disclosure of who is paying for it.
Coverage on Life:
- Read here how France rushed assisted suicide into law and pushed real care for the dying off to 2030.