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In 40 of the 50 U.S. states, the same political party controls both the governor's mansion and legislative chambers. That one-party rule means state policies don't gridlock the way Congress often does. One state with split government is Arizona. If Democrats can win the legislature, they could change Arizona's school voucher system. From member station KJZZ in Phoenix, Wayne Schutsky reports.
WAYNE SCHUTSKY, BYLINE: A couple of years ago, Arizona's Republican legislature took the state's small school voucher program and made it one of the most expansive in the country, letting any family use tax dollars to pay for private school tuition or homeschooling. For parent Chelsea Ellison, that's been a success after her daughter struggled in public elementary schools.
CHELSEA ELLISON: It took us a little bit of last year to get her where she should've been in general, and now she's thriving. She loves school.
SCHUTSKY: Ellison's children are among the over 77,000 enrolled in the program, up from 12,000 kids before Republicans expanded the program a couple of years ago. Voucher parents like Ellison, who talks to me at her home while her kids took an art class, say they've been paying taxes but experienced a deteriorating situation in public schools.
ELLISON: There was larger class sizes, more budget cuts. We had no STEM teacher. We had no music teacher. We had no art teacher.
SCHUTSKY: But the vouchers - about $7,000 per child in most cases - worry parents with kids still in public schools, like Miriam Hoban, who I met at Scottsdale Unified school board meeting.
MIRIAM HOBAN: I feel like the vouchers definitely take away from the critical dollars that the public schools need to keep providing the excellent schooling that they are capable of providing.
SCHUTSKY: Arizona's voucher program is a model around the country for backers of what's called school choice. But last year, it cost $718 million that critics say came at the expense of public schools and contributed to a budget deficit requiring cuts elsewhere as well. Meanwhile Hoban, the public school mom, says teachers or parents are forced to pay out of pocket for basic necessities like pencils and markers.
HOBAN: I notice that the amount of resources available to the teachers directly, it just is not there. Any kind of funding for improvements at the school is not there.
SCHUTSKY: Vouchers are just one issue where states make the rules. In Arizona and across the country, statehouses have been ruling on access to abortion, Medicaid eligibility, gun laws, taxes and trans rights. And this fall, there are close battles for control for several legislatures, including in Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania. Here in Arizona, Democrats hope to flip a few Republican seats and have a Democratic-run legislature to work with Democratic Governor Katie Hobbs. Soon after she took office in 2023, she put the voucher program back on the agenda.
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KATIE HOBBS: The previous legislature passed a massive expansion of school vouchers that lacks accountability and will likely bankrupt this state.
SCHUTSKY: How they spent that money has generated headlines focused on questionable expenses like private lessons and luxury cars and ski resort passes, supposedly part of their education. But for Democrats to win enough seats in the legislature to turn that around, they might have to temper goals for scaling back the program, says Arizona pollster Paul Bentz.
PAUL BENTZ: I don't expect that they could mount a full-fledged repeal. I think that would be challenging for some of the swing areas for Democrats. But I certainly think, at a minimum, there would be regulation on it and probably some definite changes to the program.
SCHUTSKY: Bentz says Arizona's swing districts have plenty of parents like Ellison, who says she prefers to keep her kids learning at home.
ELLISON: So I've watched them learn more and want to be part of learning since. Before, it was fighting to do homework.
SCHUTSKY: She supports putting additional guardrails on the program but doesn't want to upend the progress her kids have made at home.
For NPR News, I'm Wayne Schutsky in Phoenix.
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