Public School Supporters Fight Utah Voucher Plan

A political battle in Utah that raged through this winter and early spring has demonstrated the broad popular support for public schools among the state’s registered voters. In February, the state legislature passed and Governor Jon Huntsman signed into law the nation’s most sweeping school voucher program. Lawmakers, however, were met in response with a dramatic outpouring of opposition to the law, led by the grassroots organization Utahns for Public Schools.

Utahns for Public Schools applied for a petition opposing the law and, within the required 30-day window, gathered over 131,000 signatures, well over the 92,000 needed to put the measure on hold until it can appear before voters as a ballot referendum. Carmen Snow, president of the Utah PTA, was astounded by the speed and magnitude of the response: “In all my years, I have seen nothing to match the passion and energy that parents brought to this signature drive.” Though pro-voucher organizations are already preparing for legal challenges to the referendum, it appears likely that popular support for public schools has stopped this voucher program dead in its tracks, at least for now.

A Sweeping Voucher Law

The voucher law – the Parents for Choice in Education Act, or HB148 – would allow any of the state’s 512,000 public school students to receive vouchers that could be used at any private school. The amount of the voucher would range from $500 to $3,000, depending on the wealth of the student’s family, and the legislature predicted the program would cost $9.3 million in the first year, growing to a total of $327 million over 12 years. The bill also included $9.2 million in “mitigation money” – funds that would be used to reimburse public schools for revenues lost from declining student enrollment.

School vouchers are not a new idea in Utah. Since 2005, Utah students with disabilities have been able to receive vouchers of up to $5,700 for private school tuition. However, the idea of a universal voucher program has perpetually lacked support. The Utah House voted down voucher laws six times before they passed HB148 by a single vote. The state Senate endorsed the bill by a margin of 19 to 10.

“No Sense for Utah”

Within 24 hours of the adjournment of the legislative session, Utahns for Public Schools – a grassroots organization made up of state education leaders, educators, PTA members, and groups such as the Utah Education Association and the NAACP – applied for a referendum petition. Under Utah state law, any bill passed by less than a two-thirds majority in the House and Senate can be put on hold and put before voters as a ballot referendum if a certain number of registered voters sign a petition against it. Within a month, grassroots activists had collected far over the required number of signatures.

Procuring the signatures alone was a huge victory for voucher opponents, because polling indicates the law would be voted down as a referendum. A poll done in March found that two-thirds of Utah voters “somewhat oppose” or “strongly oppose” the voucher law and 55 percent said that they would vote against it in a referendum. These figures are similar to the American public at large, who, in a 2006 poll, opposed vouchers by a margin of 60 percent to 36 percent.

Utahns for Public Schools is prepared for a fight, however. The group Parents for Choice in Education, an organization that helped push the law through the legislature, has mobilized to build support for the law, and it spent over $200,000 for media advertising in the final two weeks of Utahns for Public Schools’ signature drive. Pat Rusk, a spokesperson for Utahns for Public Schools, has derided the organization. “Many of us have worked for years to overcome the river of money from out-of-state ideologues intent on starting a voucher experiment in Utah,” she said. “This makes no sense for Utah, where 96 percent of Utah students attend public schools and 21 Utah counties have no private schools at all.”

Legal Challenges Expected

Despite the success of the petition, Parents for Choice in Education believes that even if the referendum succeeds in killing the law, Utah’s voucher program will be able to go forward. The difficulty comes from HB174, a law passed three weeks after HB148 that amended the original law, adding additional funding, requiring background checks for teachers in schools enrolling voucher students, and requiring a state audit of the program in five years. HB174 contains language that voucher supporters claim would keep in place the core of the voucher program, but without the mitigation money for public schools included in HB148. Utah Attorney General Mark Shurtleff has announced his agreement with this position.

Lawyers for Utahns for Public Schools, however, have called the idea absurd, saying that HB174 does not contain any clauses that allow for enactment of the program or appropriation of any money. Janet Jenson, an attorney for the organization, says that voucher supporters are “distorting the truth” in order to scare voters away from voting the voucher law down. Whatever the final legal opinion on the matter, Governor Huntsman has said he will respect the will of the people: “If the people vote it down, obviously that’s the answer…. I would obviously respect that.” Governor Huntsman has said the referendum will likely be on the ballot during the February 2008 primary elections.

Even if the law is enacted, however, voucher opponents have their own legal challenges ready. People for the American Way, along with other advocacy groups, says the law could be challenged on the grounds that it violates a provision of the Utah Constitution prohibiting state aid to religious schools.

Prepared by Matthew Samberg, May 1, 2007