A few months after Arizona Governor Doug Ducey signed a major expansion of the state’s most ambitious private school choice program into law, the program is on the verge of being blocked.
A group that aims to halt the expansion says it has collected enough signatures for a petition to stop the new law from taking effect.
Save Our Schools Arizona says it has more than 100,000 signatures—enough to put the expansion on hold so that voters can directly weigh in on the law at the ballot box next year. The Associated Press reports that’s 25 percent more signatures than required.
Arizona lawmakers passed a bill expanding the state’s education savings accounts program this spring. The program allows parents to pull their children out of public school and use the per-pupil funding the state allocates to each student on approved education expenses instead, such as private school tuition, tutoring services, or even text books for home schooling.
The bill had the backing of U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos, and Ducey signed it into law in early April.
