Former Arizona lawmaker Joel John cast one of the deciding votes for Arizona’s massive, universal voucher legislation.  

He’s regretted it ever since.  

John, the keynote speaker at Idaho Education Association’s annual Lobby Day Dinner, told the crowd that Idaho shouldn’t make the same mistake as Arizona.  

“What’s funny is that major proponents of the vouchers — they’ll demand accountability for public schools, but none for private schools, even if they’re accepting these public dollars,” John said. “And they also try to claim that there’s competition. Well, it’s not competition if … the public schools are playing by a completely different set of rules.” 

Later, John was joined for a panel discussion by Heather Williams, the director of the Idaho Rural Schools Association; Paul Kellerer, CEO of Idaho Business for Education, and Quinn Perry, deputy director of the Idaho School Boards Association.

‘It’s Not About Giving Families a Choice’

John, a lifelong Arizonan and longtime rancher, entered public service after working as a music teacher for a few years. At that point, anti-public school forces had been converging on Arizona for a decade, trying to persuade legislators to vote for a universal voucher system. Arizona’s “empowerment scholarship accounts” had started off small.

“It began with something fairly benign, give a scholarship or give a voucher to kids with disabilities,” he said. By the time John arrived in the Legislature, the vouchers could even be used to cover students living on Arizona’s borders who wished to attend school in a neighboring state.

“Know this: Universal is the end goal, no matter what it is,” he said. “It starts small, little small pills, easy to swallow.”

“What’s funny is that major proponents of the vouchers — they’ll demand accountability for public schools, but none for private schools, even if they’re accepting these public dollars.”

– Former Arizona lawmaker Joel John

But John, along with two fellow Republican lawmakers, held out on making the program truly universal. He admits that he voted for universal expansion in order to win his next election, which he lost.

“My eyes opened up,” he said. “There’s things I can see clearly that I couldn’t see at the time when I was in office.”

One thing that has become glaringly obvious? Arizona’s voucher program benefits the families that need the money the least.

“It’s not about getting families a choice,” John said, noting that more than 70 percent of the students who use Arizona’s vouchers have never attended public school. “It’s about creating a private school subsidy for families that can already afford it. It’s about maintaining an unequal playing field, one that holds public schools accountable.”

Allies Share Their Warnings About Vouchers

Williams, of the Idaho Rural Schools Association, said that inequality extends to the urban/rural divide in Idaho. “When we divert funds from our system that is already underfunded for rural communities, it’s a problem, and I think that’s the biggest issue,” she said. “When you think about places like Clark County, Dubois or Camas County, Fairfield … there are not private schools in those areas now. The access is limited, and those districts are still going to have to function, and so as we siphon off funds from those schools already and continue to divert funds away from operations and facilities that have been undermined for rural districts because of policy decisions the last few years … It’s going to be problematic.”

Vouchers will force rural public school districts — which already rely heavily on property taxes due to the state’s chronic underfunding of education — to ask for even more money. In other states, private schools can also draw on public funds, said ISBA’s Perry.

“In states like Wisconsin and now in Indiana, you’re actually starting to see state legislatures allow private schools to receive taxpayer assistance through property tax levies, meaning the school district is running a levy, and the private school actually gets a portion of the portion of those funds,” Perry said. “So when we talk about where this expansion is going, we can use evidence and data from states across the country to learn from our mistakes.”

Idaho can avoid the same fate, panelists said, but it’s time to be direct about what vouchers really are — and what they really mean. Kellerer, of Idaho Business for Education, gave a piece of advice to IEA members preparing to speak to their legislators the next day.

“When the words are, ‘This is not a voucher, it is a refundable tax credit,’ ask these two questions,” she said. “Does it take public funds? Our taxes, once they leave our home, become public funds. So does it take public funds? And are public school students eligible to use them? If the first answer is yes, but the second answer is no, it’s a voucher.”