Save Our Schools! Steve Williamson and Karen McClelland welcome Beth Lewis to the show. Lewis is a mom, former public-school teacher, and founding member and Executive Director of Save Our Schools Arizona.
Lewis says, “Arizona is the tip of the spear when it comes to privatizing public education, which is a chief goal of, not only the Trump administration, but also Project 2025 and everyone who sort of ‘puppeteered’ getting Trump into office…”
Supposedly aimed at improving education, the taxpayer-funded voucher program has had the opposite effect. Roughly 75 percent of the vouchers go to families that homeschool or are already wealthy enough to afford private schools. And, because the vouchers have funneled money away from public schools with little accountability, the state now ranks dead last in per-student spending, 49th in teacher salaries, and the classrooms are the second most crowded in the nation.
To make matters worse, other Republican-led states have chosen to follow Arizona’s lead in a race to the bottom.